A Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) S Series Node is a highly efficient, highly available, cost-effective storage device that supports very large amounts of data. Each S Series Node consists of two cooperating server modules and multiple high-density drives in some number of enclosures.
During normal operation, the two server modules in an S Series Node actively share responsibility for all S Series Node functions. Because the server modules are peers, if one module becomes unavailable, the other can still provide full, uninterrupted S Series Node functionality, although performance may be degraded.
The S Series Node data storage implementation ensures that data is well-protected through the use of erasure coding. Additionally, S Series Nodes use several internal processes to continuously check the integrity of both the stored data and the storage media.
S Series Nodes can provide direct-write storage for HCP systems and for HCP for cloud scale systems. S Series Nodes can also serve as storage tiering platforms for HCP systems. A single HCP system or HCP for cloud scale system can seamlessly store data across multiple S Series Nodes, thereby enabling scalability in both capacity and performance.
HCP systems and HCP for cloud scale systems use the S Series Node implementation of the Hitachi API for Amazon S3 to write, retrieve, and otherwise manage objects in an S Series Node. This RESTful, HTTP-based API is compatible with Amazon S3.
For administrative purposes, S Series Nodes provide a web-based Management Console and a RESTful, HTTP-based management API. Using these interfaces, S Series Node administrators and service providers can configure, manage, and monitor an S Series Node. These interfaces can also be used to start and verify certain S Series Node hardware procedures, such as adding and replacing drives.
The current S Series Node models are the S11 Node, S31 Node, and S32 Node. The S32 Node is the most recent model.
The S32 Node has more processing power than the S31 Node but has the same amount of memory. The S31 Node has more processing power and memory than the S11 Node.
While the S11 Node supports at most two enclosures on which data is stored, the S31 and S32 Nodes support as many as nine, thereby providing significantly more storage capacity than the S11 Node. Additionally, S32 Nodes support higher-capacity drives than S11 and S31 Nodes support, enabling S32 Nodes to store more data than S31 Nodes can store.
The base enclosure for the S32 Node differs from the base enclosure for S11 and S31 Nodes. The base enclosures, therefore, are not interchangeable between the S32 Node and the S11 and S31 Nodes. However, the S11, S31, and S32 Nodes all use the same expansion enclosures, so these enclosures are interchangeable between the models.