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Course Overview - 1

Copyright © 2010 EMC Corporation. Do not Copy - All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The

information is subject to change without notice.

THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” EMC CORPORATION

MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE

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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.

EMC, EMC2, Celerra, CLARiiON, Navisphere, PowerPath, SRDF, Symmetrix, and VisualSAN are

registered trademarks, and Access Logix, Automated Resource Manager, Connectrix, EMC

ControlCenter, EMC Snap, Enginuity, Legato, Legato Networker, Powerlink, PowerVolume, SAN

Architect, SAN Manager, SnapSure, SnapView, StorageScope, SymmAPI, Symmetrix DMX,

TimeFinder, and VisualSRM are trademarks of EMC Corporation.

All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

Course Overview - 2


These are the objectives for this course. Please take a moment to review them.

Course Overview - 3


This slide describes the agenda for the morning and afternoon of Day 1.

We begin by taking care of the class administration and reviewing the prerequisites. Then we review

the benefits derived from the architecture of ControlCenter. We look at how we can use ControlCenter

to view information about our environment. There is a lab on viewing the array, SAN and Host

information. In the Administration module, we review how to manage ControlCenter users and agent

data collection policies used to collect information about the IT environment.

Course Overview - 4


This slides lists the agenda for the morning and afternoon of Day 2.

On Day 2, we start looking at the “active management” functions of ControlCenter such as storage

array and SAN configuration.

Day 3 is spent on how we can reconfigure parts of our environment using ControlCenter. We look at

creating and modifying volumes in an array, reconfiguring SAN environments, and performing local

and remote business continuity operations on Symmetrix arrays. There will be multiple labs on the

various components.

Lectures and Labs from this day might carry over to the following day.

Course Overview - 5


Day 3 is spent on monitoring and reporting on parts of our environment using ControlCenter. In the

morning, we cover monitoring, how alerts can provide notification on pending issues; then we look at

some of the options for automating recovery. There is a lab on Alert Management and Planning. The

afternoon of Day 3 is spent on reporting using StorageScope, Performance Management using the

ControlCenter console, and Performance Manager. There are labs on StorageScope Usage, as well as

one using Performance Manager.

Course Overview - 6


Day 4 is spent entirely on labs. These labs are based on scenarios and emphasize the skills that were

taught during the early part of the week.

Course Overview - 7


Day 5 looks at some of the more advanced features of ControlCenter. First, we talk about automation.

There are two parts to automation:

• Autopathing allows LUN masking and zoning to be done together as one operation

• Storage provisioning services allow host, SAN, and array operations to be done based on rules as a

single operation

You will perform a lab on automation.

Course Overview - 8


Data processing in a Symmetrix DMX array is performed by Directors. Host Directors communicate

with hosts to manage I/O requests and Disk Directors retrieve or store the data from or to the disks.

Directors are often referred to as Adapters, since it is the Adapter component that connects the Director

to its disk or host.

Buffering all I/O transactions is the global Cache. Several Cache Cards provide a large region of data

storage that greatly improves I/O performance when compared to direct drive access. In a DMX-

family Symmetrix, each director has an independent connection to each cache card, providing a great

deal internal bandwidth. In earlier Symmetrix models, the directors and cards were connected by four,

or two shared busses.

Disk Drives are managed by a primary director and a redundant director. If the primary fails, the

redundant director takes over until it is replaced. Redundancy at the Host ports is accomplished by

configuring each device to be visible to a host over two or more ports. The host must have an

equivalent number of Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) so that independent connections to the ports can be

made.

Course Overview - 9


The data processing components of a Symmetrix V-Max array are engines and disks. A single array can

have from one to eight engines, and many disk drives. Each engine has two directors; each director has

four independent dual-processing units commonly referred to as “slices.” Each slice manages either

four external host ports or four internal disk ports. V-Max directors are similar to DMX directors,

however they have twice as many ports.

Each engine is a self-contained module with its own power supplies, batteries, environmental

monitors, and internal and external I/O ports. Each director has connections to two independent virtual

matrices. This lets the directors communicate and share in the I/O handling—an I/O processed by one

director might be stored on disks managed by other directors.

Each V-Max engine also has a global cache area. As you add engines, you increase the amount of

cache in the array. It is considered to be global because any engine can access any other engine’s cache

memory. All I/O into or out of the array is cached in memory.

Course Overview - 10


CLARiiON Architecture is based on intelligent Storage Processors that manage physical drives on the

back end and service host requests on the front end. Depending on the module, each Storage processor

includes either one or two CPUs. Storage Processors communicate to each other over the CLARiiON

Messaging Interface (CMI).

Note that both the front-end connection to the host and the back-end connection to the physical storage

is Fibre channel.

The module architecture allows the customer to add drives as needed to meet capacity requirements.

When more capacity is required, additional disk enclosures containing disk modules can be easily

added.

LCC, or Link Control Cards, are used to connect shelves of disks. In addition, the LCC monitors the

FRUs within the shelf and reports status information to the storage processor. The LCC contains

bypass circuitry that allows continued operation of the loop in the event of port failure.



A network is a collection of fibre channel nodes that usually communicate via fiber optic media (Fibre

Channel can be implemented using copper media for short distances: 30m.). The port on the member

node provides the physical and logical connection to the network. Each port and node has a permanent

and unique identifier called the Worldwide Name (WWN).

Each switch has an entity, Name Service, that is responsible for the name registration and the

management of devices that are attached to the switch. This service can limit which ports an

individual port can access.



It is important to remember that SAN and storage are part of a larger IT environment. Changes that are

made in the SAN have effects throughout the larger environment. These environments are not made

up of just technology. The environment is made of the interactions of technology with the people and

processes that an organization has. In order to better understand processes, there are numerous

different frameworks for describing different IT processes. The column on the left uses Process names

from ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) which is one of the process frameworks

that EMC uses.

Finally, it is important to remember that all processes, people, and technology function at different

levels. Rating maturity is important because it allows projects to be prioritized based on which would

do the most good. One of the ratings standards is EMM (Enterprise Maturity Model) which ranks

business processes based on how reliable and repeatable they are.



Several EMC products including ControlCenter have been re-branded under the EMC Ionix Family

name. A result of a five-year development and acquisition effort, the Ionix Family represent a unified

management software portfolio that provides unparalleled insight and control across physical and

virtual IT infrastructures.

Several of the acquired products will undergo significant name changes as they transition to the Ionix

Family. The ControlCenter suite will simply have the name “Ionix” inserted in the existing name.

EMC ControlCenter is now officially known as EMC Ionix ControlCenter.

Throughout this course, we follow the standard convention of abbreviating the product names. So a

product like EMC Ionix ControlCenter StorageScope (the correct full name) will be referred to as

simply “StorageScope.”



EMC Ionix ControlCenter is made up of three layers. They can be easily thought of as data

visualization, data storage, and data collection, but are more formally called the User Interface Tier,

Infrastructure Tier, and Agents Tier.

The infrastructure is the tier responsible for data storage made up of three separate processes (Server,

Repository, and Store).

The console tier handles data presentation. The main presentation tool is the ControlCenter Java

Console, but other presentation tools are used for deeper analysis.

The agent tier is responsible for data gathering. Agents of different types monitor and manage objects

such as arrays, switches, and applications. This is covered in more detail in the next lecture.



This course is part of the EMC Proven Professional Certification program. It is a key part of the

Specialist Exam of the Storage Administrator track (EMC customer and partners), the Technology

Architect track (EMC Global Services employees), and the Implementation Engineer track (EMC

Global Services employees). Follow the links shown here to further explore these certification tracks.



You can discuss ControlCenter by participating in a variety of online communities. EMC customers,

partners, and employees contribute equally to the discussions. You can gain insight into how your peers

are using the product, gather technical details regarding a specific problem, or discuss the next step in

your Proven Professional certification.

Certain EMC employees participate in each community. When beginning a discussion, make sure you

are in the appropriate community for that topic.

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