This article summarizes the Chinese ATE Symmetrix/VMAX Hardware Architecture FAQ. 

Q1: Symmetrix provides several of monitoring method to ensure any hardware failures are detected at first time, the alerts could be send to customer or technical support expertise. How Symmetrix DMX/VMAX detect such as disk, battery, SFP, memory or director failure? How EMC follow up those events? Can you share some experiences?

A1: EMC provides four kinds of Symmetrix box monitoring methods.

ESRS: EMC Secure Remote Support Gateway maintains a strong and highly visible commitment to protecting customer’s infrastructure through the 24x7availability of remote technical support resources and automated secure remote support solutions. The EMC Secure Remote Support Gateway (ESRS) provides a secure, IP-based, distributed remote service support solution giving you command, control, and visibility of remote support access. ESRS fully supports Symmetrix DMX/VMAX product which is preferred option for customer.

Modem: Modem uses regular telephone line or operates with a PBX. Your Symmetrix box can automatically connect to the EMC remote support in the event of an abnormality, and remote support center then connects back into your Symmetrix box to diagnose and resolve the issue.

Email:  Email is a one-way connection from your Symmetrix box back to EMC remote support for the delivery of alerts and notifications. This option eliminates the need for an active telephone line, but an enable telephone line is necessary for EMC remote support engineer to connect Symmetrix system to resolve the issue.

WebEX:  The WebEX remote application and computer-sharing tool is a one-way connection from EMC remote support service in to your EMC system. WebEX can be used alone or in conjunction with the other connectivity options to enable EMC remote support engineer to provide an interactive session for error diagnosis and resolution.

From customer perspective, there are following methods to monitor the Symmetrix box:

Customer can monitor Symmetrix box through EMC provided tools and software such as ECC (EMC Control Center), SMC (Symmetrix Management Console), Unisphere for VMAX to check the alerts. If customer found any abnormalities in the box, they can contact EMC remote support for troubleshooting via WebEX, telephone to resolve the issue. Field engineer will be onsite if any hardware issue requires Symmetrix components need to be replaced.

Symevent command: the Solutions Enabler command to monitor the status of Symmetrix box.

Other software, SOC provided by EMC consultant team, 3rd party software supports SMI-S.

BTW, some customer writes their own Solutions Enabler script to monitor the Symmetrix with interface of ECC.

Q2:  As industry leading high-end storage array, being the representatives of increasing number of new feature from middle-end storage, will there be any new innovated feature from Symmetrix for continuing to attract users stay in Symmetrix camps?

A2: I believe the new feature will be there for sure, in the current version, the features such as FTS (Federated Tiered Storage), Host I/O limits, VP compression on the middle-end storage are rarely seen. The kinds of those features will be certainly introduced in the future.

For the existing Symmetrix features, such as Timefinder, SRDF , FAST, although they can also be found in middle-end storage, but high-end product provide much better in details, For example the SRDF Star, DSE, MSC etc. FAST product line developed FAST DP for thick device and FAST VP for thin device which provide customer more options.

Q3: How to set the threshold on particular Symmetrix FA/DA? We need a recommended value to define if the FA or DA is overload and any disk adjustment is required.

A3: There is no recommended threshold value on Symmetrix FA/DA, the value depends on the customer environment and configuration, such how many channel they use, which kinds of application etc.

Q4: How to monitor CPU utilization of particular Symmetrix VMAX Director? Is it possible to set alerts, for example auto alert when CPU utilization is over 95%?

A4: You can use Unisphere for VMAX, go to performance – setting – threshold and alerts, then define the value you need. Unisphere for VMX has several metrics to configure the monitoring which includes Symmetrix system metrics, back-end director, front-end director, disk etc. For the details, you can refer the EMC Symmetrix Unisphere for VMAX Online help

Author: Fenglin Li

             

iEMC APJ