VNXe 3200 Vault Drive Configuration

Just a follow-up...  I did find this KB article on vault drive configurations on VNXe 3100, 3150, and 3300.

Now the VNX3 3200 can be ordered with 6 drives, 12 drives, and 25 drives (and 8 drives on the all-flash version).  But, again, how is the vault configured on these disks?

Thanks,

Eric

Hi emarzock,

The VNXe products have private system space created on the first 4 drives of the system (DPE Disks 0-3) and are physically marked with a yellow label. In the VNX products, these drives are referred to as the "vault drives" and can only be used in RAID Groups. In the VNXe products (3100, 3150, 3300, and the new 3200), these drives are referred to as the "system drives" and can be used in Storage Pools (RAID Groups are not available in the VNXe products).

On the VNXe system drives (DPE Disks 0-3), you will see a lower capacity when compared to non-system drives. For example: If your VNXe systems drives are 600GB SAS, the formatted capacity will be ~536GB but the usable capacity will be ~459GB (because the VNXe has ~80GB private system space allocated from each of the first 4 drives in the DPE).

Thanks Charles. Helpful information.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone

Yes, you can use the system drives (DPE Disks 0-3) in a Storage Pool. When doing so, however, you will receive a warning message in the Unisphere GUI stating that you will see reduced capacity and performance for that portion of the storage pool that is leveraging the system drives.

Hi Charles,

Can we use these 4 drives for data ? Or its' not recommended ?

Thanks

Rakesh

Hi Rakesh,

You can use the space on Vault drives for data, however it is not recommended as the systems performance gets negligibly (bit) degraded.

Regards

Shivanand

Thanks for all the feedback on this thread. Maybe someday, EMC may choose a design for its midrange storage platforms that includes a pair of mirrored SSD’s in the back of the system, invisible to and unusable by the administrator.

Hey,

The vault drives configuration of VNXe3200 is same with VNXe3100,3150 and 3300. They all use some space of the first four disk drives (Disk0 ~ Disk3) of the DPE to store the operating system data. VNX series also use Disk0 ~ Disk3 to store the operating system data.

For more detailed information VNXe vault drives, please refer to KB Vault drives of VNXe which is write by me before.

For VNX vault drives, please refer to this thread. VNX replace firt 4 disk and reimage.

Hope this helps! 

When creating a storage pool, can you choose not to use the first 4 drives of the VNXe?  If I have 20 - 900GB SAS drives in the DPE, 4 of which are for the Vault, can I create a 15 drive 4+1 RAID 5 storage pool excluding the Vault drives all together?  Do I have that type of flexibility.  The 1 remaining drive would be a hot spare.  I just want to know that I have the flexibility to carve up the VNX in the way I want.

Yes, what we typically do is configure the first 6 drives as 600 gb 10k, and use them for a "ISO" partition, where we store disk ISO's used to install VM's.  That way the space isn't wasted, and if need be, you can delete it all and use that reclaimed space to migrate off of a full LUN.

If you really don't want to store data on them, you can order the first 6 drives as 300 GB drives and then there will be zero available space on those first 4 drives.  However you then end up with 1 drive that is unusable, unless you buy several more 300 GB drives to create a Raid group with.

My recommendation is to save money on the first 6 drives, 600 10k or 900 10k, and use it for archival of non-critical data, then buy enough additional disks to use that 1 extra disk as the start of a 4+1 raid group or added to a storage pool.

Seems EMC would set this up to be 5 Disk instead of 6.

DPE 6 X 900 GB 10k, 3 x FC, 4 x 900GB 10k, 4 FAST VP

          4 Drives Vault R5 = ~ 1.5 TB Archive

          5 900GB 10k Perf = 1.8 TB Performance Tier

          3 FC = 200 GB Fast Cache

          3 FVP = 200 GB Extreme Performance Tier

DAE 5 X 2TB NL-SAS

          8 TB Capacity Tier

This config gives you tiered storage, AMAZING speed, and plenty of scalability.  You have room for 10 more NL-SAS drives, 8 more SAS/FC/FVP drives, without adding a DPE or DAE.  The odd 8 number left in DPE gives me fits tho...  I generally leave 3 slots open, and just get another 2.5 DAE if I grow further, cuz I like my drives in the 5 at a time range.

Unfortunately no NL-SAS on VNXe3200 2.5 inch yet.

Hi,

What is the purpose of mSATA SDD inside SP's then ? They only hold vault and boot area and the rest of system is on 4 drives ?

Second question : can system drives be NL SAS drives  ?

Rgrds,

jarek

I know there was mSATA SSD on the VNXe 3150's but I haven't pulled the SP on the 3200 to see yet.  If its there, then it is probably used for CACHE, and various storage needs like firmware and meta-data.

Here are the 3.5 inch VNXe3200 options.  9 or 12 4TB drives, and 9 or 12  2TB drives.  I suppose its not a bad idea to put your capacity storage on the DPE, but you are taking the performance hit on drives that are already lower performance.

You can configure the 3200 a

Hi,

Thanks a lot for showing possible configuration options.

For my needs ( small Vsphere Environemnt ) 6 x 600GB SAS 15  + 6 x 4TB NL SAS would be the best option - and as I can see there is such bundle for VNXe3200.

On SAS drives I would like to create some Vmware datastores. But in that configuration SAS drives would be system drives ( 4 of them ) - according to your config options, so there would be performance impact ( thats why I was asking if system drives on NL SAS are possible, as on those drives would be only not performance demanding file data )

On my some old Clariions ( CX4) I always avoided to use Flare drives for I/O demanding Luns - only for passive storage like iso/file.

So I wonder what is real performance impact on VNXe3200 when data ( like Vmware datastores or RAW Luns ) would be stored on SAS drives ( which would be system drives as well ) - in best performance guide actually I didnt find any recommendations on it.

Rgrds,

jarek

Keep in mind those are the 3.5 inch options for the DPE.

The 2.5 inch DPE's give you many more drive slots, and use up less rack space.

I just deployed a VNXe3200 2.5 inch DPE with 6x900gb 10k drives and have 2.9T usable with no performance issues so far.

The VNXe3200 also comes with 4 10 gig capable ports on each SP, and tons of snapshot and compression options.  Very impressed.

I still think it's a good idea to avoid using the vault drives for performance workloads if you can get away with it and a mix of only 6 x 10k drives and NL-SAS 4TB is way too dense in my opinion. (generally speaking).

Have you priced maybe a 3150 for comparison ? You may find the initial platform outlay is cheaper to allow you to invest in higher performing drives.

I agree the available drive packs for the vnxe can be annoying, but generally you can make them work.

Happy to provide more guidance if you want to provide more details about your requirements