Dell PowerVault 770N (Deskside NAS Appliance) - Manual (Page 3)

Intended Audience
This guide addresses two audience levels:
Users and system installers who will perform general setup, cabling, and configuration of the PowerVault NAS Cluster
components
Trained service technicians who will perform more extensive installations, such as firmware upgrades and installation of
required expansion cards
Obtaining More Information
See " Obtaining Technical Assistance " and " Overview of NAS Clusters " for a general description of PowerVault NAS SCSI
clusters and clustering technology.
See " Using MSCS " for an overview of the clustering software built into the Windows Storage Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
operating system.
Obtaining Technical Assistance
Dell Enterprise Training and Certification is available; see www.dell.com/training for more information. This service may
not be offered in all locations.
Overview of NAS Clusters
The PowerVault NAS SCSI cluster implements clustering technology on PowerVault NAS systems based on the Windows
Storage Server 2003, Enterprise Edition operating system. PowerVault NAS clusters provide the following benefits in meeting
the needs of mission-critical network application programs:
High availability — Clustering technology built into Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) ensures that system services
and resources are available to network clients if a cluster node fails for any reason.
Redundant storage — Application data can be stored on a maximum of four PowerVault storage systems.
Cluster share failure recovery — Cluster shares run on virtual servers, which can be failed over to another cluster
node if a node fails for any reason.
Zero impact on network resources — Cluster nodes can be repaired, serviced, upgraded, or replaced without taking
the entire cluster offline.
PowerVault NAS systems provide an easy-to-install solution for ensuring high-availability of your network storage resources
for Windows and UNIX® clients. Novell® NetWare® and Apple resources are also supported. However, if a system running
NetWare or Apple resources fails for any reason, you must manually restart their dependent resources. This procedure does
not corrupt the share data.
A NAS cluster provides a failover solution for the NAS systems, thereby ensuring a higher availability of network resources
than a nonclustered NAS system. The NAS cluster consists of the following components:
PowerVault NAS systems — Two homogeneous (identical) PowerVault NAS systems with the Windows Storage
Server 2003, Enterprise Edition operating system installed on each system
Cluster interconnect cable — An Ethernet crossover cable (cluster interconnect) connected to a network adapter in