Symmetrix system expansion

I'm still fetching details on maximum and minimum allowed DMX3/4 configurations... Probably someone may give you actual numbers quicly .. However when it comes to expanding your existing storage, there are options .. If you have free disk slots in your existing DMX, you can buy disks .. from a single 146Gb drive (even if I think it's useless) up how many drives you want (and obviously with whatever sizes you want) .. You can choose between 146Gb 300Gb 500Gb .. and you have also "low cost" LCFC drives.. I suggest you to buy always the big number of drives. Don't buy 2 drives today and 2 more tomorrow .. Buy 4 today and live happy spreading your workload on as many drives as possible.

If you don't have free slots, you can buy drive drawers (in case your rack still have free space) or even new bays. More on this later ..

Please note however that when you want to buy drives, you have to ask EMC thus our TC and the whole sales team will help you in sizing your request and finding the better answer to your question.

Thank very much for the great information. Hopefully you or someone can also give me the maximum and minimum numbers.

EMC will let you go lower than the stated minimum number of disks in your list. We purchased a DMX-4 2500 with one quadrant populated with 68 - 300GB 10k disks (including 4 hot spares) and the other quadrant populated with 164 - 146GB 15k disks (including 4 hot spares).

That being said, I don't know how low you can go That was just what we happened to get as a configuration based on our needs.

hahah ..is that what it's called in Symmetrix community ?

maybe this will help:

DMX3/4 - 1500

1 DA pair
Drive Channels - 8
Number of disks (min/max) - 96-240
Max TB (raw) - 119
Max TB (protected) 102
Memory Directors 2-8
Max Global Memory 64GB

DMX3/4 - 2500

2 DA pairs
Drive channels - 16
Number of disks (min/max) - 192-960
Max TB raw - 479
Max TB protected - 301
Memory Directors 2-8
Max Global Memory - 144GB

DMX3/4 - 3500

3 DA pairs
Drive channels - 24
Number of disks (min/max) - 360-1440
Max TB raw - 719
Max TB protected - 435
Memory Directors 4-8
Max Global Memory - 216 GB

DMX3/4 - 4500

4 DA pairs
Drive channels - 32
Number of disks (min/max) - 480-2400
Max TB raw - 1053
Max TB protected - 526
Memory Directors - 4-8
Max Global Memory - 256 GB

how many DA pairs did you get ?

You forgot the dwarf ..

Oh in case you don't know what is the dwarf, I'm talking about DMX4 950

Not completely full. The top quadrant, DA 2 and 15, is my 4Gb bus quadrant and hosts the 164 146GB 4Gb 15k disks. So I have 76 empty slots there. My calculation is based on 8 enclosures per storage cabinet per quadrant so there are 16 total enclosures for the top quadrant.

The bottom quadrant, DA 1 and 16, is my 2Gb high capacity quadrant and was deployed with 68 300GB 10k 2Gb disks. I have since added 66 500GB SATA disks (including two as hot spares) to the quadrant. So again with a total of 16 enclosures for that quadrant currently that leaves me with 106 empty slots.

Does that make sense? Not sure if I am explaining this clearly

i see ...so you you have both top and bottom pods full of disks in both storage cabinets ??

Two DA pairs. Slots 1,2,15,16 are DA boards and slots 8 and 9 are 4Gb FA boards. There are two storage cabinets attached to the system cabinet to support the config.

ok ..i guess we are just using word quadrant a little be different . When i think of quadrant i just think of the 8 DAEs in one storage cabinet. So your setup looks something like this: ?

No, that's how I call a tiny DMX storage

Ahh, well I was led to believe that the quadrant related to the pair of DAs and it's attached disks. Since at maximum you can have four DA pairs, then that would be four quadrants.

And a DMX800 ? What would you call that ?

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