GE

Corporate IT Documentation

GE-CT Unity Build SOP

Work Instruction
Revision 01
Issued 12 December 2019

Functional team GO-IT Storage Ops

Team
Document GE Internal
classification

Contents
1 Purpose 1
2 Scope 1
3 Audience 1
4 Unity Configuration Best Practices 2
11 Revision history 12

1 Purpose
1.1 To document the work instructions for the Unity Implementation process and
configuration.

2 Scope
2.1 This covers instructions and URLs to current procedures and resources for adding Unity
Storage Array on the floor.

3 Audience
3.1 This procedure applies to GE-CT Storage Ops Team.

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4 Unity Configuration Best Practices
4.1 Code Level
4.1.1 Maintain the latest code level if possible, GE’s best practice is to maintain N-1 level.
4.1.2 Maintain same code level throughout the organization
4.1.3 Maintain the same firmware on the drives

4.2 Drive Configuration and Cabling

4.2.1 When cabling DAEs to the DPE, balance them as evenly as possible across all available
buses.
4.2.2 When only the 2 SAS ports on each DPE are available, it is recommended to connect
DAEs in the following order:
• DAE 1 connects to SAS Bus 1 (on-board port 1)
• DAE 2 connects to SAS Bus 0 (on-board port 0)
• DAE 3 connects to SAS Bus 1 (on-board port 1)
Connect additional DAEs in the same rotation.
4.2.3 When provisioning the 4-port SAS I/O Module, it is recommended to connect DAEs in
the following order:
• DAE 1 connects to SAS Bus 1 (on-board port 1)
• DAE 2 connects to SAS Bus 2 (I/O Module port 0)
• DAE 3 connects to SAS Bus 4 (I/O Module port 2)
• DAE 4 connects to SAS Bus 3 (I/O Module port 1)
• DAE 5 connects to SAS Bus 5 (I/O Module port 3)
• DAE 6 connects to SAS Bus 0 (on-board port 0)
Once all buses have at least 1 connected DAE, connect additional DAEs in the same
rotation.
4.2.4 When connecting multiple 80-drive enclosures to a system, place them on as many
separate buses as possible, before daisy chaining them on a single bus.

4.3 Disk Pool

 Distribute workloads across all available resources in order to maximize system
performance, eliminate individual bottlenecks by utilizing all hardware resources.
 Spread Flash drives across back-end buses.
 Build storage pools with many drives. Using fewer storage pools means that
more drives can be devoted to any single workload in the pool, possibly
improving performance.
 Balance LUN assignment and NAS Servers across both Storage Processors (SPs).
 Spread host connections across as many front-end ports as possible

4.4 Network Interface

4.4.1 Common configuration regardless of NAS or iSCSI

 Dell EMC Unity supports NAS/iSCSI connections on multiple 1Gb/s, 10Gb/s,
and 25Gb/s.
 Use the highest speed possible for the best performance.
 If possible, configure Jumbo frames (MTU 9000) on all ports in the end-to-
end network, in order to provide the best performance.

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  Configure standard 802.3x Flow Control (Pause or Link Pause) on all
NAS/iSCSI Initiator and Target ports.

4.4.2 Nas Configuration

 Dell EMC Unity provides network redundancy for NAS via Link Aggregation
Control Protocol (LACP) and Fail-Safe Networking (FSN).
 Combine FSN and LACP with redundant switches to provide the highest
network availability

4.4.3 Iscsi Configuration

 To achieve optimal iSCSI performance, use separate networks and VLANs to
segregate iSCSI traffic from normal network traffic.
 Use iSCSI offload using CNA ports, not available on Unity-XT model
 Utilize multi-pathing software on hosts connected via iSCSI, such as Dell
EMC PowerPath

4.5 Storage Pool

General recommendations for storage pools Unity supports 2 different types of storage
pools, traditional pools and dynamic pools. The following recommendations are
applicable to both types of pool.
 In general, it is recommended to use fewer storage pools within Dell EMC Unity,
as this reduces complexity and increases flexibility.
 However, it may be appropriate to configure multiple storage pools, in order to:
• Separate workloads with different I/O profiles
• Dedicate resources to meet specific performance goals
• Separate resources for multi-tenancy
• Create smaller failure domains

 Storage pools must maintain free capacity in order to operate properly. If

5% or less capacity is available snapshot and replication operation will be
suspended. It is recommended to have 10% free capacity

4.5.1 Traditional Pools

 Traditional Storage Pools apply RAID protection to discreet groups of drives
within the storage pool.
 Traditional pools are the only type of pool available on Dell EMC Unity hybrid
systems and are also available on all-Flash systems.
 RAID protection for traditional pools, generally RAID-5 is recommended for
drives in Extreme Performance and Performance tiers, and RAID-6 for drives in
the Capacity tier.
 It is recommended to have smaller raid width in traditional pool, to increase
performance and fault domain at expense of capacity, also minimum drives to be
added in pool should be equaling to raid width.
 EXAMPLE: When configuring a traditional pool tier with RAID-6, use 4+2 or
6+2 as opposed to 10+2 or 14+2

4.5.2 All-Flash Pool

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  All-Flash pools provide the highest level of performance in Unity. Use an all-
Flash pool when the application requires the highest storage performance at the
lowest response time.
 FAST Cache and FAST VP are not applicable to all-Flash pools.
 It is recommended to use only a single drive size and a single RAID width within
an all-Flash pool.
 EXAMPLE: For an all-Flash pool, use only 1.6TB SAS Flash 3 drives, and
configure them all with RAID-5 8+1.

4.5.3 Hybrid Pool

 Hybrid pools can contain HDDs (SAS and NL-SAS drives) and Flash and can
contain more than one type of drive technology in different tiers.
 It is recommended to have a Flash tier in hybrid pools. The Flash tier helps
enable pool performance efficiencies and improves response times.
 The minimum recommended Flash capacity is at least 5% of the pool capacity.
 Configure all the three tiers in a Hybrid pools Extreme Performance,
Performance, and Capacity.
 It is recommended to use only a single drive speed, size, and RAID width within
each tier of a hybrid pool.

4.5.4 System Drives

 The first 4 drives of every Dell EMC Unity system are called the system drives
(DPE Disk 0 through DPE Disk 3).
 It is not recommended to add this drive in the pool, as it has lesser useable
capacity and may have performance impact as it contains Operating Environment

4.5.5 Dynamic Pools

 Dynamic Storage Pools apply RAID protection to groups of drive extents from
drives within the pool and allow for greater flexibility in managing and expanding
the pool.
 At the time of creation, dynamic pools will use the largest RAID width possible
with the number of drives specified, up to the following maximum widths:
o RAID-1/0: 4+4
o RAID-5: 12+1
o RAID-6: 14+2

4.5.6 Fast VP
 FAST VP accelerates performance of a specific storage pool by automatically
moving data within that pool to the appropriate drive technology, based on data
access patterns.
 The recommended FAST VP policy for all storage objects is “Start High then
Auto-tier
 It is recommended to schedule FAST VP relocations to occur before backups or
nightly batch processing.
 For applications which are continuously active, consider configuring FAST VP
relocations to run constantly.

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  It is recommended to maintain at least 10% free capacity in storage pools, so that
FAST VP relocations can occur efficiently.

4.6 Fast Cache

 FAST Cache is a single global resource that can improve performance of one or
more hybrid pools.
 Fast Cache can improve performance for low IO, higher skew and hybrid pools
 For applications that use larger I/O sizes, have lower skew, or do not change
locality as quickly, it may be more beneficial to increase the size of the Flash tier
rather than enable FAST Cache.

4.7 Data Reduction

 Turn on Data Reduction Gradually to reduce the load on the CPU

 Turn on Data Reduction on the storage objects before migrating data to the object.

4.8 Advanced Deduplication

 Advance deduplication can enhance data reduction efficiency on the available
systems.
 Turn on Advanced deduplication before migrating data to storage objects

4.9 D@RE (Data at Rest Encryption)

 D@RE is Controller Based Encryption that does not impact performance;
therefore, Dell EMC recommends ordering Dell EMC Unity systems as
encryption-enabled, if appropriate for your environment
 If encryption is enabled, it is recommended to make external backups of the
encryption keys after system installation, and immediately following any change
in the system’s drives

4.10 Host I/O limits

 It is recommended to set Host I/O Limits on workloads which might monopolize
pool resources and starve other applications of their required performance.
Consider some of the following opportunities to utilize Host I/O Limits:
o Limit the bandwidth available backup jobs
o Limit the IOPS capability of Thin clones

4.11 Snapshots
 It is recommended to include Flash tier in a hybrid pool where snapshots will be
active.
 Consider the overhead of snapshots when planning both performance and capacity
requirements for the storage pool.
 Before enabling snapshots on a storage object, it is recommended to monitor the
system and ensure that existing resources can meet the additional workload
requirements Enable snapshots on a few storage objects at a time, and then
monitor the system to be sure it is still within recommended operating ranges,
before enabling more snapshots.

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  It is recommended to stagger snapshot operations (creation, deletion, etc.). This
can be accomplished by using different snapshot schedules for different sets of
storage objects.
 It is also recommended to schedule snapshot operations after any FAST VP
relocations have completed.
 EMC Unity will throttle snapshot delete operations to reduce the impact to host
I/O.
 Snapshot deletes will occur more quickly during periods of low system utilization.

4.12 Network Configuration for NAS

4.12.1 LACP trunking

 Link Aggregation combines multiple network connections into one logical link.
This provides increased throughput by distributing traffic across multiple
connections and also provides redundancy in case one connection fails. If
connection loss is detected, the link is immediately disabled, and traffic is
automatically moved to the surviving links in the aggregate to avoid disruption.
 All ports within the aggregation must have the same speed, duplex settings, and
MTU size.
 It is recommended that LACP trunking ports from one SP are connected to same
switch
 It is also recommended that LACP trunking is created on both SP
 Also, the ports used for LACP are in same numbering order in both SP, i.e. Port
1-4 if used in SPA for LACP trunking, same ports are used in SPB

4.12.2 LACP trunking for replication

 When replicating from one system to another, it is recommended to configure link
aggregations the same way on both systems.
 If a link aggregation with the same name is not found on the destination system,
the interfaces on the destination NAS Server are created without a port
assignment.
 Alternatively, if a non-matching configuration is desired, you can override the
interfaces on the destination NAS Server to assign them to a valid port.
Otherwise, data access becomes unavailable in the event of a failover.

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4.12.3 FSN Configuration
 FSN provides Switch level redundancy and link failover. FSN appears as a single
link with a single MAC address and potentially multiple IP addresses.
 It is recommended to use same type of connection in FSN, i.e. Link Aggregation
from both SP.
 All ports in an FSN must have the same MTU size, but the speed and duplex
settings can vary

4.12.4 Cisco
 If the Unity ports are connected to different network switches, you should
configure all switch ports connected to these ports to immediately switch
from blocking mode to forwarding mode and not pass through spanning tree
states of listening and learning when an interface comes up.
 You enable the portfast capability on a port-to-port basis. When enabled, the
portfast variable causes the port to immediately switch from blocking to
forwarding mode. 
 Do not use portfast on switch-to-switch connections.   
 Configure MTU 9000 through out the network where possible.
 Use 802.3ad port channel protocol for LACP

4.12.5 HP

4.12.6 ARISTA

4.12.7 DELL
 It is best practice to configure LACP before connecting the cables, otherwise
undesired results can occur

4.13 Replication Best Practices

 Asynchronous replication Dell EMC recommends including a Flash tier in a
hybrid pool where asynchronous replication will be active.
 This is applicable to both the source and the destination pools. Dell EMC
recommends configuring multiple replication interfaces per SP and distributing
replication sessions across them.
 LACP can also be used to aggregate bandwidth for a replication interface.
Configure Jumbo frames (MTU 9000) when possible.
 Consider the overhead of snapshots when planning performance and capacity
requirements for a storage pool which will have replicated objects.
 Setting smaller RPO values on replication sessions will not make them transfer
data more quickly; but smaller RPOs will result in more frequent snapshot
operations.
 Choosing larger RPOs, or manually synchronizing during non-production hours,
may provide more predictable levels of performance.

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5 Pools
5.1 Create one Single Pool for all the flash or Hybrid pool, unless otherwise needed for
legality

6 Array Naming Standard

o Example: unifraixl81
 First three letters of the name indicate storage type, in this case it’s “Unity”,
so it will be uni
 Next two letters will be from country. So, if country is France, next two
letters will be “fr”
 Next four letters will be from where the array is getting installed, in Aixl,
Next letter is “AIXL”
 Next two letters are numbers indicating, it’s production (81) or DR (91)
storage. So, in this case, it is production, so number is “81”
 So full name is “unifraixl81”

7 Unisphere Management Configuration Standards

7.1 Configuration Table

Management IP
Name of the Array
Management Subnet
Management Gateway
Management Vlan (Optional)
SNMP Version V2C
SNMP Server IP snmp-lb-dev.corporate.ge.com,
snmp-lb-prod.corporate.ge.com
SNMP Community Public
SMTP Gateway
SMTP Alert Email InfraOpsStorageECL2@ge.com

7.1.1 UnityOS

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7.1.2 Drive firmware

7.1.3 DNS Server

10.220.220.220
10.220.220.221

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7.1.4 NTP

ntp1.ge.com
ntp2.ge.com
ntp3.ge.com
ntp4.ge.com

7.1.5 Failback Policy

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7.1.6 Dell EMC Support Credentials

InfraOpsStorageECL2@ge.com

7.1.7 Contact Information

First Name: Storage Operations

Last Name: Support
Email: InfraOpsStorageECL2@ge.com
Phone: 415-943-0354

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7.1.8 ESRS Configuration
7.1.9
US Servers:
Primary: alphesrsc2.corporate.ge.com : 3.34.4.75
Secondary: cighesrsc2.corporate.ge.com : 3.34.188.70
Non-Us Servers:
Primary: isslondesrsgw01.corporate.ge.com :
3.151.228.41
Secondary: issamssesrsgw01b.corporate.ge.com :
10.137.0.95

7.1.10 Cloud IQ
7.1.11

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7.1.12 ALERTS
7.1.12.1 General

7.1.12.2 Email and SMTP

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 From Email Address: serialnumber@dell.com
Send email Alerts to the following email list:
InfraOpsStorageECL2@ge.com : Warning and Above
Language Used: English
SMTP Configuration
SMTP Server: e2ksmtp01.e2k.ad.ge.com:25

7.1.12.3 SNMP
v2c
Dev Server: snmp-lb-dev.corporate.ge.com : 10.93.217.159
Prod Server: snmp-lb-prod.corporate.ge.com : 10.93.217.158
Severity level of alerts to send: Warning and Above
Language used to send alerts: English

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7.1.13 Users and Groups
7.1.13.1 Directory Services

Configure LDAP Server Credentials

Domain Name: Logon.ds.ge.com
Distinguished Name:
CN=lg384427sv,OU=Service,OU=Users,ou=enterprise,dc=vds,dc=logon
Port: 636 / LDAPS
LDAP Server Names: prodvdscin.2389.corporate.ge.com,
prodvdsalp.2389.corporate.ge.com
Advanced (Custom)
User Settings:
User ID Att: sAMAccountName
User Object Class: user
User search path: OU=Users,ou=enterprise,dc=vds,dc=logon
Group Settings:
Group member att: member
Group name att: cn
Group Object path: group
Group search path: OU=Groups,ou=enterprise,dc=vds,dc=logon

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7.1.13.2 User Management

Groups and Users

LDAP GROUPS (Administrator):
SVR_GE016000000_NAS_ENG_EC (NAS Engineers -
Admin)
SVR_GE016000000_NAS_RUN_EC ( L2 Ops - Admin)
SVR_GE003000000_STOR_MIGRATION_ADMINS
(Affinity Migration Team - Admin)

NonEC Run/Engineering:
NonEC: SVR_GE016000000_NAS_ENG_NEC g01330853
(A)
NonEC: SVR_GE016000000_NAS_RUN_NEC g01330843
(A)

EC EMEA:
EC: SVR_GE016000000_NAS_BE_EC g01330856 (A)
EC: SVR_GE016000000_NAS_DE_EC g01330855 (A)
EC: SVR_GE016000000_NAS_FR_EC g01330854 (A)

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 LDAP USERS (Administrator):
lg641755sv (StorageX Service Account)

LOCAL USERS (Operator):

frameviewRO (Frameview Billing)
dellRO (Dell EMC Support)

8 NAS Server Configuration Standards

8.1 NAS Server Configuration Sheet

Nas Server SP
Nas Server IP
Nas Server Gateway
Nas Server Subnet Mask
VLAN ID
AD Server Logon.ds.ge.com
Ldap Server 3.108.4.11, 3.108.36.11

Ldap Bind Account

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 LDAP Context
NAS Server Interface (Ethernet port) FSN

8.2 Creating Network Configuration

8.2.1 Link Aggregation
 To create link aggregation, you need two or more ports together for high
availability. Verify that all the Ports must have the same MTU size in order to be
aggregated.
 Ensure that same ports are available on the peer SP for the link aggregation
 Ensure that Linked ports are connected to the same logical switch, and the switch
must be configured to use the IEEE 802.3ad standard Link Aggregation Control
Protocol (LACP).
 Under Settings, select Access > High Availability
 Under Link aggregations, select the Add icon.

8.2.2 Select the Ethernet ports you want to add to the link aggregation.
8.3 Creating NAS Server
 Under Storage, select File > NAS Servers.
 Select the Add icon.

 On the General page do the following

o Provide name for the NAS server.
o Choose the Pool to use
o Choose the Primary SP for the NAS Server and Select
Next

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  This will bring you to interface page.
 On the Interface page, do following
o Select Ethernet Port FSN IOM connection or any
FSN connection
o Enter IP, Mask, Gateway and optionally VLAN and
Select Next

 You can skip all the other options and

keep pressing next to create a NAS
server without serving any protocol

9 File System Standards

 Create a 35d snapshot retention policy
 Apply oplocks on filesystem
 Create thin filesystem to begin with

10 Appendix

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11 Revision history
11.1 Revision history
No Date Complet Approved Complianc Changes
. ed by
by Approver
01 12/12/20 Rahul Document creation
19 Mehta
02 12/18/20 Rahul Split the document in
19 Mehta three

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