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EMC SAN Architecture

SAN Architecture
This document will be using the EMC symmetrix configuration. There are a number of EMC Symmetrix configurations but they all use the same architecture as detailed below.

Front End Director Ports (SA-16b:1) Front End Director (SA-16b) Cache Back End Director (DA-02b) Back End Director Ports (DA-02b:c)

Disk Devices

Front End Director A channel director (front end director) is a card that connects a host to the symmetrix, each card can have upto four ports. Cache Symmetrix cache memory buffers I/O transfers between the director channels and the storage devices. The cache is divided up into regions to eliminate contension. Back End Director A disk director (back end director) transfers data from disk to cache. Each back-end director can have upto four interfaces (C,D,E and F). Each back-end director interface can handle seven SCSI ids (0-6) Disk Devices The disk devices that are attached to the back-end directors could be either SCSI or FC-AL. Interconnect The direct matrix interconnect is a matrix of high speed connections to all componentswith bandwidth up to 64Gb/s SAN Components The are many components to a SAN Architecture. A host can connect to a SAN via direct connection or via a SAN switch.
Host HBA Host bus adaptor cards are used to access SAN storage systems There are many types of cables and connectors: SAN Cables Types: M ultimode (<500m), single mode (>500m) and copper Connectors: ST, SC (1Gb), LC (2Gb)
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EMC SAN Architecture

The primary function of a switch is to provide a physical connection and logical routing of data frames between the attached devices. SAN Switches Support multiple protocols: Fibre channel, iSCSI, FCIP, iFCP Type of switch: Workgroup, Directors

Zoning is used to partition a fibre channel switched fabric into subsets of logical devices. Each zone contains a set of members that are permitted to access each other. M embers are HBA's, SAN Zoning switch ports and SAN ports. Types of zoning: hard, soft and mixed This is a group of zones that relate to one another, only one zone set can be active at any one time. Storage array is were all the disk devices are located. This is also know as LUN masking. The storage array maintains a database that contains a map of the storage volumes and WWN's that are allowed to access it. The VCM database in a symmetrix would contain the LUN masking information.

Zone set s Storage arrays Volume access control

SAN Login The below table documents the various proccesses that occur when a fibre channel device is connected to a SAN
Information/process FLOGI (fabric login) - Link initialization - Cable - HBA and driver - Switch Port - WWN - S_ID What information is passed - Protocol - Class - Zoning - N_port to F_port PLOGI (port login) - FLOGI - Zoning - Persistent binding - Driver setting - WWN - S_ID - ULP - Class - BB Credit - N_port to N_port - LUN PRLI (process login) - PLOGI - Device masking (target) - Device mapping (initiator) - Driver setting (initiator)

What is need ?

Who does the communication ?

- ULP( scsi-3 to scsi-3) Unix - Syslog - Host based volume management Windows - Driver Utilities - Host based volume management - Device M anager

Unix - syslog - switch utilites where to find the information ? Windows - Event viewer - Switch viewer

Unix - Syslog - Driver Ulitities Windows - Driver utilities

If any one of the above were to fail then the host will not be allowed to access the disks on the SAN. VCM Database
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The Symmetrix Volume Configuration Management (VCM) database stores access configurations that are used to grant host access to logical devices in a Symmetrix storage array. The VCM database resides on a special system resource logical device, referred to as the VCMDB device, on each Symmetrix storage array. Information stored in the VCM database includes, but is not limited to: Host and storage World Wide Names SID Lock and Volume Visibility settings Native logical device data, such as the front-end directors and storage ports to which they are mapped Masking operations performed on Symmetrix storage devices result in modifications to the VCM database in the Symmetrix array. The VCM database can be backed up, restored, initialized and activated. The Symmetrix SDM Agent must be running in order to perform VCM database operations (except deleting backup files). Switches There are three models of switchs M-series (Mcdata), B-series (Brocade) and the MDS-series (Cisco). Each of the switch offer a web interface and a CLI. The following tasks can be set on most switches: Configure network params Configure fabric params (BB Credit, R_A_TOV, E_D_TOV, switch PID format, Domain ID) Enable/Disable ports Configure port speeds Configure Zoning
BB Credit R_A_TOV E_D_TOV Configure the number of buffers that are available to attached devices for frame receipt default 16. Values range 1-16. Resource allocation time out value. This works with the E_D_TOV to determine switch actions when presented with an error condition Error detect time out value. This timer is used to flag potential error condition when an expected response is not received within the set time

The CLI commands can be viewed here for all switches, also a detailed view of zoning can be located here. Host HBA's The table below outlines which card will work with a particular O/S
Solaris HPUX AIX Windows Linux Emulex PCI (lputil) Qlogic PCI-X gigabit fibre channel and ethernet card FC6227/6228/6239 using IBM native drivers Emulex (HBAnyware or lputilnt) Emulex PCI (lputil)

The card configuration page can been seen here Clariion configuration
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The Clariion cheat sheet can be seen from this link Symmetrix configuration The Symmetrix cheat sheet can be seen from this link.

www.datadisk.co.uk/html_docs/emc/emc_architecture.html

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