FAST and Thin LUNS

To use FAST, you'll create a storage pool. You'll put at least two types of disks into the storage pool (SATA+FC, FC+EFD, SATA+EFD, SATA+FC+EFD). You can then configure auto-tiering on the storage pool itself. Out of that pool, you can create thin LUNs as well as thick LUNs, and because those LUNs reside inside a storage pool that has been configured for auto-tiering then the LUNs will be auto-tiered as well (on a sub-LUN basis).

Hope this helps!

Hi,

Anyone know if we can mix different capacity of FC disk in a FAST Storage Pool.

When is Flare 30 Best Practice doc going to be released?

Thanks.

What are some of the best practices for designing FAST enabled storage pools? When would you create a second storage pool, or split your available disks into two or more pools?

Thanks for the help,

Shawn

I image you could use multiple storage pools if you require different levels of raid-protection. This as all the disk in the pool will have the same raid protection, thus RAID 5, RAID 6 or RAID 1/0 (requires FLARE 30).

Thus you could create a RAID 1/0 group and a RAID 5 group or RAID 6.

Also it is advised to only include one type of each disk, thus not 10k and 15k fibre channel disks in one pool, as FAST will differentiate between EFD, FC and SATA disks, not between different types, speed and sizes. If you have such a config, this might be a reason to add another pool.

If you want more information, on powerlink.emc.com there are several white papers about FAST, you can find some of these via this link:

http://www.emc.com/products/detail/software/clariion-fast.htm

Hi all, if you would need the white paper on FAST with Clariion, you can run a search on the home page at Powerlink with "EMC FAST for Clariion" (recent paper dated September 2010). You can also find FAST explanations in the latest Flare30 Best Practices paper, just type "EMC Clariion Best Practices for Perfromance" in the global search, you will find the new paper dated November 2010.

I take the opportunity to submit some questions.

Regarding the implementation of FAST :

1. As far as I understand, FAST would need to be configured from the beginning of a new CX4 implementation, isn't it ?

I mean, if I do regular RAID Groups as usual and then, later on, I want to implement FAST, is this possible ? Or would I need to destroy everything and make pools later on ?

2. I don't know if there is any relationship between FAST implementation and Virtual Provisioning. In other words, do I need the Virtual Provisioning enabler if I want to use FAST.

3. Can someone explain briefly the difference between a thick LUN and a thin LUN ?

4. There is some doubt with the terms used in FAST...I read that FAST and FAST2 existed...in the following paper FAST (http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/white-papers/h6951-leveraging-cx4-fast-wp.pdf), we can read that FAST  is a combination of host-based utilities and storage-based array utilities... etc.

EMC refers to a FAST LUN Migrator tool on a host or similar. Is this still valid today with Flare30 and FAST ? Or is it only a storage-based array feature ?

Thanks in advance.

Jacky