EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 and Symmetrix V-Max: Basic Differences

June 30th, 2009 Devang Panchigar Leave a comment Go to comments

EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 and Symmetrix V-Max: Basic Differences In this post we will cover some important aspects / properties / characteristics / differences between the EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 and EMC Symmetrix V-Max. It seems like a lot of users are searching on blog posts about this information. From a high level, I have tried to cover the differences in terms of performance and architecture related to the directors, engines, cache, drives, etc It might be a good idea to also run both the DMX-4 and V-max systems through IOmeter to collect some basic comparisons between the front end and coordinated backend / cache performance data. Anyways enjoy this post, and possibly look for some more related data in the future post. EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 Called EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 DMX: Direct Matrix Architecture Max Capacity: 1 PB Raw Storage Max Drives: 1900. On RPQ: 2400 max EFDs Supported Symmetrix Management Console 6.0 Solutions Enabler 6.0 EFD: 73GB, 146GB, 200GB, 400GB FC Drives: 73GB, 146GB, 300GB, 400GB, 450GB SATA II: 500GB, 1000 GB FC Drive Speed: 10K or 15K SATA II Drive Speed: 7.2K Predecessor of DMX-4 is DMX-3 EMC Symmetrix V-Max Called EMC Symmetrix V-Max V-Max: Virtual Matrix Architecture Max Capacity: 2 PB of Usable Storage Max Drives: 2400 EFDs Supported Symmetrix Management Console 7.0 Solutions Enabler 7.0 EFD: 200GB, 400GB FC Drives: 73GB, 146GB, 300GB, 400GB

SATA II: 1000 GB FC Drive Speed: 15K SATA II Drive Speed: 7.2K Predecessor of V-Max is DMX-4

DMX-4 management has got a bit easy compared to the previous generation Symmetrix 4 Ports per Director No Engine based concept 24 slots 1 System bay, 9 Storage bays No engines 64 Fiber Channel total ports on all directors for host connectivity 32 FICON ports for host connectivity 32 GbE iSCSI ports Total Cache: 512GB with 256 GB usable (mirrored) Drive interface speed either 2GB or 4GB, drives auto negotiate speed Green color drive LED means 2GB loop speed, Blue color drive LED means 4GB loop speed 512 byte style drive (format)

Ease of Use with Management atleast with SMC 7.0 or so called ECC lite

8 Ports per Director Engine based concept The concept of slots is gone 1 System bay, 10 Storage bays 8 Engines in one System (serial number) 128 Fiber Channel total ports on directors/engines for host connectivity 64 FICON ports for host connectivity 64 GbE iSCSCI ports Total Cache: 1024 GB with 512 GB usable (mirrored) Drive interface speed 4GB

Only 4GB drive speed supported.

520-byte style drive (8 bytes used for storing data check info). Remember the clarion drive styles, well the data stored in both the cases is different. The 8 bytes used with the Symmetrix V-Max are the data integrity field based on the algorithm D10-TIF standard proposal FAST: Fully Automated Storage Tiering will be supported later this year on the V-Max systems

FAST: Fully Automated Storage Tiering may not be supported on DMX-4s (most likely since the support might come based on a microcode level rather than a hardware level) Microcode: 5772 / 5773 runs DMX-4s Released in July 2007 Concepts of Directors and Cache on separate physical slots / cards DMX-4 Timefinder performance has been better compared to previous generation No IP Management interface into the Service Processor

Microcode: 5874 runs V-Max Released in April 2009 Concept of condensed Director and Cache on board 300% better TImefinder Performance compared to DMX-4

IP Management interface to the Service Processor, can be managed through the customers Network IP infrastructure

Symmetrix Management Console is not charged for until (free) DMX-4

Symmetrix Management Console to be licensed at a cost starting the V-Max systems Architecture of V-Max is completely redesigned with this generation and is completely different from the predecessor DMX-4 Microcode 5874 has been build on base 5773 from previous generation DMX-4

Architecture of DMX-4 has been similar to the architecture of its predecessor DMX-3

Microcode 5772 and 5773 has be build on previous generation of microcode 5771 and 5772 respectively No RVA: Raid Virtual Architecture

Implementation of RVA: Raid Virtual Architecture Large Volume Support: 240GB per LUN (Open Systems) and 223GB per LUN (Mainframe Systems) 512 hypers per Drive (luns per drive) V-Max systems introduced the concept of concurrent configuration change allowing customers to perform change management on the V-Max systems combined to work through single set of scripts rather than a step based process. Reduced mirror positions giving customers good flexibility for migration and other opportunities Virtual Provisioning allowed now with RAID 5 and RAID 6 devices Concept of Autoprovisioning groups introduced with V-Max Systems Minimum size V-Max SE (single engine) system can be purchased with 1 engine and 360 drive max.

Largest supported volume is 64GB per LUN

128 hypers per Drive (luns per drive) Configuration change not as robust as V-Max Systems

DMX-4 does present some challenges with mirror positions

No Virtual Provisioning with RAID 5 and RAID 6 devices No Autoprovisioning groups

Minimum size DMX-4: A single storage cabinet system, supporting 240 drives can be purchased with a system cabinet No concepts of Engine, architecture based on slots

Each Engine consists of 4 Quad Core Intel Chips with either 32GB, 64GB or 128GB cache on each engine with 16 front-end ports with each engine. Backend ports per engine is 4 ports connecting System bay to storage bay Intel Quad Core chips used on Engines Powerpath VE supported for Vsphere Virtual machines for V-Max V-Max fits in the category of Modular Storage and eliminates the bottle neck of a backplane V-Max systems have been sold with a big marketing buzz around hundreds of

Power PC chips used on directors Powerpath VE support for Vsphere Virtual machines for DMX-4 Concept of Backplane exists with this generation of storage

DMX-4 was truly sold as a generation upgrade to DMX-3

engines, millions of IOPs, TBs of cache, Virtual Storage Systems cannot be federated The concept of Federation has been introduced with V-Max systems, but systems are not federated in production or customer environments yet Engines are connected through copper RAPID IO interconnect at 2.5GB speed

Directors are connected to the system through a legacy backplane (DMX Direct Matrix Architecture). No support for FCOE or 10GB Ethernet No support for 8GB loop interface speeds Strong Marketing with DMX-4 and good success

No support for FCOE or 10GB Ethernet No support for 8GB loop interface speeds

Virtual Marketing for Virtual Matrix (VMax) since the product was introduced with FAST as a sales strategy with FAST not available for at least until the later part of the year. Would InfiniBand be supported in the future to connect engines at a short or long distance (several meters) With Federation expected in the upcoming versions of V-Max, how would the cache latency play a role if you had federation between systems that are 10 to 10 meters away? Global Cache on local engines chips: again as cache is shared between multiple engines, cache latency is expected as multiple engines request this IO The V-Max building blocks (engines) can create a much larger storage monster 200GB of vault space per Engine, with 8 engines, we are looking at 1.6TB of vault storage IOPS per PORT of V-Max Systems 128 MB/s Hits 385 Read 385 Write IOPS for 2 PORT of V-Max Systems 128MB/s Hits 635 Read 640 Write

No support for InfiniBand expected with DMX-4

No Federation

Global Cache on Global Memory Directors

DMX-4 is a monster storage system

256GB total vault on DMX-4 systems

Performance on DMX-4 has been great compared to its previous generation DMX, DMX2, DMX-3

V-Max performs better compared to

2.2 x Performance on FICON compared to

DMX-4 FICON

DMX-4 Systems. 2 Ports can have as many as 17000 IOPS on FICON

Large Metadata overhead with the amount of volumes, devices, cache slots, etc, etc SRDF Technology Supported

A reduction of 50 to 75% overhead with the V-Max related to metadata New SRDF/EDP (extended distant protection) Diskless R21 passthrough device, no disk required for this passthrough

Symmetrix Management Console 6.0 supported, no templates and wizards Total SRDF Groups supported 128 16 Groups on Single Port for SRDF V-Max comparison on Connectivity V-Max comparison on Usability (Storage) DMX-4 was the first version of Symmetrix where RAID6 support was rolled out RAID6 support on DMX-4 is and was a little premature SATA II performance on DMX-4 is better than V-Max

Templates and Wizards within the new SMC 7.0 console Total SRDF Groups supported 250 64 Groups on Single Port for SRDF 2X Connectivity compared to the DMX-4 3X usability compared to the DMX-4 RAID 6 is 3.6 times better than the DMX-4

RAID 6 on V-Max (performance) is equivalent to RAID 1 on DMX-4 SATA II drives do not support the 520byte style. EMC takes those 8 bytes (520 512) of calculation for data integrity T10DIF standard proposal and writes it in blocks or chunks of 64K through out the entire drive causing performance degradation. The performance of SATA II drives on VMax is bad the DMX-4 systems Fiber Channel performance compared to DMX-4 improved by about 36% Fiber Channel performance 5000 IOPS per channel RVA: Raid Virtual Architecture allows to have one mirror position for RAID volumes allowing customers to used the rest of the 3 positions for either BCVs, SRDF, Migration, etc, etc. MIBE: Matrix Interface Board Enclosure connects the Odd and the Evens or (Fabric A and Fabric B) Directors together. The SIB (System Interface Board) connects these engines together using Rapid IO Director count goes from 1 on the bottom to 16 (F) on the top, based on each engine having 2 directors. 8 Engines, 16 Directors. Single engine failure (2 Directors) will not cause Data Loss / Data Unavailable and the system will not cause an outage. Failed components can be Directors, Engines, MIBE, PSs, Fan, Cache in a single Engine or 2 directors. Single loop outages will not cause DU

SATA II performance on DMX-4 is better than V-Max Fiber Channel performance better compared to DMX and DMX-2s. DMX-4 start supporting 4GB interface host connectivity RVA not available on DMX-4 platforms

No MIBE and SIB with DMX-4. Rather the DMX-4 directors are connected through a common backplane.

Director count goes from Director 1 on the left to Director 18 (Hex) on the right 2 Directors failures if not in the same fabric or bus, rather are not DIs (Dual Initiators) of each other will not cause a system outage or data loss / data unavailable Single loop outages will not cause DU

More architectural details related to drives, cache, directors, cabinets, Mibe, SIB, Service Processor to come in the V-Max architecture expansion and modularity post over the next week. Enjoy!!!! Related posts:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

EMC Symmetrix V-Max: Supported drive types EMC Symmetrix DMX-4: Supported Drive Types Symmetrix BIN file EMC Symmetrix V-Max: Enginuity 5874 Enhancements to EMC Symmetrix V-Max Systems coming!!

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derekpm
8 months ago

Rather interesting. Has few times re-read for this purpose to remember. Thanks for interesting article. Waiting for trackback Flag

Enki
7 months ago

LikeReplyReply

Good list of differences! A couple of clarifications - V-Max supports 10K drives (400GB available) - Virtual Provisioning supports Mirrored, RAID 5, & RAID 6 on both DMX and V-Max

- The small system for DMX (the 950) and the V-Max SE both support 120 drives in one rack with the option of one additional rack to take them to 360 drives.

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StorageNerve
7 months ago in reply to Enki

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Hi Enki,

Thanks for pointing to these corrections. I do remember the limitation with RAID 5 and RAID 6 devices related to Virtual provisioning on 5773? Has that been changed? Cheers, @storagenerve

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storagenerve 1 week ago

From twitter via BackType

This has been the post with the most number of hits in 2010, what does it say about #EMC #V-Max http://bit.ly/fNAyE customers migrating to

storagenerve 2 weeks ago

From twitter via UberVU

Believe it or not, this has been the post with the most number of hits in 2010, what does it say about #EMC #V-Max http://bit.ly/fNAyE

lamw 8 months ago

From twitter via UberVU

RT @hany_michael: very interesting comparison between EMC DMX4 and V-MAX : http://bit.ly/fNAyE

hany_michael 8 months ago

From twitter via UberVU

very interesting comparison between EMC DMX4 and V-MAX : http://bit.ly/fNAyE

storagenerve 8 months ago

From twitter via UberVU

EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 and V-Max: Differences - http://bit.ly/EqV6r

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