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Ask the Expert: Performance Calculations on Clariion/VNX
Performance calculations on the CLARiiON/VNX with RRR & Jon Klaus
Welcome to the EMC Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to learn about Performance calculations on the Clariion /VNX systems and the various considerations that must be taken into account
This discussion begins on Monday, August 13th. Get ready by bookmarking this page or signing up for email notifications.
Your hosts:
Rob Koper is working in the IT industry since 1994 and since 2004 working for Open Line Consultancy. He started with Clariion CX300 and DMX-2 and worked with all newer arrays ever since, up to current technologies like VNX 5700 and the larger DMX-4 and VMAX 20k systems. He's mainly involved in managing and migrating data to storage arrays over large Cisco and Brocade SANs that span multiple sites widely spread through the Netherlands. Since 2007 he's an active member on ECN and the Support Forums and he currently holds Proven Professional certifications like Implementation Engineer for VNX, Clariion (expert) and Symmetrix as well as Technology Architect for Clariion and Symmetrix.
Jon Klaus has been working at Open Line since 2008 as a project consultant on various storage and server virtualization projects. To prepare for these projects, an intensive one year barrage of courses on CLARiiON and Celerra has yielded him the EMCTAe and EMCIEe certifications on CLARiiON and EMCIE + EMCTA status on Celerra.
Currently Jon is contracted by a large multinational and part of a team that is responsible for running and maintaining several (EMC) storage and backup systems throughout Europe. Amongst his day-to-day activities are: performance troubleshooting, storage migrations and designing a new architecture for the Europe storage and backup environment.
This event ran from the 13th until the 31st of August .
Here is a summary document og the higlights of that discussion as set out by the experts. Ask The Expert: Performance Calculations on Clariion/VNX wrap up
The discussion itself follows below.
hersh1
197 Posts
0
August 20th, 2012 03:00
The way I do it is leave periodic archiving turned on. I then check to see if a NAR file was generated every hour (anaylzer -archive -all -path d:\narcollection\). I grab all files, this way if the script server is down for an extended period of time it will grab files that it missed. I then delete all the files from the array so they aren't downloaded again the next hour (analyzer -archive -delete -all -o).
I used to manually create the NAR files with the script. I found that we would have issues with the script host and we wouldn't get a NAR created in a time and thus not have data for a specfic timeframe. This method allows the NAR files to just be archived on the array until the script comes grab them.
hersh1
197 Posts
0
August 20th, 2012 04:00
Depends on your settings. Here are my settings for one fo the arrays:
Archive Poll Interval (sec): 300
Real Time Poll Interval (sec): 300
Periodic Archiving: Yes
Current Logging Period (day): nonstop
RRR
2 Intern
2 Intern
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5.7K Posts
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August 20th, 2012 04:00
Ok, but creating the logs will stop after 30 days, won't it?
To minimize the "holes" or "gaps" in the logging I restart the data logging before it actually automatically ends, so the gap will be minimal, except that scripting this doesn't work perfectly
JonK1
247 Posts
0
August 20th, 2012 04:00
Rob, you can unselect the "Stop data collection after" option. This will keep it running 24/7/365.
At some point in time, you'll end up with so many NAR files that it will start deleting the oldest, but that's no problem for me. I try to grab some NARs once every 1-2-3 months or so, save them locally and perform some basic checks. I just keep that as a history.
RRR
2 Intern
2 Intern
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5.7K Posts
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August 20th, 2012 04:00
Ah! I never noticed that! Cool!! Thanks for telling me
RRR
2 Intern
2 Intern
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5.7K Posts
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August 20th, 2012 04:00
I never noticed the nonstop option
bartdonders
25 Posts
0
August 20th, 2012 05:00
Unfortunately for me, I am only a simple, but happy end-user.
Vipin VK
812 Posts
0
August 20th, 2012 05:00
Hi Jim,
Can you tell me where exactly in the service partner web ?
Vipin V.K
bartdonders
25 Posts
0
August 20th, 2012 05:00
I can download the Analyzer Helper from Powerlink?
Or is it for EMC internal use only?
RRR
2 Intern
2 Intern
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5.7K Posts
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August 20th, 2012 05:00
On an existing array (CX4 or VNX) with traditional Raid Groups still set up or perhaps a basic pool configurations without auto tiering (FAST VP) you can still enhance performance quite significantly. Besides FAST VP EMC came up with FAST Cache which is basically an extension to the RAM based cache which is always present in any array. This 2nd level cache - if you may call it that way - is much slower than RAM (nano second range for RAM compared to micro second range for flash), but still much faster than the traditional spinning disks (micro second range for flash compared to mili second range for disk). This FAST Cache uses EFDs (Enterprise Flash Drives, also known as SSDs; mostly SLC by the way) to absorb writes to the spinning disks, but since these devices are most of the time 100GB or more they can hold much more data than the regular RAM cache which can only be a fraction of that (11GB in CX4-960). So by investing a relatively small amount of money a great performance gain can be achieved.
A caveat of FAST VP is that data is redistributed to better match the storage tier it's supposed to sit on. Data which is hardly read or written to will be placed on a slow tier, but what if suddenly this data needs to be accessed frequently? The scheduled reshuffle will only move this hot data to a faster tier during the night! When FAST Cache is placed in the array as well this will absorb a lot of the slow data access and make it appear as being based on faster drives. It doesn't take away the "slowness" completely, but it's a great way to get the most money for your bucks
.
Jim_Hegner
212 Posts
0
August 20th, 2012 05:00
Vipin...
I just checked, and found out that I was wrong.
Analyser Helper can be downloaded from a webpage.
That webpage can be found on the ECN
ECN > Partner network > Aervices partner Exchange > Velocity services > Documents > toolshed.
To have access to that part of ECN your company need to be VSI / PSP partner under the Velocity program.
And be aware that to get the licensing for this tool you need a VNX TA or VNX IE certification..you might have to be a part of the EMC consolidate champion program...that is not entirely clear in the instructions.
Jim_Hegner
212 Posts
0
August 20th, 2012 05:00
The Analyser helper is also available to EMC partners.
I think you need to be Velocity implement partner to have access.
I know that we can download it from powerlink, under EMC services partner Web page..
RRR
2 Intern
2 Intern
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5.7K Posts
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August 20th, 2012 06:00
oops, you beat me to it (that happens when you load a page and don't refrech for an hour).
(I'm a VNX IE by the way and soon TA as well)
RRR
2 Intern
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5.7K Posts
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August 20th, 2012 06:00
The Analyzer Helper used to be available on the partner web, but it disappeared and maybe it's back again, I don't know. I know that it's also available under the partner section here on ECN.
Vipin VK
812 Posts
0
August 20th, 2012 07:00
Hi Jim,
Thanks a lot for Arrayconfiganalyzer and analyzerhelper. I got analyzer helper.