EMC XtremIO KnowledgeCenter Errata

Content

Who should use this guide

This erratum should be used by anyone using the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller to configure these systems with the EMC XtremIOs.

You should review the errata contained within this guide and note the details with respect to the suitable SVC infocenter information and Best Practices from the Redbooks.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/STPVGU/welcome
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/portals/storage

Note; SAN Volume Controller, SVC, also denotes suitable IBM Storwize controllers.

Configuring the EMC XtremIO

This portion of the document covers the necessary configuration for using a EMC XtremIO with an IBM SAN Volume Controller cluster.

Support models of XtremIO

The XtremIO All Flash Arrays are supported for use with the IBM SVC.

Initial Support firmware levels of XtremIO

XtremIO Version:	4.0.x, 3.0.x and 2.4.x
SVC Version:	7.4.0.3

For support on later versions, consult :-
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/support/storage/ssic/interoperability.wss
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S1003658
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S1004946#_Xtremio

Concurrent maintenance on XtremIO

Concurrent Firmware upgrades (NDU's) from 2.x to 3.0x or later, are not supported, consult XtremIO procedures.
Concurrent Firmware upgrades from 3.0.x onwards are supported.

XtremIO interface

This is the XtremIO Management Server (XMS) which enables you to control and manage the XtremIO cluster.
The XMS provides the CLI and GUI. It can be installed on a dedicated physical server or as a VMware virtual host.

Users configure an XtremIO via an XtremIO on the server.
Remote access to the server is via RDP protocols from a remote desktop client.

The XMS is not on the Data Path and is for configuration and Monitoring.
The XMS must have network access to management/IPMI addresses on all Storage Controllers in the X-Bricks,
and must be accessible by any GUI/CLI client host machine.

For details on XtremIO Management Server (XMS), refer to the document "EMC XtremIO Storaage Array Users Guide"
which can be found in EMC Online Support, (https://support.emc.com).

Explanations will assume use by the GUI.
Setup is largely intuitive, with minimal settings or configuration.
Create Host (Initiator Group), Create Volume, Connect Host (LUN Mapping Configuration).


Logical units and target ports on XtremIO

LUNs

The XtremIO maximum raw capacity is the limit of the X-Brick type (10TB or 20TB).
The maximum virtual volume size capable of being supported by SVC is 1PB.
A Volume is referenced by the Volume name.

XtremIO can export 8192 LUNs.
XtremIO can have a maximum 512 initiators per cluster, 64 initiators per Initiator group per cluster.
Greater than 2TB LUNs are supported by SVC.

SVC will detect the controller when zoned without Luns being provisioned.

The Lun number can be edited, but Lun 0 is valid and used by default.

All controller ports present the same Luns.

LUN IDs

XtremIO will identify exported Logical Units through
SCSI Identification Descriptor type 3.
The 64-bit, NAA IEEE Registered Extended Identifier (NAA=5
for the Logical Unit is in the form;
5-OUI-VSID .
The (EMC) XtremIO IEEE Company ID is; 14F0C5,
the rest is a vendor specific ID.

# lsmdisk 1
id 1
name mdisk1
status online
mode unmanaged
mdisk_grp_id
mdisk_grp_name
capacity 10.0GB
quorum_index
block_size 512
controller_name XtremIO
ctrl_type 4
ctrl_WWNN 514F0C50FFFFFF01
controller_id 0
path_count 8
max_path_count 8
ctrl_LUN_# 0000000000000001
UID 514f0c523ba00012000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
preferred_WWPN
active_WWPN many
fast_write_state empty
raid_status
raid_level
redundancy
strip_size
spare_goal
spare_protection_min
balanced
tier enterprise
slow_write_priority
fabric_type fc
site_id
site_name
easy_tier_load high
encrypt no

Configuring EMC including Logical Drives and Hosts.

Settings are in general default unless specified.

The XtremIO will be configured as a large virtualised, thin-provisioned, de-dupped and compression capable storage pool.
Note; if over-allocating the storage capacity, care should be taken to monitor the systems remaining capacity to avoid taking related SVC mdiskgroups offline.

The underlying storage is visible but is pre-configured into a single "protection group" with XDP 23+2 wide stripe protection, without the use of Hot Spares.

Zone SVC to the storage first, and check SVC can see all the expected controller ports as part of the controller. [ svcinfo detectmdisk, svcinfo lscontroller ]

Creating an SVC Host;
SVC can be either a single Initiator Group or if preferred in a single Initiator Group in a Folder.
SVC should for simplicity be one "Initiator Group".
From main page on GUI select configuration Configuration.
On the Configuration page, go to the right pane and select "Add" Initiator Group.
Choose suitable "Initiator Group Name" for the cluster, then select "Add" to add the first initiator port.
This brings up a new dialogue box, enter a "Initiator Name" for the node port, and select the "Initiator Port Address" for it from the drop down menu.
Note; SVC ports are generally of the form; 5005076801ppxxxx, where pp is port 10,20,30,40.. and xxxx is a node specific identifier.
Repeat until all the SVC node ports have been added, then press next.
Pressing finish adds the group to the default "Parent" directory.

Creating Volumes;
From main page on GUI go to Configure, there is one Redundancy Group.
On the Configuration page, go to the left pane and select "Add" Volume.
This can be done individually one the dialogue box or by multiples by selecting "Add Multiple".
Options;
Name; Choose suitable name, (and number of volumes and start index if multiple volumes being used).
Size; in GB.
Logical Block Size; Normal (512 LBs)
Enable small IO alerts; disabled
Enable Unaligned IO alerts; disabled
Enable VAAI TP alerts; disabled
Press next and finish to add to parent directory, or create a folder for the volumes. They will appear in the left panel.

Mapping Volumes to the SVC Host "Initiator Group";
From main page on GUI go to Configure.
In the left "Volumes" panel select the volumes or volumes in folders to be mapped. Multiple selections can be made by holding "CTRL".
In the right "Initiators" panel select the "Initator Group" or folder that represents the SVC Fibre Channel ports.
In the middle "LUN Mapping Configuration" panel select "Map All".
Note; to complete, the "Apply" button at the bottom of the middle panel must be pressed.
The Mapping can be seen as a connection in the middle pane between the volume and initiator group when volume selected.
Note; LUN id's can be chosen by use of the LUN field, but this is not normally required.
Check on SVC that all is presented as expected and any errors corrected.
Note; Multiple Initiator Groups can be selected, however SVC requires unique access to its LUNs, so care should be taken in selecting.
[ svctask detectmdisk, svcinfo lsdiscoverystatus]

lscontroller
id controller_name ctrl_s/n vendor_id product_id_low product_id_high
0 XtremIO SACD XtremIO XtremApp
Note; chcontroller has been used to rename controller_name.


To Modify, Resize, or destroy a Volume/LUN,.

The Volume must be removed from any SVC mdiskgroup and be in an “unmanaged” state before doing any modifications on the controller.

*** Note: Make sure the SVC mdisk is unmanaged (removed from any mdiskgroup) on the SVC Cluster before deleting the Volume on the EMC XtremIO storage system.

*** Note: Do not use volume expansion on LUNs that are in use by a SAN Volume Controller cluster. For this to be recognised by SVC the mdisk must
be first made unmanaged by migrating or deleting from the MDiskGroup.

LUN Presentation

LUNs are exported through all the XtremIOs available FC ports. .

Special LUNs

There are no special considerations to a Logical Unit numbering. LUN 0 is presented by default and configurable.

Target Ports

A XtremIO storage system can have a total of no of X-Bricks x 2 node x 2 x 8GB FC ports.
The system WWNN will have associated controller ports of 4 x the number of xbricks x WWPNs (for a XtremIO system).

All WWPNs will appear under a single WWNN.

# lscontroller 0
id 0
controller_name XtremIO
WWNN 514F0C50FFFFFF01
mdisk_link_count 4
max_mdisk_link_count 4
degraded no
vendor_id XtremIO
product_id_low XtremApp
product_id_high
product_revision 3000
ctrl_s/n SACD
allow_quorum yes
fabric_type fc
site_id
site_name
WWPN 514F0C50FFFFFF02
path_count 8
max_path_count 8
WWPN 514F0C50FFFFFF04
path_count 8
max_path_count 8
WWPN 514F0C50FFFFFF03
path_count 8
max_path_count 8
WWPN 514F0C50FFFFFF01
path_count 8
max_path_count 8



XtremIO WWNN and WWPN settings look like this:

524A937SSSSSSSPP

5 - IEEE 803.2 extended 64-bit ID NAA format,
SSSSSSS - unique vendor-supplied serial number for the device.
PP - vendor specific code used to identify specific ports.

WWNN 514F0C50FFFFFF01

WWPN 514F0C50FFFFFF02
WWPN 514F0C50FFFFFF04
WWPN 514F0C50FFFFFF03
WWPN 514F0C50FFFFFF01

LU access model

All controllers are Active/Active. In all conditions, it is recommended to cross connect the ports across FC switches to avoid an outage from controller failure.
All XtremIO controllers are equal in priority so there is no benefit to using an exclusive set for a specific LU.


LU preferred access port

There are no preferred access ports on the XtremIO as all ports are Active/Active across all controllers.


Detecting Ownership

Detecting Ownership does not apply to XtremIO.

Switch zoning limitations for XtremIO

There are no zoning limitations for XtremIO.
The XtremIO system presents itself to an SAN Volume Controller cluster as a single controller with multiple WWPNs. For example, if one of these storage systems has 4 ports zoned to the SAN Volume Controller, it appears as 1 controllers each with 4 WWPNs. A given logical unit (LU) is mapped to the SAN Volume Controller through all controller ports zoned to the SAN Volume Controller using the same logical unit number (LUN).

Fabric zoning

Each Fabric zone to all the SVC backend ports should contain at least one XtremIO storage system port from each controller for robustness,.

Example switch port of controller (name server)

N 660e00; 3;51:4f:0c:50:ff:ff:ff:04;51:4f:0c:50:ff:ff:ff:01; na

FC4s: FCP [XtremIO XtremApp 3000]
NodeSymb: [39] "QLE2562 FW:v5.08.01 DVR:v8.02.01-k4-tgt"
Fabric Port Name: 20:0e:00:05:1e:34:56:09
Permanent Port Name: 51:4f:0c:50:ff:ff:ff:04
Port Index: 14
Share Area: No
Device Shared in Other AD: No
Redirect: No
Partial: No

Target port sharing

The XtremIO storage system does not support port LUN masking.

Host splitting

This can be done if the Multipathing Drivers are compatible.

Controller splitting

The controller may be shared with other hosts, provided svc has sole access to the LUNs presented to it as mdisks.

Configuration settings for XtremIO storage system

There are little if no settings configurable on the XtremIO, it is designed for
simple and intuitive configuration.

Quorum disks on XtremIO

The SAN Volume Controller cluster will select disks that are presented by the XtremIO storage system as quorum disks. To maintain availability for the cluster, ideally each quorum disk should reside on a separate disk subsystem.

Clearing SCSI reservations and registrations

This option is not available on the browser or cli.
Note; this should never be done, LUNs must be exclusive to SVC.

Copy functions for XtremIO storage system

The XtremIO replication and snapshot features are not supported under SVC.

VAAI functions

SVC currently supports CAWATS, XCOPY, ZEROING but not UNMAP.

Configuration Suggestions

Real-time compression and thin provisioning are built into XtremIO and cannot be disabled, so the option is available to use these functions without SVC. For thin provisioning care must then be taken to monitor the available storage capacity on the controller if over-allocating.

Consider creating XtremIO mdisks in a small number or large LUNs for the SVC MDiskGroups.

XtremIO mdiskgrps can be used in an EasyTier configuration but must be classed as a Tier 0 device, for SSD's.

Refer to the IBM svc infocenter and Redbooks for best practises.
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/STPVGU/welcome
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/portals/storage
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