RAID your NT
Original article date: November 1999
Though launched at a print show, Springtek is also targeting industrial data acquisition with its Little Big Box. Alan Quinn reports
Version Two of the Little Big Box, from UK manufacturer Springtek, made its bow at – unusually – a print show exhibition. But the device, which was unveiled by managing director Robert Long at Southprint at Earls Court in September, targeted at all companies which need to store large volumes of critical data. And this not includes printers, reprographics companies, advertising agencies, digital editing studios and commercial printers, but also includes engineering companies involved in data acquisition.
In fact, 10-year-old Springtek has its roots in engineering with a background of electronics and software engineers, and its recent products are suitable for a very wide range of computer applications.
Little Big Box 2, which is small enough to fit into the drive bay of an NT tower, gives hardware-protected RAID storage up to 75GB and supports sustained read-write speeds of up to 40MB/s. This is more than fast enough for broadcast video and for use on heavily used servers. It has a wide low voltage differential SCSI interface which is compatible with the ultra-wide SCSI interface of the original version.
The device is designed with data security very much in mind. The internal hardware RAID controller ensures that data is safely protected, even in the unlikely event of one of the three internal disks failing (RAID 4 or 5 mode). You can carry on using Little Big Box with one faulty disk and when you replace it, which is simple to do, the controller automatically regenerates protection data while you continue to use the unit as normal.
What is RAID exactly? RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (it originally stood for Redundant Array of Independent Disks). It is a collection of disks managed by special hardware or software (that the end user or application don’t need to know about) that simplifies the management of a number of large disks.
RAID makes certain failures invisible by storing information on more than one disk and making it possible to retrieve the information through more than one route. Everything has more than one copy available online and readily accessible. Failed components can usually be replaced without shutting down a system.
Various levels of RAID performance are available, numbered from 1 to 5. By distributing information throughout the array, which is just several coordinated disks working together, important systems can survive the failure of one or more components without loss of service. The performance of RAID comes with a cost premium though – in this case the box will cost between (UK pounds)3k and (UK pounds)4k. And backing up remains just as crucial as it was before RAID sub-systems became a common feature of servers running Windows NT. One way is to have two Little Big Boxes operating in tandem and removing one to a safe location in accordance with established procedures.
- Springtek
November 1999