Kaleidescape Premiere line servers use low-profile disk cartridges.
WARNING: Disk cartridges are sensitive mechanical devices susceptible to damage from shock. Handle carefully. Protect from bumps and drops. Always transport and ship disk cartridges in anti-static, well-cushioned containers.
Handling Disk Cartridges
Servers in the Premiere line house disk cartridges that contain high-capacity hard drives to store movies and music. Disk cartridges are packaged separately, but shipped in the same box with the server. Handling disk cartridges correctly is critical to prevent damage.
Shock and Vibration Disk cartridges are sensitive mechanical devices susceptible to damage from shock. Do NOT shake or rattle disk cartridges. Damage to a disk cartridge is often difficult to detect and can cause sudden drive failure. Protect disk cartridges from bumps and drops and always transport or ship them in well-cushioned containers.
NOTE: Shipping containers designed to protect disk cartridges are available from Kaleidescape.
Electrostatic Discharge Avoid touching the exposed connector at the back of a disk cartridge. Static electricity can damage the electronics inside the disk cartridge. Always store and ship disk cartridges in an anti-static bag.
Hard Drive Handling Video A short video demonstrates the correct way to handle disk drives and avoid catastrophic damage. To view this video, go to www.kaleidescape.com/go/drive-handling.
Server Fault Tolerance
RAID-K Data Protection Every Kaleidescape Premiere line server includes RAID-K technology for content protection. RAID-K is a proprietary technology developed by Kaleidescape to provide the following features:
Better performance for movies and music
Increased safety for content storage
Content protection from a single drive failure
Incremental additions to storage capacity
Unlike other variations of RAID technology, RAID-K allows new drives with different storage capacities to be added to the array.
If a drive fails, RAID-K data and parity information allow the server to continue providing content from the failed drive until a replacement disk cartridge can be installed.
NOTE: A failed disk cartridge must be replaced as soon as possible. If a second drive failure occurs before the first failed disk cartridge is replaced on a 1U+ Movie Server or a 3U Server missing the hot spare, content will be lost.
RAID-K technology does NOT allow swapping disk cartridges between servers.
NOTE: When a disk cartridge with a storage capacity larger than the other disk cartridges is added to a 1U+ Movie Server, the larger capacity disk cartridge allocates the same amount of storage capacity as the largest disk already in the server. Any excess capacity is allotted to parity information. However, when a second large capacity disk cartridge is added, the entire storage capacity can be used to store movies and music.
NOTE: When a disk cartridge with a storage capacity larger than the other disk cartridges is added to a 3U Server, the first larger disk is used as hot spare, second is used for data and some parity, the third is all data.
3U Server Hot Spare Disk Cartridge A hot spare disk cartridge is an additional disk cartridge installed in the 3U Server. The hot spare is immediately available as a replacement if an existing drive fails. The 3U server continues to operate because of RAID-K technology and no content is lost. Information on the failed disk is recreated on the hot spare disk cartridge.
The hot spare disk cartridge can be identified by the slow blink on the blue light at the base of the disk cartridge. Active disk cartridges have steady blue lights. When a failed disk cartridge is replaced, the replacement cartridge becomes the new hot spare disk cartridge.
NOTE: Because the hot spare must be able to replace any disk cartridge in the array, the capacity of the hot spare cannot be smaller than any other disk in the array. (The 1U+ Movie Server does not have a hot spare disk cartridge and cannot begin failure recovery until a replacement cartridge is installed.)
