
Technical Guide Book for PowerVault MD3200MD3220
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the firmware, and protect data until it can be written safely to the hard disk drives. The MD3200’s
architecture is designed to excel in multi-host systems environments. Its I/O system core provides built-in
hardware XOR for high-speed RAID parity calculations – enabling it to easily handle very compute-intensive
tasks. Each RAID controller contains 2GB of cache for a total of 4GB of cache in a dual controller
configuration which is mirrored with the other controller’s cache for high availability. In the event of a
power failure, the controllers are protected with battery assisted persistent cache backup which destages
cache to non-volatile media for indefinite safe keeping.
Each controller has a 36-port 6 Gb/s SAS expander that provides access to the drives in the MD3200 or
MD3220 enclosure. The SAS expanders enable each controller to access all of the drive ports, creating
active/active drives loops that provide both controllers redundant access to all attached disk drives.
Each controller has the following external connections:
• Four 6Gb SAS ports for host connectivity
• One 6 Gb/s SAS port for drive enclosure expansion for additional capacity
• One Ethernet management ports for LAN out-of-band management
• One PS/2 serial interface for service
Figure 2. MD3200 RAID Controller Module View – LEDs
Location
LED Term Color Icon General Behavior
1 Power Green
OFF = No power applied
ON = Power is applied
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