EMC to Compellent Volume Import

Do you have a server directly connected to EMC/Compellent or is it part of i.e. VMWare?

My guess - you need something that can talk to both at the same time - EMC & Compellent - to achieve what you need.

We are using VMWare, so during our migration from EMC to Compellent we simply were able to vMotion machines from EMC to Compellent, with no downtime at all...

If you have some server directly attached, I don't think you could copy anything between EMC & Compellent without the OS.

I think you can't have a server with powerpath connected to a compellent.

When we purchased our Compellent array we migrated our CX-300 Luns by Zoning it's front-end ports directly to the Compellent front end ports. Basically we made a zone between port 0 from SPA and SPB and one port from each of the Storage Center servers. We were then able to map the CX Lun to Compellent as external storage and kick off a Compellent migration.  It's not quite as straight forward as it could be and I believe you have to get professional services involved to get the instructions as they want to make sure they don't make your EMC box go into a panic. We ended up doing a pre-migration phone call where we went over all the steps, then did the migration on our own so it really didn't cost much at all.

So, Yes, you can do it. Yes, it's pretty quick, but the LUN has to be off-line during the copy. No, there isn't a freely available setup guide, and you should really talk with co-pilot or PS before you attempt to do it. (that being said, it's fairly easy to do).

There is a risk of the SPs panicing on EMC if you have Powerpath installed while doing a thin import.

Now there is an even better way to upgrade.  Dell and FalconStor have announced a partner ship for migrating off EMC to Compellent without any downtime!  Since we've already migrated I have not idea on the pricing or particulars, but I bet your Dell rep would be happy to help you out.  Just another option.

This is mitigated by manually registering the Compellent ports in Navisphere\Unisphere prior to presenting storage to the Compellent. The WWN to register is a combination of the fiber channel port WWN and Compellent Port WWN (i.e., If using Brocade switches, :). Create a new host with any IP, set the initiator type to CLARiiON Open, Failover Mode to Active/Passive Mode-failovermode 1, select the advanced options and check the ArrayCommPath(LUN Z) option.

Hello,

while I was trying to register manually the compellent host in an EMC CX4, I get to add only one set of WWN of CML storage. is it true or is there a way to add all the WWN's while manually registering the host in unisphere.

Regards

Shetty

You should do a 1 to 1 zoning and then mapping of the front end ports within the CX4. This way you can ensure that you are splitting IO across multiple front end ports if you want to run multiple imports at a time.  

There are unpublished documents on the import process that Copilot may give you if you ask but I'm not sure as they're part of the resources used by the Dell Services team.