## About the Sun StorEdge 6920 System

The Sun StorEdge 6920 system is a standalone storage system with up to 65 terabytes of storage. The system is a single point for management and monitoring and is host-platform independent. It provides graphical and command-line interfaces to help administrators manage the storage, as well as data services to help them provision the storage. The system design supports high availability, high performance, flexible configurations, and scalability.

### User Interfaces

The system provides the following user interfaces:

- A graphical user interface for a web browser running on any host networked with the system.
- A command-line interface so that you can enter commands to perform operations. Thin-scripting clients are available to provide a command-line interface for various operating systems.

### Management Software

The management software, labeled SE6920 Configuration Service in the GUI, provisions and maintains the storage for data hosts.

- Storage domains provide secure sharing of storage resources. In addition to the system's default storage domain, you can configure additional domains to ensure safe sharing of the storage resources among multiple hosts.
- Storage pools are collections of storage elements that share a common configuration. A storage domain can have several different storage pools within it.
- Storage profiles define the characteristics of a storage pool. You can use the default storage profile, choose one from the set of preconfigured profiles, or create a new one.
- Volumes are divisions of a storage pool, either physical disks or virtual disks, representing the storage space that is used by the data hosts in the environment.
- Snapshots are copies of the data in a volume. They offer a high-availability alternative to backups because you do not need to take the system offline to create the snapshot, and you can store the snapshots in less space than the original data.

### Monitoring Software

The monitoring software, labeled Storage Automated Diagnostic Environment in the GUI, checks for system updates, which can then be installed at the user's request or, if the installation is non-disruptive, automatically.

The monitoring software also automates the transmission of alerts, which can be sent to an email address, to a pager, or to diagnostic software running on a management host on the network. A trial version of the Sun StorEdge Enterprise Storage Manager software is included with each system to allow you to view the topology of your storage network and check on the capacity of storage elements. This software can also collect alerts from multiple storage devices, including one or more Sun StorEdge 6920 systems on the same network.

You can also monitor the system using third-party management tools such as Tivoli or BMC PATROL software.

### Remote Monitoring

The Sun StorEdge Remote Response feature provides the following features:

- The system can send alerts automatically to Sun Services, who can monitor and fix many problems remotely and order FRU replacements when the need arises. See About the Sun StorEdge Remote Response Service for more information.
- If multiple Sun StorEdge 6920 and 6320 systems are in the same environment, you can configure the alerts to be aggregated and sent to Sun Services using a single dedicated phone line.

### SAN Management

The system is supported in both storage area network (SAN) and direct attached storage (DAS) configurations and has 2 to 28 primary and alternate Fibre Channel (FC) ports, for the following purposes:

- To connect data hosts through host bus adapters to the FC ports.
- To add more ports for both host and storage connections. You can add between two and four storage resource card (SRC) sets, each providing eight FC ports.

You do not need to use any front-end switches, unless you want to connect more than the maximum number of hosts supported by the ports on the system's SRCs.

### Scalability

The minimum system has two controller trays, each with a minimum of seven disks, in a single base cabinet with 16 ports. As your storage requirements increase, you can expand the capacity of the system in the following ways:

- Add more arrays
- Upgrade expansion trays to controller trays
- Add more disks to existing storage trays
- Add more expansion cabinets (maximum of two)
- Add more ports for either data hosts or storage

### Related Topics

- Hardware Components Overview
- About the Software Architecture
- Default Configuration