Can you explain about DMX Architecture?

The Symmetrix DMX features a high-performance, Direct Matrix Architecture (DMX) supporting up to 128 point-to-point serial connections. Symmetrix DMX technology is distributed across all channel directors, disk directors, and global memory directors in symmetrix DMX systems.

Can you briefly explain about symmetrix series products? Symmetrix 8000/4 was the first symmetrix to introduce a dual bus arcitecture, providing redundancy in the path to memory. Symmetrix DMX800 is an incrementally scalable, high-end storage array which features modular disk array enclosures. Symmetrix Direct Matrix Architecture is storage array technology that employs a matrix of dedicated serial point-to-point connections instead of traditional buses or switches. Symmetrix DMX2 is a channel director specification for the DMX with faster processors and newer components. Symmetrix DMX-3 and DMX-4 are the latest technology using redundant global memory and largest capacity. Can you explain Enginuity release code 5773.79.58? 57 represents the DMX3/4 Hardware 73 represents the microcode family 79 represents the field release level to the microcode 58 represents the field release to the service processor code 52 =Symm4, 55 =Symm5, 56 =DMX/DMX2, 57 =DMX3/4, 58 =VMAX.

How many Cache directors, Front-end directors and Back-end directors we can use in DMX-4? Cache Directors = 4 Min to 8 Max. Front-end Directors = up to 12 max. Back-end Directors = 6 Min to 8 Max.

What are the different types of Front-end directors and the purpose of each one? ESCON (EA) : for mainframe attachment and SRDF family links FICON (EF) : provides the industrys highest performance connectivity Option for the mainframe. Fibre (FA/DA) : Connectivity option for open systems direct and SAN Attachment, and can be used for SRDF family remote Replication links. iSCSI (SE) : Provides the industrys first high-end Iscsi Implementation. GigE (RE) : for SRDF family replication with compression support.

Explain Rule 17 in DMX? Possible answers: Rule of 17 ensured that FAs being used for host connectivity were in different power zones. The rule of 17 is simply a way to make sure that the paths you connect your host to are not running on the same director, but one physically far away from it. The original Rule of 17 was put into place to ensure that there was a path on each bus (odd and even).The bus architecture went away in DMX-1 ( Symm6). But we had 2 power zones; one zone for directors 1-8, and another zone for directors 9-16. So the Rule of 17 still had value. but DIR 3 (odd) and DIR 4 (even) reside on different buses yet in the same power zone, so even if you had your host connected to 3 and 4 ..if that power zone went down ..Your hosts went down.

What are the Management Tools for DMX? Symcli (Symmetrix Command Line Interface) SMC (Symmetrix Management Console) ECC (EMC Control Center)

What are the Enginuity Operational Layes? Symmetrix Based Application Host Based Symmetrix Application Independent Software vendor application EMC Solutions Enabler API

Symmetrix Enginuity Operating Environment Functions Symmetrix Hardware

What are the major components of System Bay and Storage Bay in DMX? System Bay Components: Either six or eight disk directors and up to 12 channel directors (Combined total = 16). From four to eight global memory directors. Up to eight power supplies, each of having a dedicated Battery Back Up(BBU) 1U service processor with KVM (keyboard, video screen and mouse) and dedicated UPS. Three cooling fan assemblies (each containing 3 fans). Storage Bay Components: 120 or 240 disk drives per storage bay Each Drive Enclosure (DE) includes: Two link control cards (LCC). Redundant power supplies with BBUs to provide standby power. The DMX-4 storage bay has 2N power zones with independent power cables, each zone capable of powering the fully configured storage bay. The storage bay can be populated with various combinations of currently available DMX one-inch low-profile 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel disk drives available in: 73 GB, 146 GB, 300 GB, and 400 GB Fibre Channel drives 73 GB and 146 GB Flash drives 500 GB and 1 TB SATA II disk drives Can you explain about Read Hit, Read Miss and Fast Write and Delayed Write? Read Hit: In a read hit operation, the requested data resides in global memory. The channel director transfers the requested data through the channel interface to the host and updates the global memory directory. Since the data is in global memory, there are no mechanical delays due to seek and latency. Read Miss: In a read miss operation, the requested data is not in global memory and must be retrieved from a disk device. While the channel director creates space in the global memory, the disk director reads the data from the disk device. The disk director stores the data in global memory and updates the directory table. The channel director then reconnects with the host and transfers the data. because the data is not in global memory, the symmetrix system must search for data on the disk and then transfer it to the channel adding seek and latency times to the operation. Fast Write A fast write occurs when the percentage of modified data in global memory is less than the fast write threshold. On a host write command, the channel director places the incoming blocks directly into global memory. For fast

write operations, the channel director stores the data in global memory and sends a channel end and device end to the host computer. The disk director then asynchronously destages the data from global memory to the disk device. Delayed Fast Write: A delayed fast write occurs only when the fast write threshold has been exceeded. That is the percentage of global memory containing modified data is higher than the fast write threshold. If this situation occurs, the symmetrix system disconnects the channel directors from the channels. The disk director then de-stages the data to disk. When sufficient global memory space is available. The channel directors reconnect to their channels and process the fast I/O requires as a fast write. The symmectrix system continues to process read operations during delayed fast writes with sufficient global memory present, this type of global memory operation rarely occurs.

How do you calculate number of cylinders for 120 GB LUN? Maximum device sizes by Enginuity version Enginuity version:__________:MBs:_______:CYLs:______:GBs Enginuity 5874:_____________:245760:____:262668:____:240 Enginuity 5773 and earlier:_:61425:_____:65520:_____:59 Since DMX-4 supports maximum of 60GB hyper size, we have to create two hypers and form a Meta devices as 120GB LUN. To calculate cylinders for 60GB LUN use the below formula Cylinders = 60GB/15 tracks* 8 sectors* 16 blocks * 512 bytes Cylinders = 60000000000/15*8*16*512 Cylinders = 60000000000/983040 Cylinders = 61035 cyl To calculate the number of cylinders (for pre-Symmetrix DMX), use either of the following: blocks 960 or (size in megabytes) x 2.1333 To calculate the number of cylinders (for Symmetrix DMX and Symmetrix V-Max arrays), use the following: 1 cylinder = 15 tracks; each track is 64 KB, 15 x 64 tracks = .937 MB for each cylinder

What is the maximum hyper size in DMX-4? Maximum Cylinders = 65520 Maximum Capacity = 59GB or 61425 MB

How many hypers can create in a Single disk in DMX4? 255 hypers per disk.

How many members can contain in one Meta? 1 Meta head + 255 members

How many LUN IDs available per FA port? 256 LUN IDs are available per FA port, 255 LUN IDs are usable out of 256. What is Dynamic LUN addressing? This feature will automatically selects and assigns the LUN IDs to the devices while device mapping to the port Instead of manually assigning address to the device while mapping

How do you add a new member to the existing Meta? add dev XXXX to meta XXXX, protect_data=TRUE, bcv_meta_head=XXXX; or for multiple ranges: add dev XXX1:XXX6 to meta XXXX, protect_data=TRUE, bcv_meta_head=XXXX;

What is stripping and what is Concatenating? Stripped Meta Devices: Meta device addressing by striping divides each Meta member device into a series of stripes, addressing a stripe from each device before advancing to the next stripe on the first device. When writing to a striped volume, equal size stripes of data from each participating drive are written alternately to each member of the set. Concatenated Meta Devices: Concatenated devices are volume sets that are organized with the first byte of data at the beginning of the first device. Addressing continues to the end of the first device before any data on the next device is referenced. When writing to a concatenated device, the first meta device member receives all the data until it is full, and then data is directed to the next member and so on What are the DMX-4 supported disk types, no. of disks and maximum capacity? FC drives, iSCSI drives and Flash drives 15 drives per DAE 120 drivers per Cage 240 drives per Storage Bay

2400 drives per array If total of 10 storage bays connected Maximum storage capacity is 1 PB.

Briefly explain the DMX-4 supported Device types? Standard Devices: A Symmetrix device configured for normal Symmetrix operation under a desired protection method (such as RAID-1,RAID-S, and SRDF). Gatekeeper Devices: SCSI commands executed by SYMAPI are transferred to the Symmetrix array via a Symmetrix device that is designated as a Gatekeeper device. The gatekeeper allows you to retrieve configuration and status information from the Symmetrix array without interfering with normal device I/O operations. Meta Devices: Allow individual devices to be concatenated to create larger devices. BCV Devices: Specialized devices used to create a local copy of data contained in a standard Symmetrix device, which can be used for backup, restore, decision support, and application testing. SRDF Devices (R1, R2 and R21) Devices configured as RDF1 or RDF2 to support SRDF operations. R1 is source device for SRDF operations R2 is target device for SRDF operations R21 is used for multi hop SRDF operations Virtual Devices: A host-accessible device containing track-level location information (pointers), which indicates where the copy session data is located in the physical storage. Device copies use virtual devices to support TimeFinder/Snap operations. Virtual devices consume minimal physical disk storage, as they store only the address pointers to the data stored on the source device or a pool of save devices., Save Devices: Special devices (not mapped to the host) that provide physical storage space for pre-update images or changed tracks during a virtual copy session of TimeFinder/Snap operations. Device Masking (VCM)Devices: Symmetrix devices that have been masked for visibility to certain hosts. The device masking database (VCMDB) holds device

masking records and typically resides on a 24 or 48 cylinder disk device.. DRV Devices: A non-user-addressable Symmetrix device used by the Symmetrix Optimizer to temporarily hold user data while reorganization of the devices is being executed. Typically, it is used by the Optimizer in logical volume swapping operations.

What is Vault drives and Hot Spare? Vault Drivers: At the time of emergency shutdown of an Array, what ever the data in cache memory will be destaged/saved on temporary drives called vault drives Hot Spare: At the time of physical drive failure hot spare drives will take place

What is Preview, Prepare and Commit while using Symconfigure command? The preview argument verifies the syntax and correctness of each individual change defined, and then terminates the session without change execution. The prepare argument performs the preview checks and also verifies the appropriateness of the resulting configuration definition against the current state of the Symmetrix array; the argument then terminates the session without change execution The commit argument completes all stages and executes the changes in the specified Symmetrix array What are the possible device service states and device status states? Device Service States : Normal, Failed and Degraded Device Status States : Ready, Not Ready and Write Disable.

How do you reserve the devices? symconfigure -sid XXXX -f createdev.cmd -expire expiration date-owner myself -comment "this devices are reserved for SRDF activity" reserve

How do you create the Disk Groups We can not create Disk Groups, It should be done by changing BIN file by CE. We can rename the existing disk groups. Example: symconfigure -sid 207 -cmd set disk_group 4 disk_group_name = flash_dsks; -v -nop commit How do you check the free space by Disk group and Array as whole? By Disk Group : Symdisk -sid XXXX list -by_diskgroup Array as whole : Symconfigure -sid XXXX list -freespace How do you check the total assigned devices to a particular Host? Symmaskdb -sid XXXX list devs -wwn "host hba wwn"

How do you check the total allocated storage of a particular Host? symmaskdb -sid XXXX list capacity -Host hostname

What is pre check list to assign storage to the host? Verify the available free space in the symmetrix array symconfigure -sid SymmID [-v | -freespace [-units cylinders | MB]] list symdisk -sid "SymID" list -disk_group "GroupNumber" Verify the Symmetrix status Symconfigure -sid "SymID" verify If any hung activities found abort symconfigure -sid "SymID" abort