VORTEX Shared File System

Backup and Archiving

InfoStation 9 & 14-Bay Backplane Enclosure

Each InfoStation comes equipped with removable drive carriers and can support from one to four host channels. An intelligent User Interface Module with an eight-character scrolling display and control panel provides the User with complete access to chassis environmental status and control of drive configurations. This product also supports web-based chassis monitoring with StorCase's free InfoMon® monitoring utility.

The modular and scalable design of each InfoStation chassis allows a variety of product upgrades to be offered, such as optional SCSI Ultra160 or Fibre to Ultra160 RAID Controller Modules, additional I/O Repeater Modules, and a SAF-TE Processor Board. Additional InfoStation features will soon be available, including support for Fibre drives (via a Fibre backplane chassis model), a Remote Diagnostics Module with SNMP compliance, SES interface and a NAS plug-in module.

Product Description
The InfoStation is available in 9 or 14-bay rack mount models, designed to support low-profile SCSI Wide Ultra160 SCA drives. These enclosures are downward-compatible with earlier SCSI Wide technologies (i.e. SCSI Wide Ultra2 or SCSI Wide Ultra). Each enclosure is constructed of corrosion-resistant steel, supports device hot swapping, and provides drive port configuration flexibility. These models also support power supply and blower module hot swapping.

The InfoStation's SCSI Ultra160 backplane interface is available for single, dual or quad-host interfaces, with separate I/O Repeater Module "Kits" available to upgrade from one to two or from two to four channels. With the InfoStation's optional Repeater Module, the InfoStation chassis can be uniquely daisy-chained for multi-chassis operation, supporting as many as fifteen drives per channel. This Repeater Module also provides support for clustering applications.

SCSI-to-SCSI RAID Controller Modules are also available options for InfoStation 9 and 14-bay models. These Modules allow a basic InfoStation backplane chassis to be upgraded, in the field, into a fully-redundant RAID enclosure and/or a component of a complex NAS or SAN implementation.

An intelligent User Interface Module with an eight-character scrolling display found on 9 and 14-bay InfoStation models provides the User with complete access to chassis environmental status and control of drive configurations. Temperature sensors at each drive bay and an audible alarm alert the User to system hardware failures and/or warning conditions. LED indicators at each drive bay provide additional User feedback for drive activity, faults, and SCSI ID selection. The InfoStation also provides an output for external PC monitoring and display of its control, power supply, blower and repeater modules. Another feature available for use with 9 and 14-bay InfoStation chassis is InfoMon®, a downloadable chassis monitoring utility program. InfoMon provides the InfoStation with a customizable, web-based monitoring capability via a serial connection. Future versions of InfoMon will include a "Call Home" feature, which enables chassis log information to be sent to a predetermined FTP site for User access.

Each 9 or 14-bay rack mount InfoStation backplane chassis contains either one or two redundant, load-sharing, load-balancing, hot swappable 650W power supplies, and four high-pressure, variable-speed blowers which are contained in two hot swappable modules (two in each). These enclosures are designed to support up to two optional InfoStation RAID Controller Modules for active-active failover operation.