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HCP nodes and storage

An HCP system includes multiple nodes that are networked together, where each node is either an individual server, a blade in a blade server, or a virtual machine. Each physical node can have multiple internal drives and/or can connect to SAN storage. Each virtual node emulates a server that has only internal drives.

The physical storage that’s managed by the nodes in the HCP system is called primary storage. By default, primary storage consists entirely of running storage, which is storage on continuously spinning disks. However, an HCP SAIN system can be configured to use SAN storage that includes both running storage and spindown storage, which is storage on disks that can be spun up or spun down as needed. HCP uses primary spindown storage for tiering purposes.

You can also add HCP S Series Nodes , known as S Series storage, to an HCP system. S Series Nodes are highly efficient, highly available, cost-effective storage devices that support very large amounts of data. An S Series Node uses commodity hardware which ensures that the costs of growth and repair remain low. To protect data, S Series Nodes use erasure coding. S Series Nodes also use several internal processes to continuously check the integrity of the stored data and the storage media.

You can use S Series Nodes as an alternative to primary running storage or as a tiering platform. This is configurable. HCP uses the S Series Node S3 compatible API to write, retrieve, and otherwise manage objects in an S Series Node. A single HCP system can seamlessly write data across multiple S Series Nodes, thereby enabling scalability in both capacity and performance.

Additionally, for tiering purposes, HCP can use extended storage. Extended storage is storage that's managed entirely outside of the HCP system.

Each node has its own set of logical volumes. Logical volumes on storage managed by HCP are local storage volumes. Logical volumes can also be NFS volumes (also called external volumes). These are volumes that are stored on extended storage and are accessed using NFS mount points.

General nodes

General nodes are the core components of an HCP system. These nodes manage the objects that reside in HCP system storage. To ensure data integrity and continuous availability in case of a hardware or software failure, HCP uses RAID technology for its primary storage and can also be configured to store the data and metadata for each object in multiple locations.

Each storage node runs all the HCP software. The nodes work together to serve both as a repository manager and as a gateway that enables access to the data in the repository.

All runtime operations are distributed among the storage nodes, thereby ensuring reliability and performance as capacity grows. If a node fails, the HCP system adapts by redirecting processing to other nodes, so the stored data remains available to users.

Linear scalability

A repository can accumulate a great deal of data over time. To accommodate more data, you can add nodes and storage to HCP. HCP capacity can grow smoothly from hundreds of gigabytes to terabytes to petabytes.

Because HCP uses a distributed processing scheme, primary storage in the HCP system can scale linearly as the repository grows in size and in the number of clients that have access to it. When you install HCP on new nodes, the system automatically integrates those nodes into the overall workflow, without manual intervention.

 

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