Thanks for this clarification Steve. I got the "Array" term from the front
panel of a RAID product that we have qualified and sell. But
the vendor's term is "Intelligent SCSI Disk Array," so I guess they
are not being redundant--my mistake.
Anyway, the particular product that we sell is configurable to a variety
of different levels including 0, 3, and 5. But we have not had any
customers to date that are of the small shop digital video nature.
I suspect this is due to the high price point of this particular product
which is designed for full fault tolerance of supplies, controllers, disks,
etc. I'll need to keep my eye on the customer demand obviously.
Regards,
Tony
PS: Does the "I" in RAID stand for Inexpensive or Independent? My
understanding is that the correct term is Inexpensive, but I have
heard both terms used.
----------
From: Steve Chin
To: emc-pstc; PS
Subject: Re: EMC Directive
List-Post: emc-pstc@listserv.ieee.org
Date: Wednesday, April 17, 1996 9:22AM
I agree with Tony that a RAID (not RAID Array - there's no such thing!) =
is unlikely to be found in a residential installation, with one caveat. =
The RAIDs that my company produces are becoming used in an increasingly =
large amount by people producing digital video. Most of these people =
either work out of their homes or they have shops in small offices =
located in residential areas.
The only good thing I can see from this situation is that they don't use =
RAID 3 or RAID 5 units. They prefer the speed they get from a RAID 0 =
system.
Thus, we qualify our RAID 3/5 systems to class A (since they're used =
almost exclusively by banks, magazines, newspapers, and the sort), and =
our less complicated RAID 0 systems to class B for EMC.
We qualify the safety of all of these systems to the various variations =
of the 950 standard, as required by the markets in which we sell.
60MHz systems can be problematic, especially if you're running =
single-ended SCSI. I hope you're not, since the 60MHz stuff has a lot of =
problems that are EMC and non-EMC related if you're single-ended. Are you =
running 60MHz interfaces on the disk drives, the RAID controller, and the =
host? If so, you have fewer problems than if you're mixing in fast SCSI =
with Ultra (should I have mentioned that word?).
Well, good luck, Philip. Disk drive systems are such fun!
Steve Chin
FWB, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA, USA
steve_c...@fwb.com
