VNX/Clariion Block Architecture
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| VNX/Clariion Architecture |
Note:
EMC introduced the VNX Series, designed to replace both the Clariion and Celerra products.
Architecture
Clariion & VNX Block Level Storage share the same architecture and VNX Unified Storage architecture includes both the SAN & NAS part.
And the main differences will be in the specifications like Capacity, Ports, drives & connectivity.
Clariion/VNX is a mid-range storage array. It is an active passive architecture.
It has different modules,
SPE – Storage Processor Enclosure
DPE – Disk Processor Enclosure
DAE – Disk Array Enclosure
SPS – Stand-by Power Supply
Each SPE has two storage processor named as SP A & SP B, they are connected with Clariion Messaging Interface (CMI).
And each SP has front end ports and back end ports and cache memory.
Front end ports helps to serve host I/O requests; back end ports helps to communicate with the disks.
Cache is of two types, Write Cache which is mirrored & Read Cache which is not mirrored.
The first DAE which is connected is known as DAE OS.
In this first five drives are known as Vault drives or Code drives. These are used to save the critical data in case of power failure and also save the data like SP A & SP B boot information which is mirrored.
All the drives are connected through the Link Control Cards (LCC).
FLARE which is triple mirrored and Persistent storage manager (PSM) is also triple mirrored.
Each DAE has Primary and Expansion ports which is used to connect other DAE’s.
Basically VNX has 3 main models of Storage's
Block Level Storage
File Level Storage and
Unified Storage Array
For more details about the VNX series & models, please refer the below link.
VNX 1 Series
The VNX 1 series includes six models that are available in block, file, and unified configurations:
VNX 5100, VNX 5300, VNX 5500 , VNX 5700 and VNX 7500.
The Block configuration for VNX 5500 & VNX 5700 shows below:
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| Block configuration for VNX 5500 & VNX 7500 |
The File configuration for VNX 5300 & VNX 5700 shows below:
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| File configuration for VNX 5300 & VNX 5700 |
The Unified configuration for VNX 5300 & VNX 5700 shows below:
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| Unified configuration for VNX 5300 & VNX 5700 |
The VNX series used updated components that make it significantly denser than earlier drives.
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| Example of a Block dense configuration |
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| Example of a Unified dense configuration |
A 25 drive 2.5” SAS-drive DAE
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| Front view of 25 SAS-drive DAE |
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| Back view of 25 SAS-drive DAE |
A close up of the Back view with the ports naming
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| A close up of the back view |
A 15 drives DAE
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| Front view of a 15 drives DAE |
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| Back view of 15 drives DAE |
A close up of the Back view with the ports naming
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| Close up view of a 15 drives DAE |
A picture of Link Control Cards LCC cards connectivity
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| Link Control Cards |
A picture of a cooling module
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| Cooling module |
VNX 2 Series
The VNX 2 series includes six models that are available in block, file, and unified configurations:
VNX 5200, VNX 5400, VNX 5600 , VNX 5800, VNX 7600 and VNX 8000.
There are two existing Gateway models:
VNX VG2 and VNX VG8
There are two VMAX® Gateway models:
VNX VG10 and VNX VG50
A model comparison chart for VNX 2 series.
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| A model comparison chart |
The Block configuration for VNX 5600 & VNX 8000 shows below:
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| Block configuration for VNX 5600 & VNX 8000 |
The File configuration for VNX 5600 & VNX 8000 shows below:
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| File configuration VNX 5600 & VNX 8000 |
The Unified configuration for VNX 5600 & VNX 8000 shows below:
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| Unified configuration VNX 5600 & VNX 8000 |
As informed earlier, the VNX 2 series used updated components that make it significantly denser than earlier drives.
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| Example of Block dense configuration |
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| Example of Unified dense configuration |
The below picture shows the back view of the DPE with SP A (on the right) and SP B (on the left).
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| Back view of DPE |
Picture shows a close-up of the back of the DPE-based storage processor.
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| Close up view of the back view of the DPE based Storage Processor |
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| Power, fault, activity, link and status LED |
A pic of Storage processor management and base module ports
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| Storage processor management and base module ports |
Need more details about the hardware& connectivity issues, please refer this link below.