WELCOME TO RAID STORAGE EVOLVED

The ActiveRAID ES represents a new standard in affordable high performance RAID storage for Apple users.

The ES is based on the original ActiveRAID and provides the same ease of deployment and management, but is better suited to non-24/7, 365-day small and medium business class or university deployments using Mac OS X Server.

Perfect for Wiki, Calendar, Email, iChat, file or Web serving applications, it is also ideal for disk-to-disk back up and archive of critical data.

INTRODUCING THE ACTIVERAID ES

The ActiveRAID ES is the affordable high performance RAID storage solution for Apple® users. Active Storage designed ActiveRAID ES using the same principles of the original ActiveRAID, while achieving a previously unobtainable level of value by providing the capabilities of the ActiveRAID in a lower cost configuration that does not sacrifice the performance, reliability or ease of management. The ActiveRAID ES was carefully designed for use in business critical applications where organizations require a high level of data integrity with ease of installation and management, but not the 24/7 365 day duty cycles of a large enterprise or Post-production or Broadcast facility.

The ActiveRAID ES provides redundant power, redundant cooling and redundant Fibre Channel connections, and the same powerful, yet easy to use management suite of the original ActiveRAID. The ES differs from the original ActiveRAID in that it has a single high performance RAID controller and uses business class hard drives with a smaller cache size. This results in a very robust RAID solution ideal for business class applications.

Performance of the ActiveRAID ES is an impressive 800MB/s throughput and will easily handle most Mac OS X Server applications. The ActiveRAID ES is the ideal storage for business class applications such as File serving, database services, web hosting, calendar, Wiki, Mail, iChat and much more. The ActiveRAID ES is also ideal as archive storage device for near-line and Disk-to- Disk backup of the ActiveRAID or other Enterprise Class storage. Its speed and ease of management make it the perfect choice in tiered storage environments. †

^† Additional information is not required but recommended in order to get optimum performance from your ActiveRAID system.

FEATURES CHECKLIST

DOWNLOADS

ActiveRAID ES Data Sheet

DESIGN

Modern RAID Kernel and System Design

ACTIVERAID ES HARDWARE AND RAID KERNEL DESIGN

The ActiveRAID ES sets a new standard in low-cost high-performance fault tolerant RAID for Apple IT infrastructures. Active Storage designed it for outstanding ease-of-use and deployment while delivering the best price/performance possible in Apple based IT business applications. The ActiveRAID ES shares the same modern design of the original ActiveRAID, offering sophisticated features found on systems costing significantly more, but scaling back the overall throughput and 24/7, 365 day non-stop features usually reserved for enterprise and the post-production/ broadcast deployments.

Like the original ActiveRAID, Active Storage started with a proven storage processor design and enterprise hardened RAID stack. The single high-throughput RAID controller utilizes the latest storage processor technology and runs a Linux based operating system to provide ultra-fast data transfer and maximum reliability.

LIGHTWEIGHT RAID KERNEL

The Linux operating system provides a stable environment for the Active Storage RAID kernel and allows Active Storage to finely tune the system’s performance while taking advantage of a world-class TCP/IP networking stack and 128-bit SSL security. The lightweight RAID kernel maintains a small memory footprint for fast execution, and is enhanced with hardware accelerated X-OR calculation. This hardware/software combination gives the ActiveRAID ES excellent storage performance in all parity RAID levels.

The Active Storage RAID kernel has been specifically tuned to deliver maximum RAID 5 and RAID 6 performance. When running in single controller mode, the kernel provides a more balanced write to read ratio, as the system does not require cache coherency to be maintained. Latency and small file performance are improved in most operations such as database look-up and file serving. The system delivers excellent performance while guarding against any data loss by utilizing hardware-accelerated parity RAID. Dual 4Gb Fibre Channel ports on the RAID controller deliver near “line speed” performance, and support Apple multi-pathing and load balancing when using multiple LUNs.

FAULT TOLERANCE

The ActiveRAID ES is a true business class fault tolerant RAID system. Each active component in the system is field replaceable and in most cases hot swappable. All mechanical components such as cooling modules and hard drives are redundant and hot swappable, guarding against the most common downtime causing failures found in lowcost RAID systems today. This design also provides excellent time to repair in the field. Like the original ActiveRAID, system power is provided by industry standard dual redundant and fully load sharing, hot swappable power supplies. A power distribution network built into the system controls the power supplies. The Active Storage design is far more sophisticated than other systems in this price range. The power supplies are integrated into the system design in order to allow trickle power for remote turn on, shutdown, and restart. This design also allows a soft power system, which provides cache flush and proper shutdown at the power switch, preventing back-up battery drain and providing the best insurance against data loss due to improper shutdown. This also guards against unintended operator error.

The SAS expansion port on the RAID controller offers a dual, bi-directional 3GB/s throughput speed allowing the secondary expansion system to provide full-speed operation when connected to a primary RAID system. The Primary and Secondary expansion systems work together seamlessly to provide optimal performance and low-cost expansion, all with simplified user interaction like the original ActiveRAID.

The optional battery backed RAID controller cache system employs a sophisticated charging circuit designed specifically for the needs of the ActiveRAID and not an off-the shelf design as deployed by many of competitors. The charging circuit maintains the highest level of charge while constantly conditioning the battery. This prevents the common and often less than adequate number of hours of protection seen in some other systems, especially after months or years of operation. The ActiveRAID ES with the optional battery back up module will maintain your data in cache for a minimum of 72 hours. The ActiveRAID ES constantly monitors the battery condition and state providing early warning, and will even suggest replacement when necessary. We highly suggest the inclusion of the Battery Back up Module with every Active Storage ES system. This can be especially important in smaller businesses where UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supplies) are less likely to be deployed.

If your budget can support the installation of a UPS, rest assured the ActiveRAID ES will support it; the ES supports all popular UPS systems.

EASY SERVICEABILITY

The ActiveRAID ES is a modern design and takes advantage of recent industry advances in component design and packaging allowing field serviceability by the average user. The design provides the user a quick reference visual indication of failed or questionable components from both the front and rear of the enclosure with user selectable audible warning. Additionally, using the included native Mac OS X management suite, users receive notification by email of a failed component or a warning event.

Detecting problems is important, but that’s not the complete story. Serviceability without complex scripts or even hand tools that will keep you up and running – only Active Storage delivers. The ability to exchange nearly all active components with no interruption of service and without having to execute complex and cumbersome scripts puts serviceability in the hands of the average IT person. In most cases the component will be hot swappable. Simply identify the bad component visually, remove it, replace with a good component and that’s it. No downtime, no hassle. In the case of the RAID controller, the system may remain powered on while the RAID controller is replaced, but data transfer to and from the system will be interrupted. The ActiveRAID ES utilizes the finest components and enterprise quality connectors to ensure long life and predictable results.

The ActiveRAID ES is a well engineered and quality built RAID system that has been thoroughly tested by Active Storage in Apple Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Leopard environments, and has proven to provide cross platform compatibility with Windows XP, Vista, Server 2000 and Linux.

TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS

Active Storage maintains relationships with all popular Fibre Channel infrastructure vendors to ensure Interoperability and best performance. We currently partner with QLogic, Brocade, Cisco, ATTO Technology, LSI Logic, and Emulex. Active Storage continually tests and monitors conformance and compatibility with critical infrastructure partners.

The exceptional affordability of the ActiveRAID ES makes it ideal for tiered storage environments where it will provide high-capacity, low cost storage in tertiary tiers behind larger enterprise storage systems, or ActiveRAID systems. Active Storage works closely with BakBone, Atempo, Archiware, and Solutioneering to provide ILM, software backup and archive software solutions. We also work with tape library manufacturers to ensure compatibility with their products.

ADVANCED MANAGEMENT

Enterprise performance and reliability without the Enterprise complexity

MODERN STORAGE MANAGEMENT MADE EASY

Active Storage set the standard for ease-of-deployment and monitoring of self-contained RAID systems for Media and Apple users by developing the worlds first Native Mac OS X storage management suite.

In our quest to deliver the best experience possible, we introduced the first iPhone Storage Monitoring App.

Once again we are re-inventing the ease of management by bringing our ActiveRAID storage managements suite to Windows. Same familiar look and feel, same ease of use.

The Apple XserveRAID® set the high-water mark for storage management on Mac OS X. Other RAID systems with clunky Windows Explorer-like browser based interfaces, difficult to use command line interfaces and even cryptic LCD displays seemed antiquated and out of place, and more importantly not particularly Apple-friendly. At Active Storage, we knew we could do better—and only Active Storage has it.

Active Storage asked a number of Apple users what would be the best storage management approach for them—the answer was unanimous “a Cocoa management application”. We got the message loud and clear and began developing a native application suite for Mac OS X, and we are happy to say it’s here now––setup, management, and monitoring. It’s a perfect compliment to the performance, redundancy, and features of the ActiveRAID. We feel it’s absolutely the best way to manage external storage on Mac OS X.

We started out by breaking up the common grouping of administrative and monitoring functions in a single tool. User studies told us that the grouping of admin and monitoring was easier for the programmers, but was highly limiting in ease of use as RAID systems became more complex with features such as active/active redundancy and secondary expansion systems.

Most admin tasks are done in initial setup, or when updating or changing configurations which is infrequent. Where as, the monitoring is often daily.

The complexity of displaying the “heavy lifting” management tasks alongside the “light-weight” daily monitoring views, overly complicated the application. In a number of cases having joint management and monitoring – even with separate passwords opened up the user up to making a catastrophic mistake such as deleting all their data. Lets face it, you are not likely to “Admin” your storage daily if you have chosen a reliable well performing product.

Active Storage found that by the separating out the setup and admin functions, we could make the Admin process more automated and guided, making the task much less laborious than found with other systems. We felt this was a much better approach for tasks that are so infrequent.

ACTIVE ADMIN

The Active Admin features a guided Setup making setting up your first or fiftieth ActiveRAID easy.

Because Active Admin is Mac OS X native, you won’t have to deal with browser based application limitations and non Apple-like interfaces. To make setup even easier, Active Storage added Bonjour discovery. The guided setup gets you up and running in minutes, and allows changes to be made on the fly without memorization of difficult commands or referring to long manuals.

Active Admin is not only easy to use—it’s easy to get started with. Management is performed “out-of-band” over Ethernet. And because Active Storage built in Bonjour, you won’t have to memorize IP addresses or use serial ports to initially talk to your RAID. If your Mac is on the network, you are ready to manage your ActiveRAID. Choosing the best-optimized configuration for your application is automatic, as are software updates and non-disruptive Firmware updates. Active Admin is as powerful as it is easy.

Management of the ActiveRAID is further simplified by the modern design of the RAID controller and the RAID Kernel. Many of the tasks required to setup and maintain earlier systems are just not required.

ACTIVE VIEWER

By breaking out the daily monitoring tasks from the Admin functions, Active Storage was able to develop a fast “light-weight” Native Mac OS X viewer providing an at-a-glance view of one or dozens of ActiveRAID systems. With a simple intuitive interface, there is no learning curve to deal with. And because it’s a viewer only, you can’t make a mistake and damage your configuration or destroy your data inadvertently.

Active Viewer, like Active Admin, utilizes the power of Bonjour to make discovery and monitoring of ActiveRAID systems easy. The intuitive interface lets you navigate quickly and drill-down into the ActiveRAID. The viewer’s remote capabilities let you monitor systems anywhere in the world as easily as you can monitor in the same room.

ACTIVE VIEWER IPHONE APP

With the native management suite complete, Active Storage wanted to do even more. Apple provided us the greatest application platform since Mac OS X, the incredible iPhone®. The iPhone is the perfect canvas to reinvent storage management; we call it “Storage Remote Control.” Monitoring your storage remotely was never more convenient or powerful.

PERFORMANCE

Unmatched application performance • Designed for modern Mac OS X systems

ACTIVERAID ES PERFORMANCE

The ActiveRAID ES was designed by Active Storage to deliver best in class price performance in common Mac IT environments. The ActiveRAID ES is a solid performer delivering excellent overall performance in Mac OS X server applications, and is well suited the average business class deployments such as Mac OS X Server based applications in small to medium sized companies, universities, and as primary storage when used with departmental servers.

The ActiveRAID ES shares the same high throughput and fault tolerant architecture of the original ActiveRAID, making it a proven performance platform. This allows the ActiveRAID ES to deliver consistent and repeatable performance in demanding business applications.

Like all of Active Storage products, the ActiveRAID ES undergoes extensive testing and optimization by our trained Mac OS X Server certified technicians to ensure it delivers the best performance and most reliable operation possible. The goal at Active Storage is to deliver the highest performing and most reliable RAID systems right out of the box.

The ActiveRAID ES uses a single high performance RAID controller and is ideal for business server applications. Additionally, the ActiveRAID ES is a perfect companion to the original ActiveRAID as a lower cost disk archive solution delivering substantial throughput and low latency required for optimum performance when used with ILM, video archive and disk-to-disk applications software.

Active Storage sees our users as partners, and value user input on testing, configurations, and interoperability. We want to hear from you on what works and what doesn’t. Active Storage will answer your requests, and provide feedback and enhancements, as they are available.

Please direct your suggestions to: performancefeedback@getactivestorage.com

ACTIVERAID ES TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Unmatched Application Performance

• RAID kernel and open controller design provide an unmatched level of fine-grain tuning and minimum overhead
• Designed specifically for modern OS systems
• Redundant pathing, multiple Fibre Channel ports and large caches guarantee maximum bandwidth (When secondary controller is added)
• Controllers automatically balance load to provide highest throughput as user needs grow

Modern, High Availability

• All components are redundant - controllers, drives, and power supplies
• Failover and failback are truly seamless
• Native support for Mac OS X Multi-pathing
• Complete support for all popular UPS systems
• SNMP and CLI support for Enterprise environments
• Automatic parity rebuild and data integrity check
• Battery-backed cache - guaranteed 72-hour support

Management for Today and Tomorrow

• Apple-friendly native Mac OS X management suite
• Dashboard monitoring widget
• iPhone monitoring App
• Email notification engine
• Bonjour discoverable out of the box
• Set up one or many systems with no scripting
• Non-disruptive software and firmware updates

RAID Support

• RAID Levels - JBOD, 0, 1, 5, 6 10, 50, 51, 60
• LUN Support - Auto-configuring for performance up to 512 LUNs
• Drive Roaming - Full support between primary and secondary Expansion Systems
• Redundant - True active/active operation with seamless failover and failback
• On-Line data scrubbing with on-line parity regeneration
• Bad Array recognition and repair
• Sparing - Global Hot Sparing
• Full SMART reporting

Configurations

• 16 Drive SATA II or SAS 3GB per primary or expansion system
• Multi-IO design RAID controller, 2GB cache per controller mirrored across bi-directional 3GB/s path
• Primary System Features; active/active dual channel 4Gb Fibre to SAS RAID controllers 4x 4Gb/s ports, dual SAS IO, independent management/ enclosure monitoring

Statistics

• Full per port statistics package
• Controller CPU load (percentage of idle time free)
• Fibre Channel activity reporting
• Fibre Bit error rate
• Fibre average throughput (MB/s)
• Fibre IOPS
• Cache hit ratio statistics per LUN (Volumes)
• Average throughput per LUN (Volumes)
• IOPS per LUN (Volumes)
• Average throughput per LUN (MB/s)
• Number of stripes remapped by the controller per disk

Management and Monitoring

• Out-of-the-box support on Mac OS X v10.5.x and v10.6.x
• Guided Setup assistance can be used to optimize configuration of a single system in a single location, or multiple systems in single or multiple locations
• 128-Bit SSL security on Active Admin management tool
• Support for all popular Enterprise-class SNMP Applications
• Support for all popular UPS systems and controls
• Automated software update service
• On-line portal support for analysis of event log transactions
• Non-disruptive firmware upgrades
• Remote diagnostics and service center monitoring and analysis tool
• Drag-and-drop Configuration Tool for sophisticated and complex environments
• Proprietary Performance Profiling for determining future requirements

System Based Monitoring

• Front Panel - Fibre Channel activity and link per controller, drive activity and system status-RAID controller, cooling modules, system temperature, power supplies
• Rear Panel - All modules have health and status indicators

CONFIGURATIONS AND PRICING

‡ Usable capacity will vary depending on drive configuration and RAID level