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DeaconZ28-2015

252 Posts

1368

November 29th, 2007 08:00

Migrating from CX300 to CX3-40c - question about existing DAE's

I am getting ready to migrate from a CX300 to a CX3-40c in February.

The CX300 has a DAE2p (300GB 10k FC 2Gbps) and a DAE2 (500GB SATA).

Can I use these in addition to the DAE4p's that I am purchasing with the CX3-40c?

What is the downside? Will I lose my 4Gbps speed on my new SAN?

I hate for the arrays to go to waste since I purchased them within the last 18 months.

Allen Ward

2.1K Posts

December 4th, 2007 08:00

RRR is correct in that there is an outage required, but we managed to get this done in under 4 hours on one of the arrays. I still put in for an 8 hour outage for our Change Control folks.

If you can't afford an outage then you will have to do some kind of data migration from frame to frame, otherwise you should seriously look at the upgrade in place option. None of your existing drives have to change and none of your data is touched.

One thing you do have to look out for though is if you use space on the first 5 drive to assign to hosts. You will require some additional space on these drives for the FLARE. If they are full now you will have to migrate something off. I can't tell you exactly how much additional space is required (although it is minimal) but your Dell/EMC folks should be able to give you details.

Allen Ward

2.1K Posts

November 29th, 2007 11:00

Are you doing an inplace upgrade or a complete migration to a new frame?

Were you aware that you could do an inplace upgrade?

The DAEs should be reusable, but you just need to be aware that any back end bus you plug one of the old DAEs into will be forced down to 2GB. You could always keep one 2GB bus and one 4GB (if I remember correctly the CX3-40 only has two back end busses). You would just need to make sure they configure your new array initially only using one bus so you can add your old DAEs to the other one.

We actually did this with a CX500 which we upgraded in place to a CX3-80. We now have the original two backend busses running at 2GB and the two new backend busses running the higher performance stuff at 4GB.

DGM3

238 Posts

December 2nd, 2007 23:00

(if I remember correctly the CX3-40 only has two back end busses).


The CX3-40c has two backend busses, while the CX3-40f has four backend busses.
The 'c' variant supports both iSCSI and Fibre Channel host connectivity, while the 'f' variant supports only Fibre Channel host connectivity.

Regards,
DGM

RRR

1 Rookie

 • 

5.7K Posts

December 4th, 2007 02:00

4 BE's ? So BE0, BE1, BE2 and BE3 ? Waaw.... sounds like a CX700 or CX3-80 I guess.... I thought all CX3-40's only had 2 busses.

DeaconZ28-2015

252 Posts

December 4th, 2007 05:00

I was not aware that I could do an inplace upgrade. I will have to talk to my Dell rep about this.

What is involved in the process?

DeaconZ28-2015

252 Posts

December 4th, 2007 05:00

From Dell's site:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pvaul_cx3-40?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

Front End Connectivity
Dell/EMC CX3-40f
8 Fibre Channel front end ports (4 per Storage Processor)

Dell/EMC CX3-40c
4 Fibre Channel and 8 iSCSI front end ports (6 per Storage Processor)

Back End Connectivity
Dell/EMC CX3-40f
4 Fibre Channel ports per Storage Processor
4 redundant back end loops per array

Dell/EMC CX3-40c
2 Fibre Channel ports per Storage Processor
2 redundant back end loops per array

RRR

1 Rookie

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5.7K Posts

December 4th, 2007 07:00

As far as I know downtime is certainly something you need to think about in your planning, because the Clariion needs to go down while both SP's are swapped with the new ones. It's an in place migration, which doesn't mean there's no downtime involved. you simply get new SP's while the old ones will go back to EMC/Dell

DeaconZ28-2015

252 Posts

December 4th, 2007 07:00

What about the disks in the DPE? Do those get swapped out as well?

RRR

1 Rookie

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5.7K Posts

December 4th, 2007 07:00

AFAIK the enclosures stay the same and disks remain where they are. So if you have a 2Gb disk, I would indeed suggest you connect them to the same BE and possible 4Gb disks to another, so that the new ones will operate on the new, faster 4Gb speed. As soon as there's even 1 2Gb disk somewhere in a 4Gb BE, the whole bus will reset to 2Gb speed. I can asure you, you don't want that to happen online, because you will suffer unplanned downtime / glitch.

Allen Ward

2.1K Posts

December 4th, 2007 08:00

That is good news about the first five drives. It will make things a bit easier.

The only other thing you have to think about on the upgrade (non technical consideration) is the cost of maintenance on an upgraded array as opposed to maintenance (with the new array warranty) on a replacement array.

Ignoring money I can tell you the inplace upgrade is worth the savings in time and effort.

DeaconZ28-2015

252 Posts

December 4th, 2007 08:00

Downtime isn't a problem.

And the first five drives in my current CX300 are not assigned to hosts.

Thank you both for your answers.

DeaconZ28-2015

252 Posts

December 4th, 2007 09:00

In addition to my CX340, I'm also getting 6 new DAE's. Three with 146GB 15k drives and three with 300GB 10K drive. Space isn't much of a problem. But I am going to be migrating a 1TB chunk of file data to a different LUN. That may take a while.

RRR

1 Rookie

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5.7K Posts

December 4th, 2007 09:00

That certainly is a good thing as migrating luns off off there can be a nightmare. Speeds of migrating are about 3MBps (60GB per 6 hours or so). And where should you migrate to ? You need the same amount of space available for luns to migrate to, so if you don't have that you're in trouble.

Lucky for you, all space is still available !

DGM3

238 Posts

December 4th, 2007 19:00

4 BE's ? So BE0, BE1, BE2 and BE3 ? Waaw.... sounds
like a CX700 or CX3-80 I guess.... I thought all
CX3-40's only had 2 busses.


The 'f' variant of the CX3-40, which provides 4 backends, became available after the initial introduction of the CX3-series. The data sheet on EMC.com notes both offerings (FC only, and FC/iSCSI);
http://www.emc.com/products/systems/clariion_cx3/pdf/C1147_ClariionCX3_40_SS_ldv.pdf

Regards,
DGM

RRR

1 Rookie

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5.7K Posts

December 5th, 2007 06:00

Yep... and remember not to mix 2Gb drives with 4Gb drives, because that whole backend will go down to 2Gb if you do.

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