Storage Optimization with Unity All-Flash Array: Learn to Protect, Replicate or Migrate your data across Dell EMC Unity Storage and UnityVSA

CHAPTER 1

Dell EMC Unity Overview

Introduction

Dell EMC Unity storage is the midrange storage with a powerful, high performance and deployment flexibility; it is available in the Hybrid model and All-Flash model. This solution is recommended for a mixed workload environment, remote office and small-sized deployment. In the information technology (IT) industry, storage and network (SAN) storage is a critical component of a system infrastructure. If the customer plans to buy a new SAN storage they will consider many factors, for example, performance, deployment, user-friendly GUI, data migration, upgrade flexibility, cost, and more. Unity systems are designed to be simple and easy for implementation, configuration, and administration. It can support multi-platforms, for example, Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Linux, AIX, VMware hypervisor, and more. Dell EMC Unity also offers the virtual storage appliance-UnityVSA. UnityVSA can deploy on VMware ESXi platform. It is a good choice if -no storage is connected to the VMware hypervisor in the deployment and remote offices.

Structure

What is Dell EMC Unity?

Overview of the Unity systems

Unity features

Overview of Unity Management

How to Access the Unisphere GUI?

What is Dell EMC UnityVSA?

Knowledge review

What is Dell EMC Unity?

Dell EMC Unity - comprises the Hybrid model and All-Flash model. Unity Hybrid storage has four models: Unity 300, 400, 500 and 600. Unity All-Flash storage also has four models: Unity 350F, 450F, 550F and 650F. Following figure is a Unity Hybrid model:

Following table shows the details of each Unity Hybrid model:

Table 1.1: Overview of Unity Hybrid storage

Unity All-Flash storage can provide more input/output operations per second (IOPS) than Unity Hybrid storage. Following table shows the details of each Unity All-Flash model:

Table 1.2: Overview of Unity All-Flash storage

Dell EMC Unity storage supports the different interfaces input/output (I/O) modules to connect the host connectivity, that is, 16GB Fibre Channel, 10GB BaseT, and 10GB Optical. The customer can choose the required interface I/O modules to install on Unity storage. It supports to co-existence with the different interface I/O models on Unity storage. Following table shows the drive compatibility matrix for Unity Hybrid storage and All-Flash storage:

Table 1.3: Drive Compatibility Matrix

Overview of the Unity Systems

Dell EMC Unity’s Disk Processor Enclosure (DPE) has two different options. 2 Unit PDE with 25 drives in Small Form Factor (SFF) and 2 Unit PDE with 12 drives in Large Form Factor (LFF). Each DPE includes two controllers. For Hybrid configurations, SAS Flash 2, SAS and NL-SAS drives are supported on both types of DPE. SAS Flash 3 and SAS Flash 4 are only supported on PDE with 25 2.5" drives. The first four drives of the DPE are the system drives and they contain data used by the Unity Operating Environment (OE). Following figure is the 2 Unit PDE with 25 2.5"drives:

Figure 1.1: 2 Unit DPE with 25 2.5"drives

If we need a more usable capacity drive, 2 Unit PDE with 12 3.5 drives can be chosen. Following figure is the 2 Unit PDE with 12 3.5 drives:

Figure 1.2: 2 Unit DPE with 12 3.5"drives

Figure 1.3 shows the rear view for Unity DPE. In each storage processor (SP), it supports the installation of two pair of I/O modules. The Dell EMC Unity system supports six different types of I/O modules:

Four-port 12GB SAS I/O module: It provides four mini-HD SAS ports of 12GB SAS expansion for connecting additional Disk Array Enclosures (DAEs).

Four-port 16GB Fibre Channel I/O module: It supports auto-negotiating to 4/8/16GB and connects to a Host Bus Adapter (HBA) or FC switch.

Four-port 10GBE BASET I/O module: It provides 10GBE BASE-T RJ-45 copper ports for connections to an Ethernet switch.

Four-port 1GBE BASET I/O module: It provides 1GBE BASE-T RJ-45 copper ports for Cat 5/6-cabling connections to an Ethernet switch.

Four-port 10GBE Optical I/O module: It provides 10GBE IP/iSCSI SFP+ ports for connections to an Ethernet switch.

Two-port 10GBE Optical I/O modules with iSCSI offload: It provides 1GBE SFP+ ports for connections to an Ethernet switch. It supports both IP and full iSCSI Offload engine on the same IO module.

The following is a diagram of DPE’s rear view:

Figure 1.3: The rear view for Disk Processor Enclosure

Each SP contains two integrated Converged Network Adapter (CNA) ports (Figure 1.4). These ports are PCI adapters, which provide interfaces that can be configured as Ethernet, or fibre channel:

Figure 1.4: Converged Network Adapter ports on each SP

We can choose which network protocol on CNA port during the ordering phase. The following table shows all configurations of CNA on SP:

Table 1.4: CNA configurations

Once we set the network protocol on the CNA ports, we cannot switch to a different network protocol.

There is one M.2 SSD installed on each DPE, it is used to store the storage controller’s cache and can be recovered once the storage controllers are restored. If one of the storage controllers is in failure status, the cache data can be recovered from the peer storage controller.

There is a Battery Backup Unit (BBU) installed on each SP. It provides the power to each Storage Processor in case of power loss. The primary function of BBU is to make sure the power is long enough for the system to store the SP cache contents to the M.2 SSD device before powering down.

A Unity system supports three configurations of DAEs:

2U 25 drive DAEs

3U 12 drive DAEs

3U 80 drive DAEs

Following diagram shows the 2U 25 drive DAEs for the Unity, which can install 25 x 2.5" drives:

Figure 1.5: 2U 25 drive DAEs

If we need a more usable capacity drive on DAE, we can choose the 3U 12 drive DAEs. Following diagramis the 3U 12 drive DAEs for the Unity, which can install 15 x 3.5" drives:

Figure 1.6: 3U 12 drive Disk-Array Enclosures

The 3U 80 drive DAEs can install 80 x 2.5" drives.All drives leverage 12GB/s SAS backend connections and they support flash drive, SAS 15K/10K drive, and NL-SAS 7.2K drive. The following table shows the drive matrix for the Unity system:

Table 1.5: Dell EMC Unity System Drive Matrix

Unity Features

The base software includes on Unity system after system initialization (Figure 1.7):