Lenovo ThinkSystem DS6200 SFF SAS Dual Controller Unit 4619A21-01

The Lenovo ThinkSystem DS6200 is a versatile, scalable mid-range storage system designed to provide simplicity, speed, scalability, security, and high availability for medium to large businesses. The ThinkSystem DS6200 delivers enterprise-class storage management technology in a performance-optimized solution with a wide choice of host connectivity options, flexible drive configurations, and enhanced data management features. The ThinkSystem DS6200 is a perfect fit for a wide range of enterprise workloads, including big data and analytics, transactional systems, OLTP databases, and other storage I/O-intensive applications.

The ThinkSystem DS6200 supports up to 240 SFF drives with up to nine 2U DS Series external expansion enclosures or up to 252 LFF and 24 SFF drives with up to three D3284 5U enclosures. It also offers flexible drive configurations with the choice of 2.5-inch (controller and expansion units) and 3.5-inch (expansion units only) drive form factors, 10 K or 15 K rpm SAS and 7.2 K rpm NL SAS hard disk drives (HDDs) and self-encrypting drives (SEDs), and SAS solid-state drives (SSDs). The DS6200 can be scaled to up to 2 PB of raw storage capacity.

The Lenovo ThinkSystem DS6200 enclosure is shown in the following figure.

Figure 1. Lenovo ThinkSystem DS6200 SFF enclosure

The ThinkSystem DS6200 supports Intelligent Real-time Tiering capabilities that help optimize system performance, reduce costs, and simplify management. The base software includes the ability to move data dynamically between SAS HDDs that are optimized for cost per IOPS and NL SAS HDDs that are optimized for cost per GB. With the optional software license, the DS6200 supports hybrid tiering across HDDs and SSDs.

The ThinkSystem DS6200 offers the flexible choice of 12 Gb SAS, 1/10 Gb iSCSI, and 4/8/16 Gb Fibre Channel (FC) host connectivity protocols, with support for hybrid iSCSI and Fibre Channel connectivity at the same time. The Converged Network Controller (CNC) design of the DS6200 makes the selection of iSCSI or FC host connectivity as simple as attaching corresponding transceivers or Direct-Attach Copper (DAC) cables to the SFP/SFP+ ports on the controller module.

The ThinkSystem DS6200 supports battery-free cache protection, which reduces maintenance costs and provides permanent backup of unwritten cache data if there is a power failure.

The ThinkSystem DS6200 offers the following key features and benefits:

• Versatile, scalable high performance mid-range storage with dual active/active controller configurations for high availability and performance.
• Flexible host connectivity to match diverse client needs with support for 12 Gb SAS (SAS controller module), or 1/10 Gb iSCSI or 4/8/16 Gb Fibre Channel connectivity (FC/iSCSI controller module), or both iSCSI and FC at the same time.
• 12 Gb SAS drive-side connectivity with support for 24x 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF) drives in the controller enclosure; scalable up to 24 SFF and 108 LFF drives per system with the attachment of ThinkSystem DS Series LFF expansion units (12x LFF drives each), or up to 240 SFF drives per system with the attachment of ThinkSystem DS Series SFF expansion units (24x SFF drives each), or up to 276 drives (24 SFF and 252 LFF) per system with the attachment of Lenovo Storage D3284 high-density expansion units (84x LFF drives each) to satisfy growing needs for storage capacity and performance.
• Flexibility in storing data on high-performance SAS SSDs, performance-optimized enterprise SAS HDDs, or capacity-optimized enterprise NL SAS HDDs; mixing and matching drive types and form factors within a single system to perfectly meet performance and capacity requirements for various workloads.
• Support for self-encrypting drives (SEDs) to allow clients to secure their sensitive data and to comply with various security regulations, when required.
• Rich set of standard functions available at no extra cost, including virtualized storage pools, snapshots, thin provisioning, rapid RAID rebuild, real-time HDD tiering, SSD read cache, and All Flash Array (AFA).
• Optional licensed functions, including higher number of snapshots for more scalability, real-time SSD tiering for boosting IOPS performance, and asynchronous replication for 24x7 data protection.
• Enhanced streaming performance for video surveillance and media/entertainment applications.
• Integration with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) to provide the backup infrastructure for Windows Server and a mechanism for creating consistent point-in-time copies of data (known as shadow copies).
• Intuitive, web-based GUI for easy system set up and management, as well as Command Line Interface (CLI).
• EZ Start configuration wizard to quickly provision storage by creating storage pools, allocating storage space, and mapping hosts in just a few simple steps.
• Designed for 99.999% availability.
• Certified Enterprise Storage for SAP HANA Tailored Data center Integration (TDI).

The ThinkSystem DS6200 supports the complete range of data storage requirements, from highly used applications to high-capacity, low usage applications.

The following DS Series 2.5-inch drives are supported in the controller and expansion units:

• Capacity-optimized solid-state drives (1 drive write per day [DWD]): 1.92 TB, 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, and 15.36 TB
• Mainstream solid-state drives (3 DWD): 400 GB, 800 GB, 1.6 TB, and 3.84 TB
• High performance solid-state drives (10 DWD): 400 GB, 800 GB, and 1.6 TB
• High performance self-encrypting solid-state drives (10 DWD): 800 GB
• Performance-optimized, enterprise class disk drives:
  • 300 GB, 600 GB, and 900 GB 15 K rpm
  • 600 GB, 900 GB, 1.2 TB, 1.8 TB, and 2.4 TB 10 K rpm
• Performance-optimized, enterprise class self-encrypting disk drives: 1.2 TB 10 K rpm
• High-capacity, archival-class nearline disk drives: 1 TB and 2 TB 7.2 K rpm

The following drives are supported by the D3284 expansion units:

• Capacity-optimized solid-state drives (1 DWD): 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, and 15.36 TB
• Mainstream solid-state drives (3 DWD): 400 GB
• High performance solid-state drives (10 DWD): 400 GB
• High-capacity, archival-class nearline disk drives: 4 TB, 6 TB, 8 TB, 10 TB, and 12 TB 7.2K rpm

All drives are dual-port and hot-swappable. Drives of the same form factor can be intermixed within the appropriate enclosure, which provides the flexibility to address performance and capacity needs within a single enclosure.

Up to nine ThinkSystem DS Series or up to three D3284 expansion units are supported by a single ThinkSystem DS6200. Customers can intermix 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch DS Series expansion enclosures behind a 2.5-inch controller enclosure. This configuration delivers the added flexibility to mix 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drives within a single system (but not within the enclosure). More drives and expansion enclosures are designed to be dynamically added with virtually no downtime, which helps to quickly and seamlessly respond to ever-growing capacity demands.

Note: D3284 expansion units cannot be intermixed with the DS Series expansion units.

The ThinkSystem DS6200 offers high levels of system and data availability with the following technologies:

• Dual-active controller modules with low latency cache mirroring
• Dual-port HDDs and SSDs with automatic drive failure detection and rapid RAID rebuild with global hot spares
• Redundant, hot-swappable and customer replaceable hardware components, including SFP/SFP+ transceivers, controller modules, expansion modules, power and cooling modules, and drives
• Automated path failover support for the data path between the host and the drives with multipathing software
• Non-disruptive controller firmware upgrades for dual controller configurations with multipathing