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Re: Clariion Storage

 
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lanke_1
Advisor

Clariion Storage

Hi,

We are planning to migrate
from Symmetrix to Clariion CX600. The array is to to be
connected to a K570 box.


I have some questions like:

1) What are the minimun softwares required for the Clariion array to get to work?
(we have only TimeFinder3.2 for Symm)

2) Are the BCV's supported by the Clariion?

3) Does it support lvm striping?

4) What are the required patches for HPUX 11.0 to accomodate this array?

5) We have 4 luns each of 4315MB on 18G drive?
What is the best configuration
for a 73G drive?

I would appreciate if any

one with similar experience

can through some light.

Thanks in advance,

Lanke


8 REPLIES 8
harry d brown jr
Honored Contributor

Re: Clariion Storage

Lanke,

Here's the link to the Clariion info:

http://www.emc.com/products/systems/clariion_cx600.jsp


live free or die
harry
Live Free or Die
Tom Geudens
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Clariion Storage

Hi,
To start of with, we've got a ClarIIon FC4500 and a FC4700, so things might be slightly different. Check with your EMC representative.

1) You will need Navisphere (Management Station, which is an NT and Agent for HP-UX).
These softwares should come with the box itself.

2) I believe BCV is Symmetrix specific

3) Yes

4) EMC has a "best practices" document specifically for HP-UX. GET YOUR HANDS ON THIS DOCUMENT (contact your EMC representative and squeeze until you get it !). Next to patches it also explains weird EMS behavior (and how to turn that off), etc.

5) That depends. Are we talking RAID-5 or another configuration ? We've chosen RAID-5 with LUN's that approximate the size of a physical disk. It might depend on the number of volumegroups you have. There is no single rule, but keep in mind that the number of LUN's in a volumegroup is limited, so don't make 'm too small !

Regards,
Tom
A life ? Cool ! Where can I download one of those from ?
Michael Tully
Honored Contributor

Re: Clariion Storage

Hi,

Like Tom I have FC4500 and FC4700.

The equivalent for Timefinder on the clariion is a product called 'snapview'.

3) yes

4) other than best practises and having a good CE (I have, he's great!) having your patches up to date will be enough.

5) Depends, but make sure they are not too big, because if you have smallish systems and volume groups, having the LUN's too big is a waste of disk. We use 10Gb on our clariions, RAID 5.

If you intend to keep both Symmetrix and Clariion, you could incorporate them together using a peoduct called ECC. It resides on either a NT or W2K workstation. If you don't the Navisphere sofwtare will do the job.

HTH
Michael

snipet from our EMC people about snapview.
The Clariion FC4700 has an optional software product license called EMC
SnapView. SnapView is similar to the Timefinder license in the Symmetrix and
allows you to create a point in time copy of production data and assign this
copy to an alternate server (note that the Snapshot LUN must be assigned to
an alternate server, it cannot be assigned to the same server due to
Operating System restrictions).

SnapView allows the creation of two types of point in time copies:

1) Snap: This is a pointer based copy. It uses a copy on first write
principal, meaning that the snap is only used for a short period, you don't
need to allocate 100% of the space for the copy. Typically a snap that is
created nightly for backups will only require that 10% of the space be
allocated.

2) Clone/BCV: This is a full volume copy like in Timefinder. The first
time a Clone is created, a full copy of the LUN is made. Subsequent clones
of a LUN only require incremental updates, but you always need 100% of the
space.

The main advantage of the clone function over Snaps is that you can do a
disk based restore with a clone. With a Snap, you would need to manually
copy the data across the network from one server to another.

With regards to the FC4500, this can be upgraded to an FC4700 by changing
the base unit (DPE). Note however that we have brought out a new line of
Clariion products (the CX400 & CX600). The CX series will replace the FC4700
which is being end-of-lifed in late December/early January. After then, we
will not be able to upgrade the FC4500 to an FC4700.

Anyone for a Mutiny ?
Tom Geudens
Honored Contributor

Re: Clariion Storage

Wow Michael,
I didn't know about that "end-of-life" statement (and I'm getting at least 2 EMCmails every day). Are we talking December 2002, January 2003 here ? Do you have an official confirmation from your CE about that ?

Regards,
Tom
A life ? Cool ! Where can I download one of those from ?
harry d brown jr
Honored Contributor

Re: Clariion Storage

Lanke,

I never heard of someone going from a Symmetrix to a Clariion.

What are the benefits?

Was your Symm OLD?

I'm just wondering what uses I could have for my 10 Clariion's that I'll get back at corporate in the spring, from my 10 remote data centers.

Also, I think I can put these puppies on the SAN (and emc mcdata san), correct?

thanks again!


live free or die
harry
Live Free or Die
lanke_1
Advisor

Re: Clariion Storage

Hi All,

Thanks for your timely responses.

We have a symm-3300 on which we are completly utilizing the capacity.

So the Mgmt. decided to go to CX600 as it is cheap.
Also I think one has to get familiar with their softwares
to manage the array.

I do have some other questions
as I am not clear with some othe aspects like:

My Environemnet:

The symm is attached to 3
K boxes.One primary,failover and the other backup server.
We run Oracle & SAP apps.

We use OmnibackII for backup
on a private network backing up 100G of prod. data.


1)Is it mandatory to implement SAN for this kind of array.

2)Can we integrate the sapview with clones with the
existing OmnibackII software.

Thanks once again!
Lanke













Tom Geudens
Honored Contributor

Re: Clariion Storage

Harry,
Those "puppies" will definitely fit in a EMC MCdata SAN (once again I'm talking about the FC4700 and the FC4500 and I'm very sure about the CX-series). In a SAN environment you might want AccessLogix implemented on the boxes.

Lanke,
Check the connectivity with EMC. Than double (and triple)check ! We've had problems (lots of them) with connecting a K-server to our SAN (MCData directors, Brocade switches)... and in the end ... we couldn't. I don't know how many point-to-point connections are possible with the CX600 (and if a K-server can be connected directly to such an array) but you definitely want to look into this BEFORE starting the move !

Regards,
Tom
A life ? Cool ! Where can I download one of those from ?
lanke_1
Advisor

Re: Clariion Storage

Hi Tom,

I just spoke to the EMC SE.

He says CX600 can have 8 point to point connections
with 2 Storage Processors(SP) each SP of 2G cache.

When I asked him about the SAN, he says he will come to the site today evening and talk about it.

Also I asked the SE about the

"EMC best practices for HPUX doc.".He says he will get it.

The CX600 needs to go to production at the end of December. Just want to keep myself aware of the problems
that might come up with this new array.

Tom thanks for your timely advise.

I shall keep you guys posted.

Thanks,
Lanke