Clariion Basics: DAE, DPE, SPE, Drives, Naming Conventions and Backend Architecture

DAE: Disk Array Enclosure DPE: Disk Processor Enclosure SPE: Service Processor Enclosure A DAE, DPE and SPE does sound similar to each other, but below you will see the major differences between them. The picture above is a diagram of a Clariion Backend Architecture. Drives are enclosed in DAEs and Service Processors in DPEs or SPEs depending on the model types.

DAE: Disk Array Enclosure Each Disk Array Enclosure (DAE) holds 15 drives, count starts from 0 to 14. I specially remember this reading Daves NetAPP Blog on The Story of Chapter Zero (http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/2009/01/the-story-of-ch.html).

DPE: Disk Processor Enclosure The CX200, CX300, CX400 and CX500 have DPEs installed in them that can hold 15 drives in the front with 2 Service Processors in the back. SPE: Service Processor Enclosure With CX3s, CX4s, CX600 and CX700, the SPE holds the Service Processors in the backend with cooling fans in the front end.

Architecture CX200, CX300, CX3-10 has one bus/loop CX400, CX500, CX600 has two bus/loops CX700, CX3-20, CX3-40, CX3-80 has 4 bus/loops. With more bus / loops you can expect more throughput. The Clariion CX700s and the new CX3s & CX4s have more buses than the traditional CX200, CX300, CX400 and CX500. All data from host goes to cache and is queued to be written on disk through this backend bus / loops. The speed of backend bus / loop on a CX series of machine is 2Gb, with CX3s it jumps up to 4 Gb and with CX4s to 8GB per second. Also the bus/loop initiates at the SP level and goes up to the DAEs which have LCC (Link Control Cards).

Each LCC is where the bus / loop from the previous DAE/SP comes in and further daisy chains to the one above it, creating a true chained environment and protecting from single points of failure. All LCCs are connected (loop) using HSSDC (cables). These HSSDC cables and LCC cards are hot swappable which will not cause an outage on the machine. There are Power Supplies on each SPE, DAE, DPE allowing hot replacements on those while the machine is functional. Based on your environment these replacements might possibly cause some performance issues or I/O bottleneck during the replacement window.

Addressing Part of Architecture of Clariion is the Addressing scheme. To be able to properly understand the Clariion functionality and its backend working, the addressing scheme is very important. Based on the model number you will have X number of buses. For example CX200, CX300, CX3-10 has one bus/loop CX400, CX500, CX600 has two bus/loops CX700, CX3-20, CX3-40, CX3-80 has 4 bus/loops. Each bus is numbered as BUS 0, BUS 1, BUS 2 and BUS 3 depending on the model types. Each DAE (Disk Array Enclosure) located on the BUS is numbered based on the actual physical loop number running into it. Again numbering starts at 0. So for a CX700, if you have 4 Buses and 8 DAEs you will have your addressing as follows: Bus0_Enclosure0 Bus1_Enclosure0 Bus2_Enclosure0

Bus3_Enclosure0 Bus0_Enclosure1 Bus1_Enclosure1 Bus2_Enclosure1 Bus3_Enclosure1 And so forth..the picture above explains that in a CX500 with 2 bus / loops. The idea is the SPE/DPE is where the bus/loop starts and runs into the DAE (enclosures) assigning them a unique ID for communication and expansion purposes. Further to add some complexity to the mix, each DAE can have 15 drives installed in it starting at Slot 0 and going to Slot 14. To the equation above with the bus and enclosure, we have BUS X_ENCLOSURE X, now with the disk info included we have BUS X_ENCLOSURE X_DISK XX in short called B_E_D. Disk 9 installed on Bus 0, Enclosure 0, would designate it as Bus0_Enclosure0_Disk9 or in short 0_0_9. For the 2nd drive installed in Bus 2, Enclosure 0, you would have the address as?????? 2_0_1 (Remember the numbering starts at 0; we are talking about the 2nd drive.) Why is all this information necessary???? Good idea to know exactly where your data is sitting, helps you with parts replacement, troubleshooting and also figuring out disk contention or possibly help you design your environment with your applications and database, so you can put certain apps on certain buses, enclosures and drives (lets say your ORACLE needs 15K drives and your backups need ATA drives). You will be able to configure all of it using LUNS, MetaLUNS, RAID Groups, Storage Groups, etc.