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8790
April 22nd, 2012 00:00
Total Noob Needs to Get Schooled on EMC
I recently went back to school to get out of a job that I hate. Anyway, I'm currently running a PE2850 w/2008r2 and 3 PE1850's (1 is a ESXi host) 2 nothing yet. My friend, who also bought a 2850 and an 1850 also bought a Powervault 220s. With the cost of the 220s and drives, the EMC's (looking at the CX-2's) seem like a a better option. My question is this, beside a fiber channel card, will I need anything, or am I missing anything that will allow me to set it up as a poor mans enterprise SAN/NAS. I'm not really sure were to start looking, I just don't want to guy something that I won't be able to use. I fully plan to take full advantage of the system at a later date, but would like to use it for the time being. Thanks in adavance.
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Dev Mgr
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April 23rd, 2012 11:00
A DAE is a Disk Array Enclosure. This is just a dummy enclosure with disks, but no controllers (other than Link Controllers). It won't be very easily usable by a server without at least a DPE to daisy chain it off of.
There is also a DPE (Disk Processor Enclosure), which has disks, but also has the storage processors (recognizable by the ethernet ports, serial ports, optical fiber ports and copper fiber ports). This could be a CX200, CX300, CX400 or CX500.
Dev Mgr
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April 22nd, 2012 09:00
Without fiber switches, at most you can connect 2 servers to the same LUN or LUNs.
You mention the "CX-2". If you are referring to the CX200, this is a unique system; it only has a single WWPN for the front end ports (per SP). This has the following side effects:
1. When using 1 or more switches, you can only use 1 of the fiber ports per controller.
2. If you're not using fiber switches, you can only use both fiber ports on a controller if you go into the HBA settings on both of the connected HBAs and change their default FC-AL loop IDs to 2 different numbers (pick something like 100 and 101 or so (avoid the lower values and the top values as these serve unique purposes (and LUNs are usually assigned the lowest FC-AL IDs)).
stidrvr
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April 22nd, 2012 10:00
I think option 2 may need to be dumbed down a little. Although if I'm understanding you correctly, with the card and dedicated connection to the EMC I should be able to use the EMC as an "external hard drive".
stidrvr
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April 22nd, 2012 10:00
Also, the device in question is the CX-2PDAE