Hitachi VSP Architecture

VSAP di

Overview

The VSP is enterprise storage array that scales from a single bay up to a maximum of 6 bays.  The two central bays house what Hitachi is calling Control Chassis (containing processors, memory, front and backend connectivity) as well as drive enclosures.  The remaining 4 bays can contain only drive enclosures (Max 2048 Drives).

vsp1

  1. It comes in a standard sized 42u 19 inch rack
  2. Has a hot and cold isle airflow design
  3. Can take power feeds from above or below – you can now install one in your garage without installing a raised floor.

vsp2

Sub-LUN Tiering

Hitachi Dynamic Tiering (HDT).

  1. All drives can be placed into a single tiering pool.  SSD, SAS and SATA into a Single tier Pool.
  2. New data is staged to the highest tieravailable, and then, as it becomes less active it is migrated down the tiers.
  3. The Sub-LUN extent size42 MB- VSP will move data up and down the tiers in units of 42MB (contiguous space).
  4. On the policy side of things, you can set gathering windows, exclusion windows, and the movement cycle is between 1-24 hours.

SAS backend and 2.5 inch drives

SAS and 2.5 inch drives are supported in VSP

Backend

Front End Director (FED) Design

Data Accelerator ASICs

The FEDs and BEDs have custom I/O routing ASICs that are specialised for I/O traffic management. These ASICs have an affinity with ports and CPU’s are no longer locked to a particular ports all ports are moved to a processor complex called the Virtual Storage Director (VSD) where ports are pooled and can have their resources dynamically assigned and un-assigned from any front or back end port.

Control Chassis (Logic Boxes)

Control Chassis are two(Control Chassis 0 and Control Chassis 1)

The picture below is of the front and rear of a frame containing a Control Chassis.  The Control Chassis is in the bottom half on both pictures; the top half contains the drive enclosures hidden by fans.

vsp

At the front there are 4 x Virtual Storage Directors (VSD), and 8 x Data Cache Directors and at the rear there are 8 x FEDs, 4 x BEDs, and 8 x Grid Switches, or GSW.

vsp4

Data cache is backed up to onboard flash drives,Each BED has 8 x 6Gbps SAS paths.  That adds up to 32 backend SAS links per Control Chassis, and 64 x 6Gbps links in a fully configured unit.  SAS runs at full duplex.

vsp5

Control Memory (CM) is located on the Virtual Storage Directors alongside the general purpose CPUs making it very quickly accessible to the CPUs, like an L2 cache.  As with previous architectures, Control Memory stores the usual metadata and system state such as LDEV mappings, DIF tables, run tables etc.

Grid Switches – The Grid Switch boards provide the, 4-lane PCIe gen. 1, paths that cross connect all of the other boards. Each Control Chassis can have either two or four GSW boards. Each GSW board has 24 unidirectional ports, each port having a send and receive path, with each operating at 1024MB/s.Hitachi refers to the Control Chassis as being tightly coupled, and the interconnect between the two is PCIe gen 1 over copper.  The Control Chassi are able to communicate by mapping Hi-Star over PCIe.

vsp 6.jpg

 

IBM SVC Storage Provisioning

Create Host

svctask mkhost -name Host name -hbawwpn Host WWN -iogrp 0 -force -mask 1111

Create Host

Add port to Host

svctask addhostport –hbawwpn wwn [-force] host-name/host-id

Delete port to Host

svctask rmhostport –hbawwpn wwn [-force] host-name/host-id

Create Vdisk(Lun) for host

  1. check what is the mdisk group(Storage pool Id) using command “svcinfo lsmdiskgrp”

2. check the IOgroup details using command “svcinfo lsiogrp”

3. Cretae Vdisk

svctask mkvdisk -mdiskgrp mdiskgroupid -iogrp 1 -size 1024 -unit gb -name Vdisk name

Create Volume

Map Vdisk to host

svctask mkvdiskhostmap -force -host [host-id ; host_name] -scsi [lun_id] vdisk_name ; vdisk_id

Mapping Volume

 

 

Brocade useful Commands

Show Commands

Command Description
nodefind wwn

psshow

To find whether WWN loggedin array

Displays the status of the power supply

fansshow Displays the status of the fans
tempshow Displays the status of the temperature readings
sensorshow Displays the status of the sensor readings
nsshow Displays information in the name server
nsshow -t Displays information in the name server
nsshow -r Displays the information in the name server along with the state change registration details
nscamshow Displays detailed information of all the devices connected to all the switches in the fabric (Remote Name Servers)
nsallshow Displays the 24 bit address of all devices that are in the fabric
licenseshow Displays all the licenses that have been added in the switch
date Displays the current date set on the switch
bannershow Displays the banner that will appear when logging in unsing the CLI or webtools
httpcfgshow Displays the JAVA version the switch expects at the management console
switchname Displays the switchname
fabricshow Displays information of all the switches in the fabric
userconfig –show -a Displays the account information like role , description , password exp date , locked status
switchstatusshow Displays the overall status of the switch
switchstatuspolicyshow Displays policy set for the switch regarding Marginal(Yellow) or Down(Red) error status
portshow To show the port status
portcfgshow Displays the speed set for all ports on all slots and other detailed port information
configshow fabric.ops Displays the parameters of the switch. Ensure all switches in a fabric have the same parameters in order to communicate
configshow fabric.ops.pidFormat Displays the PID set for a switch Core , Native or Extended edge
switchuptime OR uptime Displays the uptime for the switch
firmwareshow Displays the firmware on the switch
version Displays the current firmware version on the switch
hashow Displays the status of local and remote CP’s. High availability , heartbeat and synchronization

Port Settings

Command Description
portcfgshow Displays the port settings
portcfg rscnsupr [slot/port] –enable A registered state change registration is suppressed when a state change occurs on the port
portcfg rscnsupr [slot/port] –disable A registered state change registration is sent when a state change occurs on the port
portname To assign a name for a port
portdisable To disable a port or slot
portenable To enable a port or slot
portcfgpersistentdisable To disable a port , status would not change even after rebooting the switch
portcfgpersistentenable To enable a port , status would not change even after rebooting the switch
portshow To show the port status
portcfgspeed , To set speed for a port Note – 0:auto negotiated 1,2,4 Gbit/sec , 1 : 1Gbit/sec , 2 : 2 Gbit/sec , 4 : 4Gbit/sec
switchcfgspeed To set speed for all the ports on the switch Note – 0:auto negotiated 1,2,4 Gbit/sec , 1 : 1Gbit/sec , 2 : 2 Gbit/sec , 4 : 4Gbit/sec
portcfgshow Displays the speed set for all ports on all slots and other detailed port information
portcfgdefault To set the port settings to default
portcfglongdistance To set the long distance mode . Default is L0(Normal), as per distance will display LE <=10 kms , L0.5 <=25kms , L1 <=50 kms, L2<=100kms , LD=auto , LS = Static
portcfgeport Used to disable a port from being a E port

Setting commands

Command Description
ipaddrset To set the ip address for the switch
bannerset To set the banner which will appear when logging in using the CLI or webtools

Time and Date Settings

Command Description
date Displays the current date set on the switch
tsclockserver 10.10.1.1 Instruction for the principal switch to synchronize time with the NTP server (specify ipaddress of the NTP server)
tsclockserver LOCL Instruction to stop NTP server synchronization (Local time of the switch)
date mmddhhmmyy To set the time of the switch when the NTP server synchronization is cancelled
tstimezone -5 To set the time zone for individual switches

License Commands

Command Description
licenseshow Displays all the licenses that are added in the switch
licenseadd To add a new license to the switch
licenseremove To remove a license from the switch
licenseidshow Based on Switch WWN

Banner Commands

Command Description
bannershow Displays the banner that will appear when logging in unsing the CLI or webtools
bannerset To set the banner which will appear when logging in using the CLI or webtools
bannerset “” To remove the bannerset

Password commands

Command Description
passwd To change the password for that particular login
passwdcfg –set -lowercase 3 uppercase 1 -digits 2 -punctuation 2 -minlength 10 -history 3 To set the password rules
passwdcfg –set -minpasswordage 1 To set the minimum password age in Days
passwdcfg –set -maxpasswordage 30 To set the maximum password age in Days
passwdcfg –set -warning 23 To set a warning for the expiration Days remaining
passwdcfg –set -lockoutthreshold 5 To set the account lockout thresh hold
passwdcfg –set -lockoutduration 30 To set the account lockout duration in Minutes
passwdcfg –setdefault To restore the password policy to Factory settings (min length – 8, history -1 , lockoutduration – 30)

User Configuration (commands to administer Accounts)

Command Description
userconfig –show -a / userconfig –show Displays all the account information like role , description , password exp date , locked status
userconfig –add jdoe -r admin -d “Jane Doe” To add a new account -r = role , -d = description
userconfig –show jdoe Displays all the information for the account jdoe
userconfig –change -e no To Disable an account , usually default a/cs like admin and user . But ensure before disabling the admin a/c there is another a/c with admin rights
userconfig –change -e yes To Enable an account

NPIV Commands

Command Description
portcfgnpivport Enables NPIV functionality on a port . By default on Condor based switches
configure In order to increase the no of port logins ( Default is 126 , max 255)

SNMP

Command Description
snmpconfig snmpconfig for 5.0 above fos
agtcfgset snmp config for fos below 5.0
snmpmibcapset for choosing the MIB’s for the snmp settings

Zoning

Command Description
alicreate “Name”, “domain,port no” Used to create alias
alicreate “Name”,”portname1; portname2″ To create more than one ports under one alias
alidelete “Name” To delete alias
aliadd “Name”, “domain,port no” To add additional ports to an alias
aliremove “Name”, “domain,port no” To remove a port from the alias
alishow “AliName” To show the alias configuration on the switch
zonecreate “Zone Name”, “alias1; alias2″ To create zones based on alias
zonedelete “ZoneName” To delete a zone
zoneadd “ZoneName”, “alias name” To add additional alias into the zone
zoneremove “ZoneName”, “alias name” To remove an alias from the zone
zoneshow “zoneName” To show the zone configuration information
cfgcreate “Configname”, “Zone1; Zone2″ To create configurations by adding in zones
cfgdelete “ConfigName” To delete a configuration
cfgadd “ConfigName”, “Zone3″ To add additional zones in the configuration
cfgremove “ConfigName”, “Zone3″ To remove a zone from the configuration
cfgshow “ConfigName” To show the details of that configuration
cfgenable “ConfigName” To enable a configuration on the switch
cfgsave To have the effective configuration to be written into the flash memory

Firmware commands

Command Description
configupload Saves the switch config as an ASCII text file to an FTP server
configdownload To restore a switch configuration from ASCII text file Note – Need to disable the switch before downloading the config file
configure => cfgload attributes : [y] => Ensure secure config upload / download : [y] Fabric OS v 4.4 & above provides Secure File Copy Protocol (SCP) during upload or download of configurations
firmwaredownload To download the firmware to be installed on the switch
firmwareshow To be run after installing the firmware on the switch
version Displays the current firmware version on the switch
fastboot Needs to be run after installing the firmware . This doesnot include the post
reboot Needs to be run after installing the firmware. This includes the post

Other commands

Command Description
killtelnet To kill a particular session which is using telnet
configure To configure a switch
quitemode To switch off the quietmode
quietmode 1 To suppress messages to the console
switchname Displays the switchname
switchname “EXAMPLE” To assign a switch name
configure To disable/enable TELNETD
timeout Displays the timeout time set for Telnet session on the switch
timeout 10 To set a specific timeout time for the Telnet session
switchuptime OR uptime Displays the uptime for the switch
switchcfgspeed To set speed for all the ports on the switch Note – 0:auto negotiated 1,2,4 Gbit/sec , 1 : 1Gbit/sec , 2 : 2 Gbit/sec , 4 : 4Gbit/sec
fastboot To reboot the switch without post
reboot To reboot the switch with the post
switchstatusshow Displays the overall status of the switch
switchstatuspolicyshow Displays policy set for the switch regarding Marginal(Yellow) or Down(Red) error status
switchstatuspolicyset To change the policy set for the switch regarding Marginal(Yellow) or Down(Red) error status