1. YES, Native Raid can recover from various failures: drawers, cabling, controllers, power supplies, etc, etc. Of course it must be configured properly so that there is no possible single point of failure.
But yes, you should get your hands on a test rig and try out (simulate) various failure scenarios and see how well it works. 2. I don't know the details of the packaged products, but I believe you can license the software and configure huge installations, comprising as many racks of disks, and associated hardware as you desire or need. The software was originally designed to be used in the huge HPC computing laboratories of certain governmental and quasi-governmental institutions. 3. If you'd like to know and/or explore more, read the pubs, do the experiments, and/or contact the IBM sales and support people. IF by some chance you do not get satisfactory answers, come back here perhaps we can get your inquiries addressed by the GPFS design team. Like other complex products, there are bound to be some questions that the sales and marketing people can't quite address.
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