Executive Summary - HP StorageWorks 1500cs - Modular Smart Array Manual

Executive summary

This paper presents an HP technical blueprint for building mezzanine backup-restore solutions, which
include HP StorageWorks raid arrays, tape libraries, and software.
The HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array 1500 (MSA1500) controller shelf is a 2-Gb Fibre
Channel storage system for the entry-level to midrange storage area network (SAN). It reduces the
complexity, expense, and risk of SAN deployments in heterogeneous server environments.
This system provides a low-cost and scalable storage system. The modular design of the MSA1500
enables customers to easily add storage capacity up to 24 TB on an as-needed basis.
While the MSA1500 can be deployed as primary storage with SCSI disk drives, it can also be used
as a mezzanine solution for staged backup and restore with Serial ATA (SATA) disk drives, otherwise
known as disk-to-disk backup. This added feature utilizes the MSA1500 controller shelf with SATA
drives and enclosures as a middle-tier backup and recovery device supported with industry-standard
backup and recovery software. It is now possible to have tape and disk coexist within a solution to
enhance life cycle data management. In the future, most comprehensive solutions will involve some
combination of disk and tape. Tape continues to provide the foundation for data protection solutions
to protect data in the event of natural disaster, viruses, hackers, and so on.
This blueprint includes the components, the design rules, an example with a logical view, a physical
view, and a bill of materials. Specifications are supplied for the components. Figure 1 presents a
logical view of the mezzanine backup-restore solution. Additional technical blueprints cover a wide
range of solutions. For a list of these blueprints, refer to for more
http://www.hp.com/go/MSA1500cs
information.
Offering storage solution blueprints is how HP defines a configuration for a specific storage problem
and provides all the information necessary to implement it. A blueprint represents a fully tested and
supported configuration, orderable as a set of individual components from the HP standard price list.
Recognizing that one size does not fit all, guidance on flexibility and scalability is given—ranging
from minor changes listed in the blueprint itself, to providing design and consultancy services for total
flexibility. Standard product support is provided for each component in a blueprint configuration, and
optional design, build, integration, and enhanced-support services are also available from HP.
Overall, the customer's experience is a quicker time to solution, without the limits of a fixed-product
bundle.
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