Premiums
Our test unit also came with SnapShot Virtual Disk and Virtual-Disk Copy, premium features available at additional cost. With SnapShot Virtual Disk, administrators can take a differential, point-in-time image of a volume for quick recovery of any files that have changed since the last snap.
Virtual-Disk Copy (VDC) takes a complete, point-in-time replica of an entire volume for fault tolerance and online backup purposes. Using a VDC image as the source volume for your tape backup is a great way to minimize the time and resources needed to perform large-scale backups.
Overall, we were pleased with the premium capabilities, but some minor features were missing. Specifically, you can create only four Snapshots per Virtual Disk in the current version. Dell's competitors are way ahead of the game on this score (see chart). Ideally, we want to maintain 5 or even 10 snapshots of a file system for quick restore of user data over the course of a couple of weeks, but this capability is currently not available on a per-volume basis. Additionally, SnapShots must be scripted via the CLI if you want to run them on a scheduled basis. We'd like to see a way to configure scheduled SnapShots via the GUI.
The first generation of the MD3000i does have some additional drawbacks. For instance, it doesn't yet support lower-cost SATA drives, and Solaris support is not currently available. Dell says SATA support should be available in the coming months.
Our MD3000i evaluation unit included 15 73GB, 15K RPM SAS drives in a 15-drive bay, 3U chassis. The unit also included dual active/active RAID controllers and dual power supplies for fault tolerance and failover. Each RAID controller included two individual gigabit iSCSI interfaces for connection to the SAN fabric, as well as a separate NIC per controller for out-of-band access to the SAN for management purposes. Lastly, each RAID controller card included an expansion port for uplinking to a maximum of two additional MD1000 chassis. At maximum capacity, the MD3000i can serve as many as 16 hosts and support up to 18TB of data across 45 drives.
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