EMC Symmetrix VMAX

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The Symmetrix VMAX system is an innovative platform built around a scalable Virtual Matrix design and solely built for virtual environment . The Symmetrix VMAX series includes the Symmetrix VMAX and the Symmetrix VMAX SE models, and meets a wide range of high-end requirements for scalability, performance, and cost. The Symmetrix VMAX is ideal for high-end configurations that require performance and the scaling capability to start as small as one engine pair and 96 drives, and grow to a maximum of eight engines and 2,400 drives. Symmetrix VMAX’s incremental scalability allows to meet your growth requirements by adding VMAX engines and disk drives non-disruptively to the existing frame. It provides support for Fibre Channel, iSCSI, Gigabit Ethernet, and FICON connected hosts. Front-end and back-end connectivity supports up to 128 host ports and 128 disk channels. The VMAX also leverages 2.3 Gigahertz multi-core processors. The new Virtual Matrix provides the interconnect that enables resources to be shared across all V-Max engines to enable massive scale out.

Enginuity is the operating environment for Symmetrix VMAX and provide simplified storage management and provisioning, as well as additional replication, migration and volume configuration option. Symmetrix VMAX provide local replication and remote replication through EMC TimeFinder and EMC SRDF (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility).

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The Symmetrix VMAX system bay houses all the system components which include: •VMAX Engines – Provide up to eight VMAX Engines within a system bay on standard configuration. •Matrix Interface Board Enclosure – Contains a Virtual matrix interface board that connects the VMAX engines and also contains two power supply/cooling modules. •Standby power supply (SPS) module – Two SPS modules for each VMAX Engine provide backup power in the event of an power interruption. •Service Processor – Provides local, remote or optional modem connection to the Symmetrix system, as well a keyboard, video and mouse interface. Service Processor components download the Symmetrix system configuration to the directors in the VMAX Engines and also provide diagnostic and maintenance utilities for the Symmetrix system. A Storage Bay consists of either eight or sixteen Drive Enclosures, and eight SPS modules. Symmetrix V-Max arrays are configured with capacities of up to 120 disk drives for a half populated bay or 240 disk drives for a full populated bay. Each Drive Enclosure includes the following components: redundant power and cooling modules for disk drives, two Link Control Cards, and 5 to 15 disk drives.

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Each VMAX Engine includes four quad-core Intel Xeon processors, 64-128 GB of Global Memory, 8-16 ports for front-end host access or Symmetrix Remote Data Facility channels using Fibre Channel, FICON, or Gigabit Ethernet. It also has 16 back-end ports connecting to up to 360 storage devices using 4Gb Fibre Channel, SATA, or Enterprise Flash Drives. Each VMAX Engine has its own redundant power supplies, cooling fans, SPS Modules, and Environmental Modules. Each VMAX engine includes two redundant director modules providing parallel access and replicated copies of all critical data. Symmetrix VMAX array combines Front End, Back End, and Memory into a single Director, reducing cost and increasing performance.

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The Virtual Matrix Architecture replaces individual, function-specific directors with Symmetrix VMAX Engines, each containing a portion of Global Memory and two directors capable of managing Front End, Back End, and remote connections simultaneously. The slide reviews the Virtual Matrix architecture in more detail. The system starts with a VMAX Engine as a highavailability base configuration. The VMAX Engine is connected to the Virtual Matrix and allows all system resources — including CPU, memory, drives, and host ports — to be dynamically accessed and shared by any application. Additional VMAX engines are added nondisruptively to efficiently scale system resources. The Virtual Matrix supports a total of eight VMAX engines in a single system. As shown, the new architecture enables significant increases in scalability. Scalability has improved in all aspects: Front End connectivity, Global Memory, Back End connectivity, and usable capacity. The Virtual Matrix is redundant and dual active and supports all Global Memory references, all messaging, and all management operations including internal discovery and initialization, path management, load balancing, fail over, and fault isolation within the array.

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A disk is sliced into Hyper or disk slices and protection schemes are then incorporated, creating the Symmetrix volume. Symmetrix logical volumes are defined by using the service processor and SymmWin interface. Configuration changes can be performed online using the EMC ControlCenter Configuration Manager and Solutions Enabler Command Line Interface.

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A host views a Symmetrix Logical Volume in the same manner as it sees any other disk device. The host is unaware of how the volume is configured in the Symmetrix, its protection scheme, or any other special attributes. Hosts assign disk device logical device names that vary depending on the operating system.

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Symmetrix Management Console is used by Symmetrix for device management for both the Symmetrix VMAX and Symmetrix DMX products. There are several key features introduced to simplify storage management in virtual data centers and cluster environments. As data centers continue to embrace virtualization, management tools are required to tier, consolidate, and scale physical resources. Symmetrix Management Console manages the following features:  Auto-provisioning Groups—Map and mask Initiator Groups, Storage Ports, and Storage Groups  Virtual Provisioning—Also known as thin provisioning  Enhanced Virtual LUN technology—Data mobility within the array and movement between tiers  FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering)

Symmetrix Optimizer automatically tunes, monitors, analyzes, and migrates logical volumes to maintain optimal performance, with no disruptions to applications or users. Symmetrix Optimizer’s load-balancing automation technology analyzes volume activity to identify hot and cold logical volumes for swaps; this automates the time consuming task of balancing the load on the Symmetrix back end. The tedious task of disk-performance tuning is completely automated.

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