This article will provide an overview of the Symmetrix VMAX 3 array including The VMAX 100K, 200K and 400K.

The VMAX 3 family contains three types, VMAX 100K, 200K and 400k.

The VMAX 3 with HYPERMAX OS 5977 contains the economical 100K, the enterprise 200K and the most high-end 400K.  Enterprise storage requirement and standard have a strong growth in recent years; the new generation VMAX 3 family can use all flash drive to meet the needs of low-latency and high-IPO requirement.

Each engine of VMAX 3 can configure either up to 720 2.5’’ drives or up to 360 3.5’’ drives, disk type can be mixed or all the flash components. In addition, all new arrays support subsequent system bay dispersion of up to 25 meters from the first system bay. There isn’t vault device because each engine has configured flash for the vault functions. System cabinet has a single engine or dual engine mode. The service processor is replaced with the Management Module Control Station (MMCS) which are included in the System Bay 1.

The next will introduce three different storage models:

VMAX 100K can house either one engine or two engines. With two engines configuration, it can support up to 1440 2.5’’ drives or 720 3.5’’ drives, providing up to 0.5 PBU maximum capacities. In addition, it can provide a maximum of 64 front-end ports to customer. Two Infiniband are responsible for internal system communication, total 12-port switches provide redundancy and reliability.

VMAX 200K can house either one engine or scaling up to 4 engines. With four engines configuration, it can support up to 2880 2.5’’ drives or 1440 3.5’’ drives, providing up to 2.1 PBu maximum capacities. In addition, it can provide a maximum of 128 front-end ports to customer. Two Infinibandare responsible for internal system communication, total 12-port switches provide redundancy and reliability.

VMAX 400K can house either one engine to scaling up to 8 engines. With eight engines configuration, it can support 5780 2.5’’ drives or 2880 3.5’’ drives, providing up to 4 PBu maximum capacities. In addition, it can provide a maximum of 256 front-end ports to customer. Two Infinibandare responsible for internal system communication, total 12-port switches provide redundancy and reliability.

Detailed specification and a comparison of the three new VMAX 3 arrays follow.

The next part of this article will introduce the constitution of system bay.

Each single engine system bay houses one engine and a maximum of 6 DAE. Two SPS modules provide backup power in the event of an power interruption.  Engine supports two disk links which are labelled A and B. Each link can support a direct connection of DAE or a maximum of 2 cascaded DAE.  

Each dual engine system bay house two engines and a maximum of 4 DAE. Two SPS modules provide backup power for each engine (SPS 1A/1B and SPS 3A/3B). In addition, each engine provide two disk links, each disk link contain a cascaded DAE. By the way, single engine system bay and two engine system bay can’t be worked together.

 

                                                                                                                                              

Translator: Jeffey