EMC Storage Product Knowledge Sharing

VMware hosts require few mandatory FA bits setting before SAN storage to be provision. Apart from FA bits a series of procedure require from installing HBAs, HBA Firmware and drivers, zoning, mapping, masking devices, to configure kernel files and devices. Let’s assume we have already identified Symmetrix FA port for VMware host and completed zoning on switch. It is better to have separate FA pair for VMware host. (You can connect VMware host to 2 pair FA if you have enough FA resources available and going to deploy critical...

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Lets understand EMC Open Replicator product:- Open Replicator enables remote point-in-time copies with full or incremental copy capabilities to be used for high-speed data mobility, remote vaulting, migration, and distribution between EMC Symmetrix DMX and other qualified storage arrays. OR leverages the high-end Symmetrix storage architecture and offers unmatched deployment flexibility and massive scalability. EMC Open Replicator is tightly integrated with EMC TimeFinder and SRDF families of local and remote solutions. Open...

In the current storage markets and technology, storage tiers are defined by availability, functionality, performance and costs. In fact data can move up and down tiers as time and business required.Tier "0" is not new in storage market but for implementation purposes it has been difficult to accommodate because it requires best performance and lowest latency. Enterprise Flash disks (Solid State Disks) capable to meet this requirement. It is possible to get more performance for company most critical applications. The performance...

Think when you are creating a point-in-time image for multiple devices. It is easy to create a point-in-time image of entire set of logical device at same time. In order achieve this you need to shut down an application so that no IO will occurs while you creating a point-in-time image. This is big problem in today’s environment where every company looking solution for zero down time.The EMC provided solution to this problem is called “Enginuity Consistency Assist”. When you create a set of sessions and invoke Enginuity Consistency...

Auto-provisioning requires Enginuity 5874 or later. It simplify Symmetrix provisioning by allowing you to create group of devices like storage group in CLARiiON, Front-End Port Group and Host Initiators Group and then associate these groups with each other in a masking view.The following are the basic steps for provisioning Symmetrix using Auto-Provisioning:-1) Create a Storage Group2) Create a Port Group3) Create an Initiator Group4) Associate the groups in a Masking View.Creating Storage Group:- It is component of Auto-Provisioning...

SRDF/S and SRDF/A configuration involves tasks such as suspending and resuming the replication, failover from R1 side to R2, restoring R1 or R2 volumes from their BCV, and more. You perform these and other SRDF/S or SRDF/A operations using both symrdf and TimeFinder command symmir. The below details are for SRDF Pair states during SRDF procedure.SyncInProg :- A synchronization is currently in progress between the R1 and the R2. There are existing invalid tracks between the two pairs and the logical link between both sides of...

Symmetrix Optimizer improves array performance by continuously monitoring access patterns and migrating devices to achieve balance across the disks in the array. This is process is carried out automatically based on user-defined parameters and is completely transparent to end users, hosts and applications in the environment. Migration is performed with constant data availability and consistent protection.Optimizer performs self-tuning of Symmetrix data configurations from the Symmetrix service processor by:· Analyzing...

Return code handling for Windows and UNIX The following lists the possible status or error codes that can be returned by the various SYMCLI commands on a Windows or UNIX platform and useful for troubleshooting.Code Code symbol Description___________________________________________________ 0 CLI_C_SUCCESS CLI -- call completed successfully. 1 CLI_C_FAIL CLI - call failed. 2 CLI_C_DB_FILE_IS_LOCKED- Another process has an exclusivelock...

Any disk drive from any manufacturer can exhibit sector read errors due to media defects. This is a known and accepted reality in the disk drive industry, particularly with the high recording densities employed by recent products. These media defects only affect the drive’s ability to read data from a specific sector; they do not indicate general unreliability of the disk drive. The disk drives that EMC purchases from its vendors are within specifications for soft media errors according to the vendors as well as EMC’s own Supply...

Organizations continually search for ways to both simplify storage management processes and improve storage capacity utilization. Several products have been released over the past few years that promise efficient use of storage space. One of the technologies that is quickly catching up is thin provisioning. 3PAR was one of the first vendors to introduce the concept while the rest quickly followed the suite.When provisioning storage for a new application, administrators must consider that application’s future capacity requirements...

There is available WWN decoder tool for EMC but I am going to discuss how to decode manually?Each Symmetrix SAF port, RAF port, EF ficon port or DAF port (DMX only) has a unique worldwide name (WWN). The WWN is associated with the Tachyon chip on the director. It was intended to remain unique per director so that the director can be accessed on a storage area network. The Symmetrix SAF/RAF/DAF/EF WWN is dependent on the Symmetrix serial number, the director number, the processor letter, and the port on the processor. When...

Mount EMC BCVs at the same hostExample:I have created a volumegroup, a logical volume, afilesystem and a file on two EMC standard volumes.(For this test you need to have two hdisks hdisk and hdisk andtwo BCVs dev and available)# mkvg -f -y MyName_vg -s 16 hdisk hdisk# mklv -y MyName_lv -b n MyName_vg 20# crfs -v jfs -d MyName_lv -m /MyName_mp -A yes -p rw# mount /MyName_mp# lptest > /MyName_mp/lptest.outFor using EMCs TimeFinder I have to create a device group.(AIX is working with volumegroups. EMCs TimeFinder is working...