Vmax3 Embedded Nas Technical Note

 

TECHNICAL NOTES   EMC® VMAX3™ Unified Embedded NAS Technical Overview H13904 REV A01  January, 2015

This technical notes document contains information on these topics:

Executive Execu tive Summar Summary................ y.......................................... ................................................... ........................................ ............... 2  Audience .............................................. .............................................................................................. .................................................. .. 2  Introduction.. Introdu ction........................... ................................................... ................................................... ........................................ ............... 2  VMAX3 Hyperv Hypervisor isor ...................... ............................................... .................................................. .................................... ........... 3  Hypervisor CPU Core Allocation – Multicore Emulation ...........................3  Hypervisor Memory Allocation .............................................................. ................................................................ ..4  Hypervisor Storage Allocation – Cut Through Device (CTD) ..................... 4  Hypervisor Network Connectivity (vNIC) ........................ .................................................. ..........................5  Embedded Embedd ed NAS.............. NAS....................................... .................................................. ................................................. ........................5   eNAS Components ........................ ........................................................................ .......................................................... .......... 6  eNAS with Service Level Objectives ........................................................ ........................................................7  Managing Managi ng eNAS ..................... ............................................... ................................................... ........................................ ............... 8  Provision Storage for Fil File e ...................... ...................................................................... ................................................11 11  Configuring Link and Launch ................................................................ ................................................................12 12  Enabling Alerts ............................................................................. .....................................................................................14 ........14  Conclusion Conclu sion ........................ ................................................. .................................................. ........................................... ..................14  References ............................................ ............................................................................................ ................................................14 14 

 

Executive Summary

Executive Summary Organizations around the globe need IT infrastructure that can deliver instant access to the huge volumes of data intrinsic to traditional transaction processing/data warehousing and to a new generation of applications built around the world of social, mobile, and big data. EMC® is redefining Data Center Clou Cloud d Platforms to build the bridge between these two worlds to form the next generation of Hybrid Cloud. VMAX3™ Unified storage extends the value of VMAX to file storage enabling customers to deploy one infrastructure to easily manage mission-critical block and file resources. VMAX3 unified storage enables customers to significantly increase data availability, dramatically simplify operations, and accelerate productivity.

Audience This technical notes document is intended for anyone who needs to understand Embedded NAS (eNAS) and the components and technology in EMC® VMAX3™ family (100K, 200K, 400K) arrays to provide a unified platform.

Introduction VMAX3 arrays introduce the industry’s first open storage and hypervisor converged operating system, HYPERMAX HYPERMAX OS 5977. It combines industry-leading industry-leading high availability, I/O management, quality of service, data integrity validation, storage tiering, and data security with an open application platform. HYPERMAX OS 5977 features the first real-time, non-disruptive storage hypervisor that manages and protects embedded services by extending VMAX high availability to services that traditionally would have have run external external to the array. It also provides direct access to hardware resources to maximize performance. VMAX3 is the first enterprise data services platform purpose-built to deliver and manage predictable service service levels at scale for hybri hybrid d clouds. It is based on the world’s first and only Dynamic Virtual Matrix™ that delivers agility a gility and efficiency at scale. Hundreds of CPU cores are pooled pooled and allocated on-demand to meet the performance requirements requirements for dynamic mixed workloads. VMAX3 arrays provide up to three times the performance of previous generation arrays with double the density. VMAX unified storage introduces embedded file data services that enable customers to consolidate islands of block and a nd file storage, simplify management, and reduce deployment costs by up to 33%. Embedded NAS (eNAS) uses uses the hypervisor provided in HYPERMAX OS 5977 to create and run a set of virtual machines on VMAX3 controllers. These virtual machines host two major elements of eNAS: softw software are data movers and control stations which are distributed based on the mirrored pair architecture of VMAX3 to evenly consume VMAX3 resources for both performance and capacity.

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VMAX3 Hypervisor 

VMAX3 Hypervisor HYPERMAX OS 5977 runs on top of the Dynamic Virtual Matrix leveraging its scale out flexibility of cores, cache, and host host interfaces. The embedded storage storage hypervisor reduces external hardware and networking requirements, delivers high levels of availability, and dramatically reduces latency. The hypervisor can also be nondisruptively upgraded. Within the VMAX3 Hypervisor, virtual machines (VMs) provide the host platform that includes CPU processing, memory, network interface card (NIC), ports, data storage by using a Cut-through device (CTD), and external network through the Management Module Control Station (MMCS). VMs run within the front end FA emulation of the VMAX3. VMs can also be referenced referenced as HYPERMAX OS Containers. The primary components of the VMAX3 Hypervisor are shown in Figure in  Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Hypervisor Concepts – Virtual Machines

Hypervisor CPU Core Allocation – Multicore Emulation Using the new Multi-Core emulation capability in the VMAX3 arrays, the CPU processing is provided using CPU cores from the FA emulation. emulation. The cores are pooled for front-end, back-end, back-end, and for HYPERMAX OS 5977 functions. functions. All of the CPU cores on the director will work on I/O from all of the ports. This helps ensure VMAX3 directors’ ports are always balanced.

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VMAX3 Hypervisor

Figure 2. VMAX3 Multi-Core Emulation

Hypervisor Memory Allocation Memory is allocated to the hypervisor as shown in Figure in Figure 3 from the VMAX3 director cache during the initial setup. setup. This memory is then allocated to each each Virtual Machine (VM) on that director for the purpose of embedded applications.

Figure 3. HYPERMAX OS 5977 Hypervisor Memory Allocation

Hypervisor Storage Storage Allocation – Cut Through Device CTD) Data storage for both the boot and application data is provided using a Cut-through Device (CTD) as shown in Figure in  Figure 4 which acts like an HBA that accesses LUNs in the VMAX3 array. The CTD has two components components to enable access to the LUNs thr through ough an 4

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Embedded NAS 

FA port. The first is the CTD Server thread. This runs on the FA emulation and communicates with the CTD Client in the embedded operating operating system. The second is the CTD Client Driver. The CTD Client Driver is embedded embedded in the host operation system and communicates with the CTD server running on the FA emulation. emulation. An operating system running in a VM must have the t he CTD client driver installed to access th the e LUNs. Embedded application ports are virtual ports specifically provided for use by the VMs that contain the applications, such as Embedded Embedded NAS. They are addressed as ports 32-63 per director FA emulation. emulation. The virtual ports are provided to avoid conte contention ntion with physical connectivity in the VMAX3. VMAX3. As with physical ports, LUNs can be provisioned to the virtual ports.

Figure 4. Cut-Through Device

Hypervisor Network Connectivity Network connectivity for the VMs is provided by a virtual NIC (vNIC). The vNIC is connected to the VMAX3 engine internal network providing communication to HYPERMAX OS 5977 and other VM instances. The VM management external network connectivity is provided through a HYPERMAX OS component called the network address translation (NAT) Gateway which is part of the Infrastructure Manager (IM) emulation. The NAT Gateway provides translation services services between external and internal IP addresses and utilizes a separate network connection on each of the two t wo Management Module Control Stations (MMCS).

Embedded NAS Embedded NAS (eNAS) extends the value of VMAX3 to file storage by enabling the customer to leverage vital enterprise features including Service Level Objective based provisioning, Host I/O limits, and FAST technologies t echnologies for both block and file storage. VMAX3 Unified is a multi-controller, transaction NAS solution designed for customers requiring hyper consolidation for block storage (the traditional VMAX use case) combined with moderate file file storage in mission-critical envir environments. onments. Common eNAS use cases include running Oracle® on NFS, VMware® on NFS, Microsoft® SQL on SMB 3.0, home directories, and Windows server consolidation.

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Embedded NAS

eNAS uses the hypervisor provided in HYPERMAX OS 5977 to create and run a set of virtual machines on VMAX3 controllers. These virtual machines host two major elements of eNAS: software data movers and control stations, and are distributed based on the mirrored pair architecture of VMAX3 to evenly consume VMAX3 resources for both performance and capacity. eNAS supports equivalent NAS capabilities as found on the VNX2 File Operating Environment (OE).

eNAS Components Figure 5 shows the eNAS storage system architecture components.

Figure 5. Embedded NAS Architecture  Architecture 

Management Module Control St Station ation MMCS): Provides environmental monitoring capabilities for power, cooling, and connectivity. Each MMCS has two t wo network connections that will connect to the customer’s local area network (LAN). One to allow monitoring of the system, as well as remote connectivity for the EMC Customer Support team, the second for use by the Network Address Translation (NAT) Gateway. Network Address Translation NAT) Gateway: Gateway: Provides translation services between external and internal IP addresses and utilizes a separate network connection on each of the two MMCS.  MMCS.  Control Station CS): CS):   Provide management functions to the file-side components components referred to as Data Movers. The control station is responsible for Data Mover failover. There is a primary CS which whi ch is configured with a matching secondary CS to ensure redundancy. Software Data Mover DM):  DM):  Accesses data from the backend backend and provides host host access using the I/O Modules that supports the NFS, CIFS, and pNFS protocols. Data Mover I/O options: Using options: Using PCI Pass-through, the following I/O modules are available for the NAS Services on the Data Mover:

  4-port 1 GBaseT Ethernet copper module

•

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Embedded NAS 

  2-port 10 GBaseT Ethernet copper module

•

  2-port 10 Gb Ethernet optical module

•

for NDMP Back-up use. There is a   4-port 8Gbps Fibre Channel module for maximum of 1 per DM.

•

Note

A minimum of 1 Ethern Ethernet et I/O I/O module module is required per Software Da Data ta Mover. Mover.

Within the VMAX3 family the specifications of e NAS depend on the array model. A comparison of eNAS in the three VMAX3 arrays models is found in Table 1. Table 1. Embedded NAS Model Comparison

COMPONTENTS Control Stations (2)

Software Data Movers (2/4) Max Software Data Movers

VMAX 100K

VMAX 200K

VMAX 400K

Logical Cores

2

2

2

Memory (GB)

8

8

8

Logical Cores

8

10/20

16/32

Memory (GB)

12

48/96

48/96

4

6/12

6/12

2

4

4

256TB

768TB

768TB

I/O Modules (Max)

Max NAS Capacity / Array (TB Usable)

Note

Each Sof Software tware Data Mover Mover can support up to 256TB 256TB of usable usable capacity.

eNAS with Service Level Objectives eNAS supports Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) and Service Level Objectives features. All FAST managed storage groups are represented represented as mapped pools on eNAS. If the storage group devices are created out out of multiple disk groups, the technology type is “mixed”. For single disk groups, the disk technology type is is the physical disk type (EFD, SAS). SAS). Devices outside of FAST storage control are discovered discovered as default Service Level Objective (DSL) devices and associated to the t he system defined pool (symm_dsl).

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Managing eNAS 

  View Data Mover health status

•

  View File Storage alerts

•

  Unisphere Link and Launch to EMC Unisphere

•

Figure 7. Unisphere for VMAX - File Dashboard

The capacity panes in the File Dashboard as shown in in Figure  Figure 8, 8, provides  provides a quick look at the free versus total capacity of the File Storage Groups, the free versus total capacity for the file systems associated with the file st storage orage groups, and the file storage pools with the most consumed capacity.

Figure 8. File Dashboard Capacity Details

In the summary pane of the File Fil e Storage Dashboard, the number of File Systems, File Storage Groups, and File Masking Views are provided.

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Managing eNAS

Figure 9. File Dashboard Summary

Each of the summary items provides a link to detailed information. Figure 10 displays each of the file systems, the associated storage group, pool, and allocated capacity.

Figure 10. File Systems Summary

The File Storage Groups details are displayed in Figure in  Figure 11 allowing easy access to view and modify the storage groups associated with eNAS.

Figure 11. File Storage Group Summary 10 EMC VM AX3 Unifi nified ed Emb ed d ed NAS Tec hnica l Overview

 

Managing eNAS 

Detailed NAS active management (Share management, replication, Quotas, etc), is performed within EMC EMC Unisphere. EMC Unisphere, shown in Figure in Figure 12, 12, is  is preinstalled and runs on the eNAS Control Stations. The link between Unisphere for VMAX and EMC Unisphere is based on context sensitive Link and Launch. This is the same management interface that is used for VNX OE Fil File e 8.1, for additional documentation please refer to the VNX OE for File 8.1 documentation available on http://support.emc.com  http://support.emc.com 

Figure 12. EMC Unisphere

Provision Storage for File Creating or expanding storage for file has been simplified and automated with Storage File  wizard seen in Unisphere VMAX and eNAS. Using the Provision Figure 13,  13,  for FAST, Service Level Objectives, Objec tives, and Dynamic Hostfor I/OFile wizard Limits canasbe assigned to storage groups at the time of p provisioning. rovisioning. Upon any change to the eNAS storage, an automatic and intelligent discovery for devices activity occurs, oc curs, called Diskmark. Diskmark maps FAST managed m anaged devices to system mapped pools and non-FAST managed devices to the system defined pool called symm_dsl. Diskmark will also update the properties for pools and file systems for changes that happen after the Storage Group is created, like a change in the Service Level Objective.

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Managing eNAS

Figure 13. Provision Storage for File

Configuring Link and Launch In order to use the context sensitive links li nks in EMC Unisphere, you must first register the Link and Launch Client. To create the client registration in Unisphere for VMAX, VMAX, Symmetrix , and select Home > Administration > from the system selector, select All Symmetrix , Link and Launch. Launch.

Figure 14. Unisphere for VMAX - Link and Launch

Click the Create Create button  button to open the Register Launch Client dialog box. Provide a unique Client ID and and password to be associated with the client. This information will be entered in EMC Unisphere to complete the registration.

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Managing eNAS 

Figure 15. Unisphere for VMAX - Register Launch Client

Once the launch client is registered in Unisphere for VMAX, open EMC Unisphere Unisphere.. From the Storage Storage pane,  pane, in the Configure Unisphere for VMAX task list, click Register Unisphere for VMAX. VMAX. In the Configure Unisphere VMAX Credentials window opens, the Symmetrix ID will be populated with the VMAX serial number. Select from the drop-down the Unisphere Unisphere for VMAX Host. The port and version will be populated Fill in the Username, Client ID, and Client Password that were setup in Unisphere for VMAX.

Figure 16. Register Unisphere for VMAX

Once Link and Launch is registered, from EMC Unisphere the context sensitive links can be used to view the Dashboard, Alerts, Performance, and Expand Expand VMAX Storage Groups from Unisphere for VMAX.

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Conclusion

Enabling Alerts The alerts that appear on the File F ile Dashboard in Unisphere for VMAX by default are disabled. This is to minimize the number number of alerts storage administrators administrators initially receive. Enabling the alerts alerts can be accomplished in the Alert Alert Policies settings as seen below. To access the Alert Policies in Unisphere Unisphere for VMAX, from the system Symmetrix , and select Home > Administration > Alert Policies. Policies. selector, select All Symmetrix ,

Figure 17. Enable File Dashboard Alerts

Conclusion VMAX unified storage introduces embedded file data services that enable customers to consolidate islands of block and file storage, simplify management, and reduce deployment costs by up to 33%. eNAS uses the hypervisor provide provided d in HYPERMAX OS 5977 to create and run a set of virtual machines on VMAX3 controllers. controllers. These virtual machines host two major elements of eNAS: software data movers and control stations and are distributed based on the mirrored pair architecture of VMAX3 to evenly consume VMAX3 resources for both performance and capacity. ca pacity. eNAS extends the value of VMAX3 to file storage by enabling customer c ustomer to leverage vital enterprise features including Service Level Provisioning, Host I/O limits, and FAST technologies for both block and and file storage. VMAX3 Unified is a multimulticontroller, transaction NAS solution designed for customers requiring hyper consolidation for block storage (the traditional VMAX use case) combined with moderate file storage in mission-critical environments.

References Reference information and product information can be found at a t support.emc.com including: 14 EMC VM AX3 Unifi nified ed Emb ed d ed NAS Tec hnica l Overview

 

Conclusion 

EMC VMAX3 Family with HYPERMAX OS Product Guide EMC HYPERMAX OS for VMAX 100K 200K 400K New Features White Paper EMC VMAX3 Service Level Provisioning with Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) VMAX3 Family with HYPERMAX OS 5977 Release Notes VNX OE for File 8.1 Documentation

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Conclusion

Copyright © 2015 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. Published January, 2015 EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without witho ut notice. The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. EMC2, EMC, EMC logo, FAST, Unisphere, VMAX, and a nd VMAX3 are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. For the most up-to-date regulatory document for your product line, go to EMC Online Support ( h ttps://support.emc.com ). https://support.emc.com  ). 16 EMC VM AX3 Unifi nified ed Emb ed d ed NAS Tec hnica l Overview