Docu33476 White Paper New Features in EMC Enginuity 5874 for Symmetrix Open Systems Environments a Detailed Review

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New Features in EMC Enginuity 5874

for Symmetrix Open Systems Environments

A Detailed Review

Abstract

This white paper is an overview of the new features and functionality introduced with EnginuityTM 5874 forEMC® Symmetrix® environments.

May 2010



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Part Number h6202.1

New Features in EMC Enginuity 5874 for Symmetrix Open Systems EnvironmentsA Detailed Review 2



Table of Contents

Executive summary ............................................................................................4

Introduction.........................................................................................................4

Audience ...................................................................................................................................... 4

Tiered storage .....................................................................................................5

Enhanced Virtual LUN Technology.............................................................................................. 5

Virtual Provisioning enhancements ............................................................................................. 5

Provisioning and management..........................................................................5

Auto-provisioning Groups ............................................................................................................ 5

Concurrent provisioning ............................................................................................................... 6

512 hypers per physical drive ...................................................................................................... 7

Large volume support .................................................................................................................. 7

New management integration...................................................................................................... 7

Replication enhancements and additions ........................................................7

SRDF/Extended Distance Protection........................................................................................... 7

SRDF enhancements................................................................................................................... 8

Concurrent SRDF/S with independent consistency protection ................................................ 8 SRDF/A adding or removing devices ....................................................................................... 8 Remote TimeFinder/Clone to SRDF R1 restore ...................................................................... 9 SRDF timestamp for suspend/resume..................................................................................... 9 SRDF/Star with an R22 device................................................................................................. 9 250 SRDF groups................................................................................................................... 10

TimeFinder enhancements ........................................................................................................ 10

Cascaded TimeFinder/Clone.................................................................................................. 10 Snap Recreate ....................................................................................................................... 10

Open Replicator for Symmetrix enhancements......................................................................... 10

Cold push from a TimeFinder/Snap snapshot (VDEV) .......................................................... 10 iSeries support ....................................................................................................................... 11

Additional features ...........................................................................................11

Symmetrix Optimizer.................................................................................................................. 11

128 directors .............................................................................................................................. 11

Support for 2,400 drives............................................................................................................. 11

Metadata reduction .................................................................................................................... 11

Conclusion ........................................................................................................12




Executive summaryThe EMC® Symmetrix® VMAX™ Series with Enginuity™ 5874 now delivers new software capabilitiesthat improve capacity utilization, ease of use, business continuity, and security.

The Enginuity storage operating environment provides the intelligence that controls all components in an

EMC Symmetrix storage array.

Enginuity is an intelligent, multi-tasking, preemptive storage operating environment (SOE) that controls

storage data flow. It is wholly devoted to storage operations and optimized for the service levels required in

high-end environments. While it shares many traits with the operating systems typically used to run largehost computers, Enginuity is more specialized and specifically optimized for storage-based functions. It is

driven by real-time events related to the input and output of data. It applies self-optimizing intelligence to

deliver the ultimate performance, availability, and data integrity required in a platform for advanced storagefunctionality. It ensures investment protection and consistency over time in technology and operational

processes and provides built-in security capabilities while insulating powerful storage applications from

technology changes. Enginuity manages data integrity through continuous checking of all data and

hardware—from host to memory to disk and back again. This includes trend analysis and early detection as

well as automatic failover and escalation when a problem does occur.

EMC is introducing a new product in the Symmetrix family, the Symmetrix VMAX Series with Enginuity5874. The new Symmetrix VMAX delivers the industry's first Virtual Matrix Architecture™, and

revolutionizes the high-end storage market to set Symmetrix apart from all other competitive offerings. Itcombines the ability to scale performance and capacity to unmatched levels with industry-proven support

for nondisruptive operations. These core capabilities allow users to efficiently support growth and maintain

service levels and are now combined with new capabilities purpose-built for the next generation Virtual

Data Center. Together, they enable IT organizations to further lower costs, simplify and automatemanagement, and protect more information. The system is powered by the Enginuity 5874 operating

environment to enable high-end functionality and data protection.

IntroductionThis white paper describes Enginuity 5874 features that help reduce cost and deliver service levels viascale-out and tiering, provide management abstraction to enable ease, speed and automation, and deliver

“24 x 7 x Forever” application availability.

Management of the features described in this white paper requires a minimum of EMC Solutions Enabler

7.0, while Symmetrix Management Console should be at least version 7.0. The focus of this white paper is

on new Enginuity 5874 features for open systems environments. For details of new features for mainframeenvironments see the white paper New Features in EMC Enginuity 5874 for Symmetrix Mainframe

Environments.

Audience

This white paper is intended for technology professionals who need to understand the new features enabled

by Enginuity 5874.




Tiered storage

Enhanced Vir tual LUN Techno logy

In previous Enginuity versions, Symmetrix logical volumes could only support one RAID type per volume.

Also, some RAID types, RAID 1 and RAID 5, occupied two of the four available mirror positions for agiven volume. Enginuity 5874 introduces a new RAID implementation for Symmetrix known as RAID

Virtual Architecture (RVA). With RVA, each local RAID group is abstracted to a single mirror position.

Currently, two distinct RAID groups, a primary and a secondary, can be associated with a Symmetrixlogical volume. This new architecture enables improved flexibility with mirrors and protection schemes.

For example, drive sparing now can take place at the same time as concurrent SRDF. RVA also is the

foundation for Enhanced Virtual LUN Technology.

Virtual LUN technology, a feature of Symmetrix Optimizer, enables users to nondisruptively relocate

volumes to different tiers, and now to different RAID types, transparently to the host and without impactinglocal or remote replication. Organizations can respond more easily to changing business requirements

when using tiered storage in the array. Migrations can be performed to either configured or unconfigured

space. When migrating to configured space, the Symmetrix will choose from existing logical volumes tomigrate the data to. These target volumes may not be in use on the array prior to or during the migration.

Following the migration, data that may have existed on the target volumes will no longer be accessible.

Migrating to unconfigured space will create new hypers, from free space, to be used as the target of the

migration. Once the data transfer has been completed, the physical space previously associated with the

migrated volume will be returned to the free pool.

Vir tual Provis ioning enhancements

Thin pools now can be shrunk nondisruptively, helping reuse space to improve efficiency. When a data

device is disabled, it will first move data elsewhere in the pool by draining any active extents to other

enabled data devices in the thin storage pool. Once the draining is complete, that device (volume) is

disabled and can then be removed from the pool.

In addition to reusing space more efficiently, benefits of this capability include the ability to:

• Adjust the subscription ratio of a thin pool – that is, the total amount of host perceived capacity divided by the underlying total physical capacity

• Adjust the utilization or “percent full” of a thin pool

• Remove all data volumes from one or more physical drives, possibly in preparation for removal of

physical drives with a plan to replace them with higher capacity drives

Customers can virtually provision all tiers and RAID levels, and support local and remote replication forthin volumes and pools using any RAID type. This includes support for RAID 1, RAID 5 (3+1), RAID 5

(7+1), RAID 6 (6+2), and RAID 6 (14+2), as well as support for TimeFinder ®/Clone, TimeFinder/Snap,

SRDF®/A, SRDF/S, SRDF/DM, Open Replicator, and Open Migrator.

Provisioning and management

Auto-provis ioning Groups

The Auto-provisioning Groups feature provides an easier, faster way to provision storage in Symmetrix

VMAX storage arrays running Enginuity 5874. The majority of applications running on Symmetrix arrays

require a fault-tolerant environment with clustered hosts, as well as multiple paths to devices. Auto- provisioning Groups was developed to make storage allocation easier and faster by reducing labor and risk

of error, especially with these types of configurations.




Storage provisioning in previous Enginuity versions required a separate command for each initiator/port

combination through which devices would be accessed. With Enginuity 5874, users can create a group of

devices (storage group), a group of director ports (port group), and a group of host initiators (initiator

group), and associate them in a masking view. When the masking view is created, the devices are

automatically mapped and masked and, thereby, accessible to the host(s).

Figure 1. Auto-provisioning Groups

After the masking view is created, any objects (devices, ports, or initiators) added to an existing group

automatically become part of the associated masking view. This means that no additional steps are

necessary to add additional devices, ports, or initiators to an existing configuration. All necessaryoperations to make them part of the configuration are handled automatically by Enginuity once the objects

are added to the applicable group. This reduces the number of commands needed for mapping and masking

devices and allows for easier storage allocation and de-allocation.

Use of the new Auto-provisioning Groups functionality requires the symaccess command available with

Solutions Enabler 7.0.

Concurrent provis ioning

A new feature in Enginuity 5874 provides the ability for multiple configuration changes to be executed

concurrently within the Symmetrix VMAX storage array, thereby improving efficiency. This concurrency

is possible provided that the configuration changes do not require the same resources. Resources will still be locked during the configuration changes, but concurrent changes can be submitted provided the targeted

resources are not locked. For example, a configuration change to add the SRDF attribute to a volume can

take place at the same time as a volume being mapped, provided that each operation is not being runagainst the same volume.

Examples of configuration changes that can take place concurrently include:

• Volume mapping

• Volume attribute changes

• Optimizer swap

• Virtual LUN migration

• Metavolume expansion

These changes will also be able to take place while maintenance scripts, such as Permanent MemberSparing or disk replacement, are running.




512 hypers per ph ysic al dr ive

Previous versions of Enginuity supported a maximum of 256 hypers per physical drive. Starting with

Enginuity 5874 this value will be increased to a maximum of 512 hypers per physical drive. This enables

customers to improve flexibility and capacity utilization by configuring more granular volumes that meettheir space requirements, particularly when using high-capacity drives.

Large volum e sup por t

Prior to Enginuity 5874, the largest single logical volume that could be created on a Symmetrix was 65,520

cylinders, approximately 60 GB. Now, with Enginuity 5874, a logical volume can be configured up to a

maximum capacity of 262,668 cylinders, or approximately 240 GB, about four times as large as with

DMX-4. This simplifies storage management by reducing the need to create metavolumes and more easily

accommodating high-capacity and high-growth application requirements. Large volumes also reduce therisk that organizations will exceed their system's volume addressing limits.

New management integrat ion

Starting with Enginuity 5874, Symmetrix Management Console (SMC) is now available on the service

processor. By joining the service processor to the corporate network, storage administrators will have

immediate access to SMC from anywhere in the enterprise. Communication to the service processor willoccur over a secure, SSL/HTTPS connection. This support for out-of-band management reduces TCO by

eliminating the need for the customer to purchase an additional server to manage the Symmetrix with SMC

and/or SMI-S Providers.

Replication enhancements and additions

SRDF/Extended Distance Protect ion

Available with Enginuity 5874, SRDF/Extended Distance Protection (SRDF/EDP) is a new two-site

disaster restart solution that enables customers the ability to achieve no data loss at an out-of-region site at

a lower cost. Using cascaded SRDF as the building block for this solution, combined with the use of the

new diskless R21 data device at an intermediate (pass-through) site Symmetrix system, provides data pass-through to the out-of-region site using SRDF/A.

With Enginuity 5773, cascaded SRDF introduced a new SRDF R21 device. The R21 device assumed dual

roles of primary (R1) and secondary (R2) device types simultaneously. Data received by this device as a

secondary can automatically be transferred by this device as a primary.

Figure 2. SRDF/Extended Distance Protection

As with cascaded SRDF, an SRDF/EDP configuration consists of a primary site (Site A) replicating

synchronously to a secondary site (Site B) with SRDF/S, and then replicating the same data asynchronously

to a tertiary site (Site e C) with SRDF/A.

An R21 device has its own local mirrors so there are three full copies of data, one at each of the three sites.

In contrast, the diskless R21 device has no local disk space allocated to store the user data, therefore itreduces the cost of having disk storage in the secondary (R21) Symmetrix system. The purpose of a

diskless R21 device is to cascade data to the R2 device. When using a diskless R21 device, the changed




tracks received on the R2 mirror are saved in cache until these tracks are sent to the R2 device. Once the

data is sent to the R2 device and the receipt is acknowledged, the cache slot is freed and the data no longer

exists on the R21 Symmetrix.

SRDF/EDP is for customers who are looking for a two-site DR solution with the ability to achieve a zero

recovery point objective (RPO) in the event of a primary site failure. To date, customers looking toestablish a two-site disaster recovery configuration with a zero RPO were bound by distance limitations due

to latency and application performance (Synchronous type replication). Also, if the business called for anextended distance replication solution (Asynchronous type replication) they would have to compromise

with some level of data loss (secs/mins). SRDF/EDP supports an RPO between the zero RPO of SRDF/Sand seconds to minutes of SRDF/A, offering customers a more cost-effective, optimal solution to a three-

site DR configuration.

The key benefits of SRDF/EDP to the customer are:

• New long-distance replication solution with the ability to achieve zero RPO at the tertiary site

• Lower-cost alternative in which to achieve no data loss for out-of-region disaster restart

• SRDF/Star differential relationship support between the tertiary site and the production site for failoveroperations with reverse SRDF/Asynchronous protection

Note: SRDF/EDP is supported within SRDF/Star environments, both concurrent and cascaded, with somelimitations. For more information on these limitations please see the EMC Solutions Enabler Symmetrix

SRDF Family CLI Version 7.0 Product Guide.

SRDF enhanc ements

Concurrent SRDF/S with independent consistency protection

RDF Enginuity Consistency Assist (RDF-ECA) provides consistency protection for synchronous mode

volumes by performing suspend operations across all SRDF/S volumes in a consistency group or a namedsubset of all volumes in a composite group. In Enginuity versions 5773 and earlier, in a concurrent SRDF

environment, RDF-ECA could only be enabled on a single link or on both links of the concurrent SRDFrelationship at the same time.

Enginuity 5874 allows for the definition of an independent RDF-ECA consistency group on each of the

links of a concurrent SRDF R1 volume, providing the ability to disable consistency protection on one link,

while still maintaining consistency on the second leg.

SRDF/A adding or removing devices

Prior to Enginuity 5874, adding a volume or volumes to, or removing from, an existing active SRDF/A

SRDF group required that all volumes in the group be taken out of asynchronous mode or suspended,

causing the SRDF/A session to be deactivated. Subsequently, after the volume has been added, all volumesin the SRDF group remain in a state of “syncinprog” until all invalid tracks for all volumes, including the

newly add volume(s), are cleared and two more cycle switches occur.

Newly introduced in Enginuity 5874 is the SRDF/A consistency exempt feature. This feature provides the

ability to dynamically add and remove volumes from an active SRDF/A session without affecting the state

of the SRDF/A session or the reporting of the SRDF pair state for each of the volumes in the active session

that are not the target of the add or remove operation. This is achieved by marking the volumes being addedor removed as “exempt” from being considered when calculating the consistency state of the volumes in

the SRDF/A session or when deciding if the SRDF/A session should be dropped to maintain dependentwrite consistency on the R2 side.




Setting the consistency exempt flag on a volume allows the volume to be added or removed from an active

SRDF/A SRDF group using either a create, delete, or move operation without requiring the other volumes

in the SRDF group to be suspended prior to the operation.

Remote TimeFinder/Clone to SRDF R1 restore

In Enginuity 5773 and earlier, a SRDF restore operation could not be initiated if the R2 volume was the

target of a TimeFinder/Clone restore while the restore was in progress. The clone restore had to complete

prior to performing the SRDF restore. Starting with Enginuity 5874, the R2 volume can be used to restoreto its partnered R1 volume while a clone restore is in progress to the R2.

SRDF timestamp for suspend/resume

Enginuity 5874 introduces a new reporting field for SRDF volume pairs. When using Solutions Enabler7.0 to query an SRDF pair or SRDF device group, a timestamp will be reported indicating when the status

of the volume pair last changed. The current link status will indicate whether this last status change caused

data transfer to be suspended or resumed on the link. The time of last action will be reported regardless ofwhether the query was issued from the primary or secondary side of the SRDF connection.

SRDF/Star with an R22 deviceA new SRDF volume type is introduced in Enginuity 5874, a concurrent R2 (R22). A concurrent R2volume is one whose two remote mirrors are paired with a different R1 volume. However, only one of the

R2 mirrors may be receiving data from its corresponding volume containing the R1 mirror at any given

time. The primary intended use for an R22 volume is to simplify failover situations and improve resiliency

in SRDF/Star environments. With the introduction of the R22 volume, SRDF/Star setup can include thecreation of recovery volume pairings, thus negating the need to create these pairings during a SRDF/Star

switch event. The availability of an R22 volume also simplifies swap operations in cascaded SRDF

configurations.

Figure 3. SRDF/Star configurations with an R22 device




250 SRDF groups

In Enginuity versions 5772 and 5773, SRDF groups could be assigned group numbers between 1 and 250,

with a maximum of 128 groups created per Symmetrix, and a maximum of 32 SRDF groups on any one

SRDF director. Enginuity 5874 now allows up to a maximum of 250 SRDF groups to be created, still

numbered between 1 and 250, with a maximum of 64 SRDF groups on any one SRDF capable director (RFor RE).

TimeFinder enhancements

Cascaded TimeFinder/Clone

As a new feature of Enginuity 5874, cascaded TimeFinder/Clone enables the ability to create and activateTimeFinder/Clone targets from a source device that is also a target volume of a separate TimeFinder/Clone

operation. This feature allows a BCV volume, using TimeFinder/Clone emulation, to be used as a source

volume for native clone operations, while also allowing for a BCV using clone emulation to be established

to the target of another native clone session.

Figure 4. Cascaded TimeFinder/Clone

When clone sessions exist between three different volumes, there are three possible combinations of nativeclone and clone emulation.

Table 1. Native clone and clone emulation combinations

Volume A to Volume B Volume B to Volume C Native TimeFinder/Clone Native TimeFinder/Clone

Native TimeFinder/Clone TimeFinder/Clone Emulation

TimeFinder/Clone Emulation Native TimeFinder/Clone

Snap Recreate

Prior to Enginuity 5874, taking a new point-in-time TimeFinder/Snap copy required terminating the

previously activated Snap session between the source volume and the target virtual volume (VDEV). Now,

following activation of a Snap session, if a new point-in-time image is requested, the session can be just be

recreated and then activated again. As the recreate will lead to the replacement of the old image on theVDEV, all used tracks in the SAVE pool associated with the previous session will be released.

Open Repl icator for Symmetr ix enhancements

Cold push from a TimeFinder/Snap snapshot (VDEV)

When Open Replicator was first introduced in Enginuity 5671, point-in-time BCV push operations, or cold pushes, were only allowed from full volume copies such as a TimeFinder/Mirror or TimeFinder/Clone

control volumes or by making the standard volume not ready. Now, with Enginuity 5874, an Open

Replicator cold push can be performed using a virtual space-saving TimeFinder/Snap snapshot volume




(VDEV) as the control volume. This allows users to avoid the standard copy-on-first-write penalty

associated with performing a hot push from the Symmetrix, while utilizing space efficiently by not having

to take a full volume copy of the data being transferred, thereby minimizing host impact. This is

particularly important when users must keep applications online but don’t want or need a full physical copy

of the source just to perform the Open Replicator push operation.

iSeries supportOpen Replicator, with Enginuity 5874, now allows for the migration of AS400 volumes from older

Symmetrix DMX™ arrays (DMX-2, DMX-3, and DMX-4) to a Symmetrix VMAX storage array, or from

one Symmetrix VMAX to another. Operations allowed are:

• Hot pull, without donor update

• Hot pull, with donor update

• Cold pull

Open Replicator iSeries support allows for the migration of metavolumes with different configurations

between source and target.

Additional features

Symmetr ix Opt im izer

Starting with Enginuity 5874, Symmetrix Optimizer swaps will be performed at a device level, rather thanat the hyper level as had been used in previous Enginuity versions. Also, as a result of the implementation

of RAID Virtual Architecture, only one DRV is needed to swap a pair of Symmetrix volumes. As before,

the devices being swapped need to be of equal size and configuration, however, the DRV being used to provide device protection during the swap can be larger. This change means that a group of DRVs can be

created equal in size to the largest device to be swapped to accommodate all volumes to be swapped.

128 directors

Previous Enginuity versions supported up to 16 director boards, with four processors per board – labeled Athrough D – for a total of 64 directors, front end and back end. The Symmetrix VMAX with Enginuity

5874 still supports 16 director boards, but now with eight emulations per board – labeled A through H – for

a total of 128 front-end and back-end directors.

The 64 front-end directors can be configured as:

• Up to 128 Fibre Channel (two ports per director emulation)

• Up to 64 FICON

• Up to 64 GigE/iSCSI

• Up to 64 RE/RF

Support for 2,400 drivesThe Symmetrix VMAX with Enginuity 5874 is incrementally scalable, supporting from 40 to 2,400 4 Gb/s

high-performance Fibre Channel disk drives, providing a maximum raw capacity of approximately 1

petabyte (PB).

Metadata reduct ion

Because Enginuity 5874 supports up to 2,400 drives, with a possible 512 hypers per drive available to beconfigured, the Symmetrix VMAX can scale well beyond existing limits. In order to accommodate the




potential growth, metadata related to the status of volume tracks was reduced for all standard volumes,

thereby reducing the amount of global memory required, improving performance, and increasing usable

disk capacity to 2 PB.

Conclusion

Enginuity 5874 features help reduce cost and deliver service levels via scale-out and tiering; providemanagement abstraction to enable ease, speed and automation; and deliver “24 x 7 x Forever” application

availability.


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Docu33476 White Paper New Features in EMC Enginuity 5874 for Symmetrix Open Systems Environments a Detailed Review