Anatomy of an EMC VNX Array

Anatomy of an EMC VNX Array

VNX 5100-5300-5500 components

Components and their purpose

Standby Power Supply SPS This is a 1u uninteruptable power supply designed to hold the
Storage processors during a power failure for long enough to write any data in volatile
memory to disk.

Disk Processor Enclosure DPE (VNX5100/5300/5500 models) This is the enclosure that
contains the storage processors as well as the Vault Drives and a few other drives. It contains
all connections related to block level storage protocols including Fiber Channel and iSCSI.

Storage Processor Enclosure SPE (VNX5700/7500 models) This is the enclose that
contains the storage processors on the larger VNX models. It is in place of the DPE
mentioned above.

Storage Processor SP Usually followed by A or B to denote if which one it is, all

VNX5100 5300 5500 and 5700 systems have 2 storage processors. It is the job of the storage
processor to retrieve data from the disk when asked, and to write data to disk when asked. It
also handles all RAID operations as well as Read and Write caching. iSCSI and additional
Fiber Channel ports are added to the SPs using UltraFlex modules.

UltraFlex I/O Modules These are basically PCIe Cards that have been modified for use in a
VNX system. They are fitted into a metal enclosure that is then inserted into the back of the
Storage Processors or Data Movers, depending on if it is for Block or File use.

Control Station CS Normally preceded by Primary or Secondary as there are at least

1, but most often 2 control stations per VNX system. It is the job of the control station to
handle management of the File or Unified components in a VNX system. Block only VNX
arrays do not utilize a control station. However in a Unified or File only system the Control
stations run Unisphere and pass any and all management traffic to the rest of the array
components.

Data Mover Enclosure Blade Enclosure This enclosure houses the data movers for file
and unified VNX arrays.

Data Movers X-Blades DM Data movers (aka X-Blades) connect to the storage
processors over dedicated fiber channel cables and provide File (NFS, pNFS, and CIFS)
access to clients. Think of a data mover like a linux system which has SCSI drives in it, it
then takes those drives and formats them with a file system and presents them out one or
more protocols for client machines to access.
Disk Array Enclosure DAE DAEs come in several different flavors, 2 of which are
depicted in the quick reference sheet. One is a 3u 15 disk enclosure which holds 15 3.5
disk drives; the second is a 2u 25 disk enclosure which holds 25 2.5 disk drives; and
finally the third is a 4u 60 disk enclosure which holds 60 3.5 drives in a pull out cabinet
style enclosure. The third type is the more rare and are not normally used unless rack space is
at a premium.

Maximum drives per System

max drives

=======================================

VNX2?

Below (I suppose) is the architecture of the new VNX2. (Perhaps VNX2 will come out in
May with EMC World?) In addition to transitioning from Intel Xeon 5600 (Westmere) to E5-
2600 series (Sandy Bridge EP), the diagram indicates that the new VNX2 will be dual-
processor (socket) instead of single socket on the entire line of the original VNX.
Considering that the 5500 and up are not entry systems, this was disappointing.

VNX2 provides 5X increase in IOPS to 1M and 2.3X in IO bandwidth to 28GB/s. LSI

mentions a FastPath option that dramatically increases IOPS capability of their RAID
controllers from 80K to 140-150K IOPS. My understanding is that this is done by completely
disabling the cache on the RAID controller. The resources to implement caching for large
array of HDDs can actually impede IOPS performance, hence caching is even more
degrading on an array of SSDs.

The bandwidth objective is also interesting. The 12GB/s IO bandwidth of the original VNX
would require 15-16 FC ports at 8Gbps (700-800MBps per port) on the front-end. The VNX
7500 has a maximum of 32 FC ports, implying 8 quad-port FC HBAs, 4 per SP.