SAN Refresh

In Veritas Storage Foundation, some time we will get this kind of disk shrink issues due to which the Private/Public portions of the disk won't have enough space to shrink as requested by the user. However, this problem can be resolved by trying this option - When you try to mirror the disks, you will find the option called "Disable Track Alignment". Leave your comments if this does / doesn't work. I need to do more checks on this option.

I've faced this difficulty while I'm trying to shrink the DMX disk. Tried different ways of checking like which application is using this disk etc. This is not a cluster node, hence checked the SQL related and other application services. Worked Solution: (Get a new disk with bigger size) Eventhough has same problem occurs, hence I've asked the stroage team to provide bigger size of a new disk. Now I tried mirror the volume with other new available bigger disk. worked!!! Vertias Storage Foundation 5.1 with SP1 (Veritas Enterprise Administrator)

Problem V-76-58645-218 "Insufficient space to grow volume" appears while expanding a volume - Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows Error V-76-58645-218 Insufficient space to grow volume Solution Description If volume that is being expanded resides on a disk that is marked as "At Risk," the disk must be reactivated before the volume can be expanded. Solution Remove the "At Risk" flag by following these steps: 1. From Veritas Enterprise Administrator (VEA), expand Disks. 2. Right-click on the disk that is marked as "At Risk." 3. Select Reactivate Disk. 4. Click Yes. Once the disk is no longer listed as "At Risk," expanding the volume should complete successfully.

Found this on one HP server, find the resolution steps in after the screenshots - All drives looked good from HP Array Configuration Utility.   Selected the option: "Re-enable Failed Logical Drive" OK to those scary follow-up pop ups.   All worked fine, without  any reboot (this one tried on Windows 2003 EE box_x32)

I've got this issue with one of the HP Server (HP DL380 G5 Model with x64 bit Windows OS). Just simple resolution,  get the PSP update to the latest version (if 7.91 is there ---> 8.15 --> 8.30 --->  8.50 is the latest at present_3rd Sept'10) This should definitely resolve the Thermal Status Degraded 6041 error alerts in the HP SIM.

Command Line command to check the Solution Enabler Version etc run c:\program files\emc\symcli\bin\symcli Sample Output:

It is an integrated family of enterprise storage resource management (SRM) products that provide Discovery, Monitoring, Automation provisioning and Reporting across multi-vendor storage arrays, storage Networks and hosts. Various Components of the ECC: • Storage Device Management - Symmetrix Manager - Symmetrix Optimizer - SRDF/TimeFinder Manager for OS/400 • SRM Monitoring and Reporting - StorageScope - StorageScope File Level Report - Workload Analyzer • SRM Planing and Provisioning - SAN Manager - SAN Advisor - Automated Resource Manager ECC Master Agent - Which acts as an interface between the Host and the ECC. Monitor health, collect data and execute configuration operation against the elements of the storage environment. The Agents run on hosts in the environment and can be installed, managed, and upgraded remotely from a central Console.

Very simply, RAID striping is a means of improving the performance of large storage systems. For most normal PCs or laptops, files are stored in their entirety on a single disk drive, so a file must be read from start to finish and passed to the host system. With large storage arrays, disks are often organized into RAID groups that can enhance performance and protect data against disk failures. Striping is actually RAID-0; a technique that breaks up a file and interleaves its contents across all of the disks in the RAID group. This allows multiple disks to access the contents of a file simultaneously. Instead of a single disk reading a file from start to finish, striping allows one disk to read the next stripe while the previous disk is passing its stripe data to the host system -- this enhances the overall disk system performance, which is very beneficial for busy storage arrays. Parity can be added to protect the striped data. Parity data is calculated for the stripes and placed ...

I have discussed about lab exercise for Storage Administration purpose, Now, Lets talk about something technical. You understand that we can create Raid 5 protected LUN means we will use striping. So, How will you calculate stripe size of LUN. Before calculating the stripe size of data in Clariion , we have discussed about how many disks make up the Raid Group, as well as the Raid Type. I have two examples of Stripe Size of a LUN. The above xample shows a Raid 5, five disk Raid Group.As I mentioned in earlier post this referred to as 4 + 1. That means that of the five disks that make up the Raid Group, four of the disks are used to store the data, and the remaining disk is used to store the parity information for the stripe of data in the event of a disk failure and rebuild. In Clariion settings of a disk format in which it formats the disk into 128 blocks for the Element Size (amount of blocks written to a disk before writing/striping to the next disk in the Raid Group), wh...

Registering Fibre Channel HBAs or iSCSI NICs with the storage system enables the storage system to see the HBAs or NICs. To register HBAs or NICs with the storage system, you will start or restart the Navisphere Agent on the host. Microsoft Windows To register the host’s HBAs with the storage system, start the Navisphere Agent as follows: 1. On the Windows host, right click My Computer and select Manage. 2. Click Services and Applications and then click Services. 3. Find EMC Navisphere Agent service. 4. If already started, stop the EMC Navisphere Agent service. 5. Start the EMC Navisphere Agent service. AIX To register the host’s HBAs with the storage system, on the AIX host, stop and start the Navisphere Agent. For example: # rc.agent stop # rc.agent start HP-UX To register the host’s HBAs with the storage system, on the HP-UX host, stop and start the Navisphere Agent. For example: # /sbin/init.d/agent stop # /sbin/init.d/agent start Linux To register the host...

Most of user asked me what are basic differences between EMC Clone/Mirror/Snapshot? This is really confusing terminology because most of things will be same logically.Only thing change that is implementation and purpose of uses. I am trying to write basic and common differences: 1) A clone is a full copy of data in a source LUN. A snapshot is a point-in time "virtual" copy that does not occupy any disk space. 2) A snapshot can be created or destroyed in seconds, unlike a clone or mirror. A clone, for example, can take minutes to hours to create depending on the size of the source LUN. 3) A clone or mirror requires exactly the same amount of disk space as the source LUN. A snapshot cache LUN generally requires approximately 10% to 20% of the source LUN size. 4) A clone is an excellent on-array solution that enables you to recover from a data corruption issue. Mirrors are designed for off-site data recovery. 5) A clone is typically fractured after it is synchronized w...

In the current storage markets and technology, storage tiers are defined by availability, functionality, performance and costs. In fact data can move up and down tiers as time and business required. Tier "0" is not new in storage market but for implementation purposes it has been difficult to accommodate because it requires best performance and lowest latency. Enterprise Flash disks (Solid State Disks) capable to meet this requirement. It is possible to get more performance for company most critical applications. The performance can be gained through using Flash drives supported in VMAX and DMX-4 systems. One Flash drive can deliver IOPS equivalent to 30 15K RPM hard disk drives with approximately 1 ms application response time. Flash memory achieves performance and the lowest latency ever available in the enterprise class storage array. Tier “0” application can be closely coupled with other storage tier within Symetrix series for consistency and efficiency, reducing co...

We have discussed about Virtual Provisioning of Symmetrix in previous post. Now, we will discuss about Virtual Provisioning Configuration. You have to understand your storage environment before you run the below mentioned command. Configuring and viewing data devices and pools: Data Devices are devices with datadev attribute. Only Data Devices can be part of Thin Pool. Devices with different protection scheme can be supported for use in Thin Pools. It is depending on specific Enginuity level. All devices with the datadev attribute are used for exclusively for populating Thin Pools. Create command file (Thin.txt) with following syntax: create dev count=10, config=2-Way-Mir, attribute=datadev, emulation=FBA, size=4602; # symconfigure -sid 44 -file thin.txt commit –v –nop A Configuration Change operation is in progress. Please wait... Establishing a configuration change session...............Established. Processing symmetrix 000190101244 { create dev count=10, size=4602, e...

Auto-provisioning requires Enginuity 5874 or later. It simplify Symmetrix provisioning by allowing you to create group of devices like storage group in CLARiiON, Front-End Port Group and Host Initiators Group and then associate these groups with each other in a masking view. The following are the basic steps for provisioning Symmetrix using Auto-Provisioning:- 1) Create a Storage Group 2) Create a Port Group 3) Create an Initiator Group 4) Associate the groups in a Masking View. Creating Storage Group:- It is component of Auto-Provisioning group and FAST ( Will discuss about FAST in later post), both require Enginiuity 5874. The maximum number of storage group allowed per array is 8192. A storage group can contain up to 4096 devices. A Symmetrix device can belong to more than one storage group. Note:- By default Dynamic LUN addresses will assigned to each device. If can manually assign the host LUN addresses for the device you are adding to the group by clicking Set LUN Addr...