Vmax3 Embedded Nas Technical Note

This technical notes document contains information on these topics:

Executive Summary.................................................................................. 2

Audience ................................................................................................ 2

Introduction............................................................................................. 2

VMAX3 Hypervisor ................................................................................... 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 NAS........................................................................................ 5

eNAS Components .................................................................................. 6

eNAS with Service Level Objectives ........................................................ 7

Managing eNAS ....................................................................................... 8

Provision Storage for File ......................................................................11

Configuring Link and Launch ................................................................12

Enabling Alerts .....................................................................................14

Conclusion ............................................................................................ 14

References ............................................................................................14

EMC® VMAX3™ Unified

Embedded NAS Technical Overview H13904 REV A01 January, 2015

TECHNICAL NOTES

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 Cloud 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 OS 5977. It combines 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 run 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 levels at scale for hybrid clouds. It is based on the world’s first and only Dynamic Virtual Matrix™ that delivers agility and efficiency at scale. Hundreds of CPU cores are pooled and allocated on-demand to meet the performance 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 file storage, simplify management, and reduce deployment costs by up to 33%. 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 which are distributed based on the mirrored pair architecture of VMAX3 to evenly consume VMAX3 resources for both performance and capacity.

2 EMC VMAX3 Unified Embedded NAS Tec hnic a l Overview

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 interfaces. The embedded storage hypervisor reduces external hardware and networking requirements, delivers high levels of availability, and dramatically reduces latency. The hypervisor can also be non-disruptively 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 as HYPERMAX OS Containers.

The primary components of the VMAX3 Hypervisor are shown 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. The cores are pooled for front-end, back-end, and for HYPERMAX OS 5977 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.


VMAX3 Hypervisor

Figure 2. VMAX3 Multi-Core Emulation

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

Figure 3. HYPERMAX OS 5977 Hypervisor Memory Allocation

Hypervisor 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 4 which acts like an HBA that accesses LUNs in the VMAX3 array. The CTD has two components to enable access to the LUNs through an


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 system. The second is the CTD Client Driver. The CTD Client Driver is embedded in the host operation system and communicates with the CTD server running on the FA emulation. An operating system running in a VM must have the CTD client driver installed to access the LUNs.

Embedded application ports are virtual ports specifically provided for use by the VMs that contain the applications, such as Embedded NAS. They are addressed as ports 32-63 per director FA emulation. The virtual ports are provided to avoid contention with physical connectivity in the 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 between external and internal IP addresses and utilizes a separate network connection on each of the two 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 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 storage in mission-critical environments. Common eNAS use cases include running Oracle® on NFS, VMware® on NFS, Microsoft® SQL on SMB 3.0, home directories, and Windows server consolidation.


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

Management Module Control Station (MMCS): Provides environmental monitoring capabilities for power, cooling, and connectivity. Each MMCS has two 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: Provides translation services between external and internal IP addresses and utilizes a separate network connection on each of the two MMCS.

Control Station (CS): Provide management functions to the file-side components referred to as Data Movers. The control station is responsible for Data Mover failover. There is a primary CS which is configured with a matching secondary CS to ensure redundancy.

Software Data Mover (DM): Accesses data from the backend and provides host access using the I/O Modules that supports the NFS, CIFS, and pNFS protocols.

Data Mover I/O 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 6 EMC VMAX3 Unified Embedded NAS Tec hnic a l Overview

Embedded NAS

• 2-port 10 GBaseT Ethernet copper module

• 2-port 10 Gb Ethernet optical module

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

Note A minimum of 1 Ethernet I/O module is required per Software Data 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 VMAX 100K VMAX 200K VMAX 400K

Control Stations (2) Logical Cores 2 2 2

Memory (GB) 8 8 8

Software Data Movers (2/4)

Logical Cores 8 10/20 16/32

Memory (GB) 12 48/96 48/96

I/O Modules (Max)

4 6/12 6/12

Max Software Data Movers

2 4 4

Max NAS Capacity / Array (TB Usable)

256TB 768TB 768TB

Note Each Software Data Mover can support up to 256TB of 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 as mapped pools on eNAS. If the storage group devices are created out of multiple disk groups, the technology type is “mixed”. For single disk groups, the disk technology type is the physical disk type (EFD, SAS). Devices outside of FAST storage control are discovered as default Service Level Objective (DSL) devices and associated to the system defined pool (symm_dsl).


Managing eNAS

DG 2

15K300GB

eNAS_App1 eNAS_App2StorageGroups TDEV TDEV TDEV

TDEV TDEV TDEV

TDEV TDEV TDEV

TDEV TDEV TDEV

Storage Resource Pool 1

Diamond

Pool 4RAID 6 (14+2)

TDAT TDATTDAT

TDATTDATTDAT

Pool 1RAID 5 (7+1)

TDAT TDATTDAT

TDATTDATTDAT

Pool 2RAID 1

TDAT TDATTDAT

TDATTDATTDAT

Pool 3RAID 5 (3+1)

TDAT TDATTDAT

TDATTDATTDAT

DG 1

eMLC200GB

DG 3

10K600GB

DG 4

7.2K2TB

DataPools

DiskGroups

StorageResource

Pool

Service Level Objectives

Platinum

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Optimized

NAS Storage Pools

Mapped Pool System Defined Pool (symm_dsl)

User Defined Pool

File System

File System

File System

Figure 6. Overview of Disks consumed from VMAX3 on eNAS

Figure 6 gives a high level overview of how a file system created on eNAS is related to underlying disk groups. File systems can be created on a pool or a meta volume. There are three types of NAS Storage Pools: mapped pool, system defined pool, and user defined storage pools. All FAST managed storage groups are represented as mapped pools. A FAST managed storage group is one which has either Service Level Objective or Storage Resource Pool (SRP) defined.

Managing eNAS Unisphere for VMAX 8.0.1 has been enhanced to include a file dashboard and interface to create and automatically provision storage to the eNAS Data Movers which facilitate the File I/O for end customers. The Unisphere for VMAX 8.0.1 release has additional functionality that focuses on providing faster troubleshooting and provisioning for VMAX administrators who are supporting file storage. A new File Dashboard, as seen in Figure 7, allows the user to perform the following tasks:

• View Capacity details

• View and manage block and file assets

• Display the mapping of file systems to storage groups

• Allows for the provisioning of storage for file systems


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 Figure 8, 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 storage groups, and the file storage pools with the most consumed capacity.

Figure 8. File Dashboard Capacity Details

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


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 11 allowing easy access to view and modify the storage groups associated with eNAS.

Figure 11. File Storage Group Summary 10 EMC VMAX3 Unified Embedded NAS Tec hnic a l Overview

Managing eNAS

Detailed NAS active management (Share management, replication, Quotas, etc), is performed within EMC Unisphere. EMC Unisphere, shown in Figure 12, is pre-installed 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 File 8.1, for additional documentation please refer to the VNX OE for File 8.1 documentation available on http://support.emc.com

Figure 12. EMC Unisphere

Provision Storage for File Creating or expanding storage for file has been simplified and automated with Unisphere for VMAX and eNAS. Using the Provision Storage for File wizard as seen in Figure 13, FAST, Service Level Objectives, and Dynamic Host I/O Limits can be assigned to storage groups at the time of provisioning. Upon any change to the eNAS storage, an automatic and intelligent discovery for devices activity occurs, called Diskmark. Diskmark maps FAST managed 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.


http://support.emc.com/

Managing eNAS

Figure 13. Provision Storage for File

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

Figure 14. Unisphere for VMAX - Link and Launch

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


Managing eNAS

Figure 15. Unisphere for VMAX - Register Launch Client

Once the launch client is registered in Unisphere for VMAX, open EMC Unisphere. From the Storage pane, in the Configure Unisphere for VMAX task list, click Register Unisphere for 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 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 VMAX Storage Groups from Unisphere for VMAX.


Conclusion

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

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 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 extends the value of VMAX3 to file storage by enabling customer to leverage vital enterprise features including Service Level Provisioning, Host I/O limits, and FAST technologies 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 storage in mission-critical environments.

References Reference information and product information can be found at support.emc.com including:


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


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 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 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 (https://support.emc.com).


https://support.emc.com/

Documents

Vmax3 Embedded Nas Technical Note