Guide Lines

Speak slowly and clearly

Do not speak loudly
Be confident with your answers
Do not argue with the interviewer
Accept your mistakes
Ask him to repeat the question if it is not clear
Preserve professional conversation (Politely and Friendly)
Be confident and positive
Before you go to the interview go through your resume properly
Before you attend the interview study about the organization

What are the day to day activities in your current profile?

Explain about day to day activities in your current profile.

Example:
Monitoring alerts using Monitoring Tool like EMC Control Center
Follow-up for the pending service requests
Checking ticketing tool for any new tickets
Updating the tickets with the current status
Responding to the assigned service requests
Documenting the service request solutions
Performing Health checks
Preparing Job plans for changes
Participating bridge calls if any
Attending internal/customer meetings, etc

Explain about roles and responsibilities in your current profile

Example:
Providing L2 support for the EMC DMX and Clariion storage
Performing upgrades/downgrades of Firmware
Storage Provisioning for new hosts
Storage Provisioning/ reclamation for existing hosts
Performing Zoning
Troubleshooting Switch issues
Troubleshooting storage issues
Troubleshooting Performance issues
Vendor /customer management during the hardware failure issues
Performing Changes and preparing job plans for changes
Performing TimeFinder/Mirror Operations
Performing SRDF Operations
Troubleshooting failed SRDF/TimeFinder jobs
Monitoring Storage environment using Monitoring Tools (ECC)
Preparing Storage Capacity planning reports
Performing Disaster Recovery Activities.etc

What is the first thing you will do at office?

Example:
Checking the mails for any escalations/ alerts/ new assignments
Checking the monitoring tools for any critical alerts on console
Checking the ticketing tools for newly logged service requests
Checking the pending issues.etc.,

Explain about your current storage environment like about Arrays,

Connectivity, Replication technology, DR environment, Management
tools, Monitoring tools, etc.,

Example:
We are having One Data Center and One DR Center and 16 branch
offices. In Data Center and DR Center we have 2 Symmetrix DMX-4
Arrays; each box is having 800TB of data.
For backup purpose we are creating mirrors in data center using
TimeFinder/Mirror technology and for local/fast restoration we are
creating snaps using TimeFinders/SNAP technology.
For remote replication (remote backup and DR purpose) we are using
SRDF/S technology.
Each Brach offices are having CX series Clariion Arrays, For backup
purpose we are creating SnapView Clones and for fast/local restoration
we are creating SnapView Snapshots.
We are using symcli for storage operation for DMX Arrays and
Navisphere Manager for Clariion Arrays, Connectrix Manager for switch
directors management, cli for individual brocade switches, for monitoring
storage environment, Storage Scope reporting, performance monitoring
we are using EMC Control Center, Replication Manager for automating
the TimeFinder/Mirror operations, Power path for path redundancy at
host-end.
Connectivity between the Data center and DR center is over Fibre
Channel.
Connectivity between the branch offices and DC/DR is over Ethernet

Explain whatever management tools you are using.

Example:
We are using Symcli/SMC/ECC for DMX Arrays storage provisioning
We are using Navisphere Manager for Clariion storage provisioning
We are using connectrix manager for Directors management
We are using cli/GUi for Individual switches management
We are using EMC Control Center for Alerts management/monitoring
We are using EMC Control Center for Storage Scope reporting
We are using EMC Control Center for Performance Monitoring
We are using Replication Manager for automating the
TimeFinder/Mirror/Clone jobs
We are using symcli for managing and monitoring SRDF jobs
We are using Power path for path management at host end

How are you monitoring your Storage environment?

Explain about the Monitoring tools using in your organization

Example: EMC Control Center, etc

How are you getting the tickets/service requests?

Explain ticketing tools using in your organization.

Example:
Getting tickets through telephone
Getting tickets through emails
Getting tickets in ticketing tool
Self logged tickets (if we found any critical alerts on management tool,
we create tickets our self), etc.,
Explain step by step procedure to close the received ticket?

Explain about ticket closure procedure in your current organization.

Example:
Received the tickets/Service requests/Service orders via telephone/
mails/ web portal, etc.

Ticket Priority (S1/S2/S3 or P0/P1/P2/P3) Customer/ Helpdesk/ Service

desk will set the priority.

Engineer will work on ticket, once it is resolved he will take the

confirmation/ approval to close the ticket from the end user who has
raised the ticket and will update the ticket with the findings and
resolution then he will close the ticket.

If not resolved:
Lack of Experience /un-known problem
Change Required
Hardware failure

Lack of Experience/ Unknown problem:

Inform to helpdesk or whoever assigned the ticket to you for escalation
with your findings?

Change Required
Update the ticket with your findings
Inform to the end user, server/device owner
Raise a change request if you are responsible or inform to owner to
raise the change request
Coordinate with all teams who are all involved in this change
Schedule the change and get it done
Update and close the ticket after getting the confirmation from the end
user

Hardware failure:
Inform your findings to the end user
Provide work around/alternate solution for time being if possible
Update the ticket with the progress
Check whether this failure can be done by internal team or vendor
support is required
If vendor support is required log a service request with the vendor
If yes take the necessary approvals from server/device owner, team lead
or who ever involved
Schedule the change as per approvals
Inform to vendor about change schedule and get it resolved the problem
Once it is resolved check with the users who are affected with this
problem and take the confirmation/approval to close the ticket
Update the ticket and close

When you initiate the change what are your responsibilities?

Explain about the procedure you are following in your current

organization.

Example:
Whenever it is required to perform the change, I will inform to my
Manager and will take approval to proceed further.
I will prepare the job plan for the change.
I will raise the change request with the schedule timings and will take the
necessary approvals from concerned teams who will affect with this
change.
I will perform the change according to the job plan.
I will cross check all operation running smoothly?
I will take the confirmation from all teams.
I will update the change request and will close.

Tell me one critical situation you have handled?

Explain about a critical situation which you have handled in the present
job.

Why do you want to leave your present organization?

Tell him the reason why do you want to leave the present company,
keep in mind that the answer should be positive.

Example:
Career growth.
Change of location necessity.
Expecting large scope of work, etc.,

Why do you want to join in this organization?

Explain why you want to join in this organization

Example:
This organization is having 100,000 employees

So many years of existence in the industry

There are lot of opportunities for career growth in this Organization,

re there any questions you would like to ask us?

Ask one or two questions if you want a clarification on any topic during
interview

Example:
Can you please tell me the project details
Working location and Shift timings
May I know the storage environment in this project?
What will be the scope of work of mine in this project
How is the career growth in your organization, etc.,

SAN INTERVIEW QUESTION AND ANSWER

Can you describe SAN in your won word?

A storage area network (SAN) is a high-speed special-purpose network

(or subnetwork) that interconnects different kinds of data storage
devices with associated data servers on behalf of a larger network of
users. Typically, a storage area network is part of the overall network of
computing resources for an enterprise. A storage area network is usually
clustered in close proximity to other computing resources such as IBM
Power5 boxes but may also extend to remote locations for backup and
archival storage, using wide area network carrier technologies such as
ATM or SONET.

A storage area network can use existing communication technology

such as IBM’s optical fiber ESCON or it may use the newer Fibre
Channel technology. Some SAN system integrators liken it to the
common storage bus (flow of data) in a personal computer that is shared
by different kinds of storage devices such as a hard disk or a CD-ROM
player.

SANs support disk mirroring, backup and restore, archival and retrieval
of archived data, data migration from one storage device to another, and
the sharing of data among different servers in a network. SANs can
incorporate subnetworks with network-attached storage (NAS) systems.

So you mention NAS, but what is NAS?

Network-attached storage (NAS) is hard disk storage that is set up with

its own network address rather than being attached to the department
computer that is serving applications to a network’s workstation users.
By removing storage access and its management from the department
server, both application programming and files can be served faster
because they are not competing for the same processor resources. The
network-attached storage device is attached to a local area network
(typically, an Ethernet network) and assigned an IP address. File
requests are mapped by the main server to the NAS file server.

Network-attached storage consists of hard disk storage, including multi-

disk RAID systems, and software for configuring and mapping file
locations to the network-attached device. Network-attached storage can
be a step toward and included as part of a more sophisticated storage
system known as a storage area network (SAN).

NAS software can usually handle a number of network protocols,

including Microsoft’s Internetwork Packet Exchange and NetBEUI,
Novell’s Netware Internetwork Packet Exchange, and Sun
Microsystems’ Network File System. Configuration, including the setting
of user access priorities, is usually possible using a Web browser.

What is SMTP and how it works?

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a TCP/IP protocol used in

sending and receiving e-mail. However, since it is limited in its ability to
queue messages at the receiving end, it is usually used with one of two
other protocols, POP3 or IMAP, which let the user save messages in a
server mailbox and download them periodically from the server. In other
words, users typically use a program that uses SMTP for sending e-mail
and either POP3 or IMAP for receiving e-mail. On Unix-based systems,
sendmail is the most widely-used SMTP server for e-mail. A commercial
package, Sendmail, includes a POP3 server. Microsoft Exchange
includes an SMTP server and can also be set up to include POP3
support.

SMTP usually is implemented to operate over Internet port 25.

Do you have any idea about NAT?

Short for Network Address Translation, an Internet standard that enables
a local-area network (LAN) to use one set of IP addresses for internal
traffic and a second set of addresses for external traffic. A NAT
box located where the LAN meets the Internet makes all necessary IP
address translations.

NAT serves three main purposes:

 Provides a type of firewall by hiding internal IP addresses

 Enables a company to use more internal IP addresses. Since
they’re used internally only, there’s no possibility of conflict with IP
addresses used by other companies and organizations.
 Allows a company to combine multiple ISDN connections into a
single Internet connection.

Explain DHCP and its uses to an environment?

Short for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, a protocol for assigning

dynamic IP addresses to devices on a network. With dynamic
addressing, a device can have a different IP address every time it
connects to the network. In some systems, the device’s IP address can
even change while it is still connected. DHCP also supports a mix of
static and dynamic IP addresses.

Dynamic addressing simplifies network administration because the

software keeps track of IP addresses rather than requiring an
administrator to manage the task. This means that a new computer can
be added to a network without the hassle of manually assigning it a
unique IP address. Many ISPs use dynamic IP addressing for dial-up
users.

What does SNMP stands for?

Short for Simple Network Management Protocol, a set of protocols for

managing complex networks. SNMP works by sending messages, called
Protocol Data Units, to different parts of a network. SNMP-compliant
devices, called Agents, store data about themselves in Management
Information Bases and return this data to the SNMP requesters.

What do you know about TCPDump?

TCPDump is a common computer network debugging tool that runs

under the command line. It allows the user to intercept and display
TCP/IP and other packets being transmitted or received over a network
to which the computer is attached. TCPDump works on most Unix-like
platforms: Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX and AIX among
others. On Windows, WinDump can be used; it’s a port of tcpdump to
Windows.

You must have a root or super user authority to use TCPdumps in UNIX
like environment.

What is software RAID Levels do?

Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID) is formally defined as a
method to store data on any type of disk medium.

LDAP

The Light Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) defines a standard method

for accessing and updating information in a directory (a database) either
locally or remotely in a client-server model.

What are the benefits of fibre channel SANs?

Fibre Channel SANs are the de facto standard for storage networking in
the corporate data center because they provide exceptional reliability,
scalability, consolidation, and performance. Fibre Channel SANs provide
significant advantages over direct-attached storage through improved
storage utilization, higher data availability, reduced management costs,
and highly scalable capacity and performance.

What environment is most suitable for fibre channel SANs?

Typically, Fibre Channel SANs are most suitable for large data centers
running business-critical data, as well as applications that require high-
bandwidth performance such as medical imaging, streaming media, and
large databases. Fibre Channel SAN solutions can easily scale to meet
the most demanding performance and availability requirements.

What customer problems do fibre channel SANs solve?

The increased performance of Fibre Channel enables a highly effective

backup and recovery approach, including LAN-free and server-free
backup models. The result is a faster, more scalable, and more reliable
backup and recovery solution. By providing flexible connectivity options
and resource sharing, Fibre Channel SANs also greatly reduce the
number of physical devices and disparate systems that must be
purchased and managed, which can dramatically lower capital
expenditures. Heterogeneous SAN management provides a single point
of control for all devices on the SAN, lowering costs and freeing
personnel to do other tasks.

How long has fibre channel been around?

Development started in 1988, ANSI standard approval occurred in 1994,

and large deployments began in 1998. Fibre Channel is a mature, safe,
and widely deployed solution for high-speed (1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB)
communications and is the foundation for the majority of SAN
installations throughout the world.

What is the future of fibre channel SANs?

Fibre Channel is a well-established, widely deployed technology with a

proven track record and a very large installed base, particularly in high-
performance, business-critical data center environments. Fibre Channel
SANs continue to grow and will be enhanced for a long time to come.
The reduced costs of Fibre Channel components, the availability of SAN
kits, and the next generation of Fibre Channel (4 GB) are helping to fuel
that growth. In addition, the Fibre Channel roadmap includes plans to
double performance every three years.

What are the benefits of 4gb fibre channel?

Benefits include twice the performance with little or no price increase,

investment protection with backward compatibility to 2 GB, higher
reliability due to fewer SAN components (switch and HBA ports)
required, and the ability to replicate, back up, and restore data more
quickly. 4 GB Fibre Channel systems are ideally suited for applications
that need to quickly transfer large amounts of data such as remote
replication across a SAN, streaming video on demand, modeling and
rendering, and large databases. 4 GB technology is shipping today.

How is fibre channel different from ISCSI?

Fibre Channel and iSCSI each have a distinct place in the IT

infrastructure as SAN alternatives to DAS. Fibre Channel generally
provides high performance and high availability for business-critical
applications, usually in the corporate data center. In contrast, iSCSI is
generally used to provide SANs for business applications in smaller
regional or departmental data centers.

When should I deploy fibre channel instead of ISCSI?

For environments consisting of high-end servers that require high
bandwidth or data center environments with business-critical data, Fibre
Channel is a better fit than iSCSI. For environments consisting of many
midrange or low-end servers, an IP SAN solution often delivers the most
appropriate price/performance.

Name some of the SAN topologies?

Point-to-point, arbitrated loop, and switched fabric topologies.

What’s the need for separate network for storage why LAN cannot
be used?

LAN hardware and operating systems are geared to user traffic, and
LANs are tuned for a fast user response to messaging requests.

With a SAN, the storage units can be secured separately from the
servers and totally apart from the user network enhancing storage
access in data blocks (bulk data transfers), advantageous for server-less
backups.

What are the advantages of RAID?

“Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks”

Depending on how we configure the array, we can have the

- data mirrored [RAID 1] (duplicate copies on separate drives)
- striped [RAID 0] (interleaved across several drives), or
- parity protected [RAID 5](extra data written to identify errors).

These can be used in combination to deliver the balance of performance

and reliability that the user requires.

Define RAID? Which one you feel is good choice?

RAID (Redundant array of Independent Disks) is a technology to

achieve redundancy with faster I/O. There are Many Levels of RAID to
meet different needs of the customer which are: R0, R1, R3, R4, R5,
R10, R6.

Generally customer chooses R5 to achieve better redundancy and

speed and it is cost effective.
R0 – Striped set without parity/[Non-Redundant Array].
Provides improved performance and additional storage but no fault
tolerance. Any disk failure destroys the array, which becomes more
likely with more disks in the array. A single disk failure destroys the
entire array because when data is written to a RAID 0 drives, the data is
broken into fragments. The number of fragments is dictated by the
number of disks in the drive. The fragments are written to their
respective disks simultaneously on the same sector. This allows smaller
sections of the entire chunk of data to be read off the drive in parallel,
giving this type of arrangement huge bandwidth. RAID 0 does not
implement error checking so any error is unrecoverable. More disks in
the array means higher bandwidth, but greater risk of data loss

R1 – Mirrored set without parity.

Provides fault tolerance from disk errors and failure of all but one of the
drives. Increased read performance occurs when using a multi-threaded
operating system that supports split seeks, very small performance
reduction when writing. Array continues to operate so long as at least
one drive is functioning. Using RAID 1 with a separate controller for each
disk is sometimes called duplexing.

R3 – Striped set with dedicated parity/Bit interleaved parity.

This mechanism provides an improved performance and fault tolerance
similar to RAID 5, but with a dedicated parity disk rather than rotated
parity stripes. The single parity disk is a bottle-neck for writing since
every write requires updating the parity data. One minor benefit is the
dedicated parity disk allows the parity drive to fail and operation will
continue without parity or performance penalty.

R4 – Block level parity.

Identical to RAID 3, but does block-level striping instead of byte-level
striping. In this setup, files can be distributed between multiple disks.
Each disk operates independently which allows I/O requests to be
performed in parallel, though data transfer speeds can suffer due to the
type of parity. The error detection is achieved through dedicated parity
and is stored in a separate, single disk unit.

R5 – Striped set with distributed parity.

Distributed parity requires all drives but one to be present to operate;
drive failure requires replacement, but the array is not destroyed by a
single drive failure. Upon drive failure, any subsequent reads can be
calculated from the distributed parity such that the drive failure is
masked from the end user. The array will have data loss in the event of
a second drive failure and is vulnerable until the data that was on the
failed drive is rebuilt onto a replacement drive.
R6 – Striped set with dual distributed Parity.
Provides fault tolerance from two drive failures; array continues to
operate with up to two failed drives. This makes larger RAID groups
more practical, especially for high availability systems. This becomes
increasingly important because large-capacity drives lengthen the time
needed to recover from the failure of a single drive. Single parity RAID
levels are vulnerable to data loss until the failed drive is rebuilt: the
larger the drive, the longer the rebuild will take. Dual parity gives time to
rebuild the array without the data being at risk if one drive, but no more,
fails before the rebuild is complete.

What is the difference between RAID 0+1 and RAID 1+0?

RAID 0+1 (Mirrored Stripped)

In this RAID level all the data is saved on stripped volumes which are in
turn mirrored, so any disk failure saves the data loss but it makes whole
stripe unavailable. The key difference from RAID 1+0 is that RAID 0+1
creates a second striped set to mirror a primary striped set. The array
continues to operate with one or more drives failed in the same mirror
set, but if drives fail on both sides of the mirror the data on the RAID
system is lost. In this RAID level if one disk is failed full mirror is marked
as inactive and data is saved only one stripped volume.

RAID 1+0 (Stripped Mirrored)

In this RAID level all the data is saved on mirrored volumes which are in
turn stripped, so any disk failure saves data loss. The key difference
from RAID 0+1 is that RAID 1+0 creates a striped set from a series of
mirrored drives. In a failed disk situation RAID 1+0 performs better
because all the remaining disks continue to be used. The array can
sustain multiple drive losses so long as no mirror loses both its drives.
This RAID level is most preferred for high performance and high data
protection because rebuilding of RAID 1+0 is less time consuming in
comparison to RAID 0+1.

When JBOD’s are used?

“Just a Bunch of Disks”

It is a collection of disks that share a common connection to the server,

but don’t include the mirroring,
striping, or parity facilities that RAID systems do, but these capabilities
are available with host-based software.
Differentiate RAID & JBOD?

RAID: “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks”

Fault-tolerant grouping of disks that server sees as a single disk volume

Combination of parity-checking, mirroring, striping

Self-contained, manageable unit of storage

JBOD: “Just a Bunch of Disks”

Drives independently attached to the I/O channel

Scalable, but requires server to manage multiple volumes

Do not provide protection in case of drive failure

What is a HBA?

Host bus adapters (HBAs) are needed to connect the server (host) to the
storage.

What are the advantages of SAN?

Massively extended scalability.

Greatly enhanced device connectivity.

Storage consolidation.
LAN-free backup.
Server-less (active-fabric) backup.
Server clustering.
Heterogeneous data sharing.
Disaster recovery – Remote mirroring.
While answering people do NOT portray clearly what they mean & what
advantages each of them have, which are cost effective & which are to
be used for the client’s requirements.

What is the difference b/w SAN and NAS?

The basic difference between SAN and NAS, SAN is Fabric based and
NAS is Ethernet based.
SAN – Storage Area Network
It accesses data on block level and produces space to host in form of
disk.
NAS – Network attached Storage
It accesses data on file level and produces space to host in form of
shared network folder.

What is a typical storage area network consists of – if we consider

it for implementation in a small business setup?

If we consider any small business following are essentials components

of SAN:

Fabric Switch.
FC Controllers.
JBOD’s.

Can you briefly explain each of these Storage area components?

Fabric Switch: It’s a device which interconnects multiple network devices

.There are switches starting from 16 port to 32 ports which connect 16 or
32 machine nodes etc. vendors who manufacture these kind of switches
are Brocade, McData.

What is the most critical component in SAN?

Each component has its own criticality with respect to business needs of
a company.

How is a SAN managed?

There is much management software used for managing SAN’s to name

a few:

Santricity.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.
CA Unicenter.
Veritas Volumemanger.

Which one is the Default ID for SCSI HBA?

Generally the default ID for SCSI HBA is 7.

SCSI- Small Computer System Interface.

HBA – Host Bus Adaptor.

What is the highest and lowest priority of SCSI?

There are 16 different ID’s which can be assigned to SCSI device 7, 6,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8.

Highest priority of SCSI is ID 7 and lowest ID is 8.

How do you install device drivers for the HBA first time during OS
installation?

In some scenarios you are supposed to install Operating System on the

drives connected thru SCSI HBA or SCSI RAID Controllers, but most of
the OS will not be updated with drivers for those controllers, that time
you need to supply drivers externally, if you are installing windows, you
need to press F6 during the installation of OS and provide the driver disk
or CD which came along with HBA.

If you are installing Linux you need to type “linux dd” for installing any
driver.

What is Array?

Array is a group of Independent physical disks to configure any Volumes

or RAID volumes.

Can you describe at-least 3 troubleshooting scenarios which you

have come across in detail?

SCENARIO 1: How do you find/debug when there is error while working

SCSI devices?

In our daily SAN troubleshooting there are many management and

configuration tools we use them to see when there is a failure with target
device or initiator device.

Some time it is even hard to troubleshoot some of the things such as

media errors in the drives, or some of the drives taking long time to spin-
up. In such cases these utilities will not come to help. To debug this kind
of information most of the controller will be implemented with 3-pin serial
debug port. With serial port debug connector cable you can collect the
debug information with hyper terminal software.

SCENARIO 2: I am having an issue with a controller its taking lot of time

to boot and detect all the drives connected how can I solve this.?
There are many possibilities that might cause this problem. One of the
reason might be you are using bad drives that cannot be repaired. In
those cases you replace the disks with working ones.

Another reason might be slots you connected your controller to a slot

which might not be supported.
Try to connect with other types of slots.

One more probable reason is if you have flashed the firmware for
different OEM’s on the same hardware.
To get rid of this the flash utilities will be having option to erase all the
previous and EEPROM and boot block entry option. Use that option to
rectify the problem.

SCENARIO 3: I am using tape drive series 700X, even the vendor

information on the Tape drive says 700X, but the POST information
while booting the server is showing as 500X what could be the problem?

First you should make sure your hardware is of which series, you can
find out this in the product website.
Generally you can see this because in most of the testing companies
they use same hardware to test different series of same hardware type.
What they do is they flash the different series firmware. You can always
flash back to exact hardware type.

Which are the 4 types of SAN architecture types?

Core-edge.

Full-Mesh.

Partial-Mesh.

Cascade.

Which command is used in Linux to know the driver version of any

hardware device?

dmesg.

How many minimum drives are required to create R5 (RAID 5)?

You need to have at least 3 disk drives to create R5.

Can you name some of the states of RAID array?

There are states of RAID arrays that represent the status of the RAID
arrays which are given below:

Online.
Degraded.
Rebuilding.
Failed.

What are the protocols used in physical/datalink and network layer

of SAN?

Ethernet.

SCSI.

Fibre Channel.

What is storage virtualization?

Storage virtualization is amalgamation of multiple n/w storage devices

into single storage unit.

Describe in brief the composition of FC Frame?

Start of the Frame locator

Frame header (includes destination id and source id, 24 bytes/6 words).

Data Payload (encapsulate SCSI instruction can be 0-2112 bytes in
length).
CRC (error checking, 4 bytes).
End of Frame (1 byte).

What is virtualization?

Virtualization is logical representation of physical devices. It is the

technique of managing and presenting storage devices and resources
functionally, regardless of their physical layout or location. Virtualization
is the pooling of physical storage from multiple network storage devices
into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a
central console. Storage virtualization is commonly used in a storage
area network (SAN). The management of storage devices can be
tedious and time-consuming. Storage virtualization helps the storage
administrator perform the tasks of backup, archiving, and recovery more
easily, and in less time, by disguising the actual complexity of the SAN.
What is HA?

HA High Availability is a technology to achieve failover with very less

latency. Its a practical requirement of data centers these days when
customers expect the servers to be running 24 hours on all 7 days
around the whole 365 days a year – usually referred as 24x7x365. So to
achieve this, a redundant infrastructure is created to make sure if one
database server or if one app server fails there is a replica Database or
Appserver ready to take-over the operations. End customer never
experiences any outage when there is a HA network infrastructure.

Can you name some of the available tape media types?

There are many types of tape media available to back up the data, some
of them are:

DLT: Digital Linear Tape – technology for tape backup/archive of

networks and servers; DLT technology addresses midrange to high-end
tape backup requirements.

LTO: Linear Tape Open; a new standard tape format developed by HP,
IBM, and Seagate.

AIT: Advanced Intelligent Tape; a helical scan technology developed by

Sony for tape backup/archive of networks and servers, specifically
addressing midrange to high-end backup requirements.

Can we assign a hot spare to R0 (RAID 0) array?

No, since R0 is not redundant array, failure of any disks results in failure
of the entire array so we cannot rebuild the hot spare for the R0 array.

Name the features of SCSI-3 standard?

QAS: Quick arbitration and selection.

Domain Validation.
CRC: Cyclic redundancy check.

What is Multipath I/O?

Fault tolerant technique where, there is more than one physical path
between the CPU in the computer systems and its main storage devices
through the buses, controllers, switches and other bridge devices
connecting them.
What is disk array?

Set of high performance storage disks that can store several terabytes of
data. Single disk array can support multiple points of connection to the
network.

What are different types of protocols used in transportation and

session layers of SAN?

Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP).

Internet SCSI (iSCSI).

Fibre Channel IP (FCIP).

What is the type of Encoding used in Fibre Channel?

8b/10b, as the encoding technique is able to detect all most all the bit
errors

What are the main constrains of SCSI in storage networking?

Deployment distance (max. of 25 mts).

Number of devices that can be interconnected (16).

What is a Fabric?

Interconnection of Fibre Channel Switches.

What are the services provided by Fabric to all the nodes?

1. Fabric Login.
2. SNS.
3. Fabric Address Notification.
4. Registered state change notification.
5. Broadcast Servers.

What is the difference between LUN and WWN?

LUN: Unique number that is assigned to each storage device or partition

of the storage that the storage can support.

WWN: 64bit address that is hard coded into a fibre channel HBA and
this is used to identify individual port (N_Port or F_Port) in the fabric.
What are the different topologies in Fibre Channel?

1. Point-to-Point.
2. Arbitrary Loop.
3. Switched Fabric Loop.

What are the layers of Fibre Channel Protocol?

1. FC Physical Media.
2. FC Encoder and Decoder.
3. FC Framing and Flow control.
4. FC Common Services.
5. FC Upper Level Protocol Mapping.

What is zoning?

Fabric management service that can be used to create logical subsets of

devices within a SAN. This enables portioning of resources for
management and access control purpose.

What is the purpose of disk array?

Probability of unavailability of data stored on the disk array due to single

point failure is totally eliminated.

How does FC Switch maintain the addresses?

FC Switch uses simple name server (SNS) to maintain the mapping

table.

What are the two major classification of zoning?

Two types of zoning are:

1. Software Zoning.
2. Hardware Zoning.

What are different levels of zoning?

1. Port Level zoning.

2. WWN Level zoning.
 3. Device Level zoning.
4. Protocol Level zoning.
5. LUN Level zoning.

What are the 3 prominent characteristics of SAS Protocol?

1. Native Command Queuing (NCQ.)

2. Port Multiplier.
3. Port Selector.

What are the 5 states of Arbitrary Loop in FC?

1. Loop Initialization.
2. Loop Monitoring.
3. Loop arbitration.
4. Open Loop.
5. Close Loop.

What is LUN Masking?

A method used to create an exclusive storage area and access control.

And this can be achieved by storage device control program.

What is snapshot?

A snapshot of data object contains an image of data at a particular point

of time.

What is hot-swapping?

Devices are allowed to be removed and inserted into a system without

turning off the system
Storage interview questions & answers for Series 1

1) What is the differerence b/w SAN and NAS ?

The basic difference between SAN and NAS , SAN is Fabric based and
NAS is Ethernet based.
SAN - Storage Area Network
NAS - Network attached Storage

2)What is a typical storage area network consists of - if we consider it for

implementation in a small business setup ?
If we consider any small buisenss following are essentials componets of
SAN

- Fabric Switch
- FC Controllers
- JBOD's

3)Can you briefly explain each of these Storage area components?

Fabric Swictch: It's a device which interconnects multiple network
devices .There are swithes starting from 16 port to 32 ports which
connect 16 or 32 machine nodes etc.Vendors who manufacture these
kind of switches are Brocade, McData.

FC Controllers : These are Data transfer medias they will sit on PCI slots
of Server,u can configure Arrays and volumes on it.

JBOD: Just Bunch of Disks is Storage Box,it consists of Enclosure

where set of harddrives are hosted in many combinations such SCSI
drives,SAS ,FC,SATA.

4)What is the most critical component in SAN ?

Each component has its own criticality with respect to buisness needs of
a company.

5) Define RAID ? Which one you feel is good choice ?

RAID (Redundant array of Independent Disks) is a technology to achive
redundancy with faster I/O.The 123re are Many Levels of RAID to
meet different needs of the customer which are : R0,R1,R5,R10,R5.
Generally customer choose R5 to achive better redundancy and speed
and it is cost effective.

6)How is a SAN managed ?

There are many management softwares used for managing SAN's to

name a few

- Santricity
- IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.
- CA Unicenter.
- Veritas Volumemanger.

7) Which one is the Default ID for SCSI HBA ?

Generally the default ID for SCSI HBA is 7.

SCSI- Small Computer System Interface
HBA - Host Bus Adaptor

8) How do you install device drivers for the HBA first time during OS
installation ?

In some scenarios you are supposed to install Operating System on the

drives connected thru SCSI HBA or SCSI RAID Conrollers,but most of
the OS'es will not be updated with drivers for those controllers,that time
you need to supply drivers externally,if you are installing windows ,you
need to press F6 during the installion of OS and provide the driver disk
or CD which came along with HBA.
If you are installing linux you need to type "linux dd" for installing any
driver.

9) What is Array ?

Array is a group of Independent physical disks to configure any Volumes

or RAID volumes.

10)Can u describe atleast 3 troubleshooting scenarios which you have

come across in detail ?

SCENARIO 1:How do you find/debug when there is error while working

SCSI devices?

In our daily SAN troubleshooting there are many management and

configuration tools we use them to see when there is a failure with target
device or initiator device.
Some time it is even hard to trouble shoot some of the things such as
media errors in the drives, or some of the drives taking long time to
spinnup.In such cases these utilities will not come to help.To debug this
kind of information most of the controller will be implemented with 3-pin
serial debug port. With serial port debug connector cable you can collect
the debug information with hyper terminal software.

SCENARIO 2: I am having an issue with a controller its taking lot of time

to boot and detect all the drives connected how can I solve this.?

There are many possibilities that might cause this problem. One of the
reason might be you are using bad drives that cannot be repaired . In
those cases you replace the disks with working ones.

Another reason might be slots you connected your controller to a slot

which might not be supported.
Try to connect with other types of slots.

One more probable reason is if you have flashed the firmware for
different OEM’s on the same hardware.
To get rid of this the flash utilities will be having option to erase all the
previous and EEPROM and boot block entry option. Use that option to
rectify the problem.

SCENARIO 3: I am using tape drive series 700X , even the vendor

information on the Tape drive says 700X, but the POST information
while booting the server is showing as 500X what could be the problem?

First you should make sure your hardware is of which series , you can
find out this in the product website.
Generally you can see this because in most of the testing companies
they use same hardware to test different series of same hardware type.
What they do is they flash the different series firmware. You can always
flash back to exact hardware type

Below are the 10 questions asked in an interview with SAN company

StorageTek .

1) Which are the SAN topologies?

Answer :SAN can be connected in 3 types which are mentioned below:

Point to Point topology
FC Arbitrated Loop ( FC :Fibre Channel )
Switched Fabric

2) Which are the 4 types of SAN architecture types

Answer :Core-edge
Full-Mesh
Partial-Mesh
Cascade

3) which command is used in linux to know the driver version of any

hardware device ?
Answer : dmesg

4) How many minimum drives are required to create R5 ( RAID 5) ?

Answer : You need to have at least 3 disk drives to create R5.

5) Can you name some of the states of RAID array ?

Answer : There are states of RAID arrays that represent the status of the
RAID arrays which are given below
online
Degraded
Rebuilding
Failed

6) Name the features of SCSI-3 standard ?

Answer : QAS: Quick arbitration and selection

Domain Validation
CRC: Cyclic redundancy check

7) Can we assign a hot spare to R0 (RAID 0)array?

Answer :No, since R0 is not redundant array, failure of any disks results
in failure of the entire array so we cannot rebuild the hot spare for the R0
array.

8) Can you name some of the available tape media types ?

Answer :There are many types of tape media available to back up the
data some of them are
DLT :digital linear tape - technology for tape backup/archive of networks
and servers; DLT technology addresses midrange to high-end tape
backup requirements.
LTO :linear tape open; a new standard tape format developed by HP,
IBM, and Seagate.
AIT :advanced intelligent tape; a helical scan technology developed by
Sony for tape backup/archive of networks and servers, specifically
addressing midrange to high-end backup requirements.

9) what is HA ?

Answer : HA High Availability is a technology to achive failover with very

less latency. Its a practical requirement of data centers these days when
customers expect the servers to be running 24 hours on all 7 days
around the whole 365 days a year - usually referred as 24x7x365. So to
achieve this a redundant infrastructure is created to make sure if one
database server or if one app server fails there is a replica Database or
Appserver ready to takeover the operations. End customer never
experiences any outage when there is a HA network infrastructure.

10) What is virtualization?

Answer :Virtualization is logical representation of physical devices. It is

the technique of managing and presenting storage devices and
resources functionally, regardless of their physical layout or
location.Virtualization is the pooling of physical storage from multiple
network storage devices into what appears to be a single storage device
that is managed from a central console. Storage virtualization is
commonly used in a storage area network (SAN). The management of
storage devices can be tedious and time-consuming. Storage
virtualization helps the storage administrator perform the tasks of
backup, archiving, and recovery more easily, and in less time, by
disguising the actual complexity of the SAN.
Virtualization is a topic of real importance and will be covered in detail in
one of our future blogpost

What are the daily tasks of a SAN professional - What are the routine
jobs he is responsible for - What happens in a SAN industry engineers'
day in office.

Answer :
As with any software professional's life the day starts with a brief review
of going through the Mails - Since we are dependent on many other
teams who are located in different time zones & geos we usually find
nearly 50 to 150 new emails in our inbox when we start our day.

We go through all these mails - some of them are very much relevant to
our day's tasks like "Storage Product enhancement or development
efforts " , " New fixes which will impact our earlier planning" , Lots of
organisation wide mails saying who will be our new director or finance
manager , Lots of Network or system or UPS outage mails , Lots of mails
about the CR's (Change request or Bugs) which we or one our
teammate has logged and what are the latest updates regarding these
bugs. The list of mails is endless so we better can have a separate
posting for that.

Then based on our mails and our seniors(manager or lead) inputs and
also based on our earlier days work we make our small "To Do " list for
the day which is some how planned with keeping in mind the "Dreaded
Project Deadlines" ( End dates for us to finish the assigned tasks).

An example of our To Do list can be something like :

1. Go through the docs about the new features coming in the next
release or version of the storage area network product.
2. Setup a test environment to reproduce the CR's or bugs logged by
customers. ( the end users of our storage products)
3. Verify the CR's fixed by dev team ( we logged 10 bugs last week they
fixed it 2 days back & delivered the new fix in our latest build of the
product yesterday so we need to verify it today ) - We need to verify the
fix & say that the fix has resolved the issue also called the product defect
or NOT. If the bug is fixed (resolved) we close the CR saying the FIX is
FINE(works) else we say the FIX has failed ( the bug still exists & the
development team has not fixed it properly)
4. Write new test scripts to check the regressions filed by customers -
We also do test development ( We develop and script or code the test
cases or test scenarios - this involves lot of learning , implementation &
improving )
5. Setup new 2 Terrabyte disk array & test how well is it working with
latest Vista or latest Suse or RHEL linux.

the list grows along the day & some of them move for next day's ToDo
list.

Then we start the actuall work to accomplish what we have put in our
ToDO list.
We may be working with new release of our SAN product and need to
carry out sanity checks on the builds ,creating setups with different
hardware and configurations and Operating Systems. We try to replicate
customer network setups as far as possible but a customer like Citibank
can have a huge SAN network costing billions of dollars what we can
afford to replicate is no where comparable to that. We can say we setup
a scaled down SAN network to work in our lab for all our work

CLARRION

Explain Clariion architecture?

The CLARiiON storage system is based on a modular architecture. The

first building block of the architecture is the Disk Processor Enclosure, or
DPE. The DPE houses the storage Processor(s) and the first Fibre
Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) disks. Disk Array Enclosures (DAEs)
are interconnected using Link Control Cards (LCCs).The module
architecture allows the customer to add drives as needed to meet
capacity requirements. When more capacity is required, additional disk
array enclosures (DAE or DAE2) containing disk modules can be easily
added. LCC or Link Control Cards are used to connect shelves of disks.
In addition, the LCC monitors the FRUs within the shelf and reports
status information to the storage processor. The LCC contains bypass
circuitry that allows continued operation of the loop in the event of port
failure.

Newer CLARiiON arrays have two processors per Storage Processor,

and do not use a DPE. Instead, it utilizes an SPE or Storage Processor
Enclosure. The SPE does not contain any disk modules, so it must have
at least one DAE2 and a maximum of 16 DAE2s. CLARiiON Architecture
is based on intelligent Storage Processors that manage physical drives
on the back end and service host requests on the front end, be it Fibre
Channel or iSCSI protocols. Storage Processors communicate to each
other over the CLARiiON Messaging Interface (CMI). Both the front-end
connection to the host and the back-end connection to the physical
storage is 2Gb Fibre channel.

What are different types of Clariion models?

CX-200,300,300i,400,500,500i,600 and 700

CX3-10, 20, 40 and CX3-80

CX4-120, 240, 480 and CX4-960

AX Series

FC Series

What are the management tools for Clariion?

NaviCli

NaviSphere Manager

EMC Control Center

SymCli

Minimum number of disks required to create RAID 1/0 raid group?

4,6,10

What is Access Logix?

Access Logix provides LUN masking that allows sharing of storage

system.

What are the significant features of Access Logix?

LUN masking.

Presents a virtual storage system.

Maps CLARiiON LUNs (FLARE LUNs) to host LUNs.

Manages the Access Control List.

Manages Initiator Registration Records - Access Logix database entries.

Why Access Logix has to be enabled?

If Access Logix is not enabled all LUNs are presented to all storage
system ports. Any host that connects to the storage system will then
have access to all of the LUNs on that storage system. In environments
where multiple hosts attach to the storage system, this will cause
problems. Windows systems may attempt to take ownership of LUNs
belonging to other Windows systems, and Unix systems may try to
mount Windows LUNs, Access Logix solves these problems by
performing LUN masking – it masks certain LUNs from hosts that are not
authorized to see them, and presents those LUNs only to the server(s)
which are authorized to see them. In effect, it present a ‘virtual storage
system’ to each host – the host sees the equivalent of a storage system
dedicated to it alone, with only its own LUNs visible to it.

Another task which Access Logix performs is the mapping of CLARiiON

LUNs, often called FLARE LUNs or FLUs, to host LUNs. It will determine
which physical addresses, in this case the device numbers, each
attached host will use for its LUNs. Note that this feature is configurable
by the user through the CLI and the GUI. Access to LUNs is controlled
by information stored in the Access Logix database, which is resident in
a reserved area of CLARiiON disk - the PSM LUN. The Access Logix
software manages this database.When host agents in the CLARiiON
environment start up, typically shortly after host boot time, they send
initiator information to all storage systems they are connected to. This
initiator information is stored in the Access Logix database

How can you check and enable Access Logix?

Right click on Clariion Array select Properties from the drop down menu.

Click on Storage Access Tab

Check whether Access Control Enabled

How many initiators can be connected per port in CX500 CX600?

CX500 – 64 Initiators/Port

CX600 – 32 Initiators/Port

What is CMI? Clariion Message Interface?

Storage Processors communicate to each other over the CLARiiON

Messaging Interface (CMI).
What is SP Collects and how do you gather SP Collects?

Spcollect is a Storage Processor based perl script which gathers

significant information from the Storage Processor and bundles this
information for investigation by engineering.

navicli –h {ip} spcollect {eng mode password} – invoke the spcollects

navicli –h {ip} managefiles –list – to monitor the progress

navicli –h {ip} managefiles –retrieve –file {filename} – to transfer

spcollect file to management host.

The managefiles command will transfer the data file to the Navisphere
CLI directory where the command was invoked.

Explain step by step procedure to assign a LUN to existing Host?

Will check is there any free space is available in existing RAID group as
per the required LUN Capacity.

If not available create the new RAID group

Bind the LUN

Will go to the host’s storage group properties and open the LUN tab and
add the newly created LUN

Explain step by step procedure for storage provision to the new

host?

Installing HBA drivers in new host

Installing NaviAgent

Installing Powerpath if required

Creating Zone, add new zone to zone set, save and enable the zone.

Checking the host connectivity status in the array

Create a new RAID

Bind a LUN (create LUNs as per the host requirement)

Create a metaLUN if required

Create a Storage Group

Add Host and LUN in the storage group properties window

Reboot the host and check the LUN visibility at host-end.

What are pre requisites for LUN migration?

Migration moves data from one LUN to another LUN

Any RAID type to any RAID type, FC to ATA or ATA to FC

Neither LUN may be private LUNs or Hot Spares

Neither LUN may be binding, expanding, or migrating

Either or both may be metaLUNs

Destination LUN may not be in a Stora ge Group

Destination LUN may not be part of SnapView or MirrorView operations

Destination LUN may be larger than Source LUN

How do you create a Meta LUN?

Right Click on LUN > Select Expand > Expand Storage Wizard will
appear click on Next > Select the Expansion Type (Stripped or
Concatenate) and Click on Next > Confirm the Preserve Data dialog >
Select the members (LUN) of Meta and click on Next > Select the User
Capacity and click on Next > give the MetaLUN name, Default Owner,
Expansion Rate, etc.. and click on Next > Review the Summary and click
on Finish

What is the recommended ration of Read and Write cache?

80% Read and 20% Write Cache

How do you troubleshoot if the Hosts are not registering issue?

1. Right click on clariion array and check the connectivity status whether
the initiators are showing. If it is showing check whether the initiators are
logged in.

2. If it is showing under connectivity status and registered status

showing "NO" then you need to install Agent or else you need to register
it manually.

3. If it is Registered and not logged in then you need to check the Zoning
side and physical connectivity.

4. if the host initiators are not showing under connectivity status at all
then you need check the zoning and physical connectivity. If possible
remove the zone and create it back. Once you create the zone dont
forget to Enable and Save the config. After this just refresh it.

5. Once all these tasks are fine then you can login to Navisphere and
update the array once. Update is over then you can go to connectivity
status and check

What are the significant features of MetaLUN?

A metaLUN is created by combining LUNs

Dynamically increase LUN capacity

Can be done on-line while host I/O is in progress

A LUN can be expanded to create a metaLUN and a metaLUN can be

further

expanded by adding additional LUNs

Striped or concatenated

Data is restriped when a striped metaLUN is created

Appears to host as a single LUN

Added to storage group like any other LUN

Can be used with MirrorView, SnapView, or SAN Copy

Supported only on CX family with Navisphere 6.5+

What are the significant features of FLARE operating systems?

FLARE Operating Environment runs in the CLARiiON Storage

Processor. I/O handling, RAID algorithms.

End-to-end data protection.

Cache implementation.

Provisioning and resource allocation.

Memory budgets for caching and for snap sessions, mirrors, clones,
copies.

Process Scheduling.

Boot Management.

What are the significant features of Cache Memory?

Cache memory on an SP performs two tasks:

Staging: Temporary buffering of current read and write data.

Always performed on each I/O.

Storage: Repository for frequently accessed data.

Maintaining copies of read and write data.

User must explicitly enable this (for both read and write).

Burst Smoothing - Absorb bursts of writes without becoming “disk

bound”.

Write cache optimization.

Locality - Merge several writes to the same area into a single operation.

Increases write performance.

Immediacy - Satisfy user requests without going to the disks.

Read cache optimization prefetching of data for sequential reads.

What are the significant features of Clariion Event Monitor?

The Event Monitor GUI is integrated with Navisphere Manager.

Event Monitor is part of the Navisphere Agent.

Monitors for user-configurable events.

Reports those events in user-configurable ways.

May launch other utilities/applications.

Can send SNMP traps to Enterprise Management Platforms.

What are the Clariion Operating Layers?

EMC Control Center/ Clariion Based Applications

Navisphere Manager/NaviCli

FLARE Operating Environment

Clariion Hardware

Explain step by step procedure for LUN migration?

Right Click on the LUN and select migrate from the drop down menu.

Select the migration rate and click on OK.

We can check the status from migration tab in the LUN properties page.

What is the process of LUN Migration Operations?

Data is copied from Source LUN to Destination LUN

- Source stays online and accepts I/O

Destination assumes identity of Source when copy completes

- LUN ID, WWN

- Storage Group membership

Source LUN is unbound after copy completes

The migration process is non-disruptive

– There may be a performance impact

LUN Migration may be cancelled at any point

- Storage system returns to its previous state

What is Private LUN?

The LUN becomes private LUN when you add it to the reserved LUN
pool. Since the LUNs in the reserved LUN pool are private LUNs, they
cannot belong to storage groups and a server cannot perform I/O to
them.

What is Reserved LUN Pool?

The reserved LUN pool works with replication software, such as

SnapView, SAN Copy, and MirrorView/A to store data or information
required to complete a replication task. The reserved LUN pool consists
of one or more private LUNs

How do you create a user and assign access rights?

Click on Tools > Click on Security > Click on User management

From the User Management windows Click on Add

Give the user name, Role, access level (Global or Local) and password.

How do you monitor Clariion alerts?

Using Clariion Event Monitor

How the Clariion Event Monitor works?

The Event Monitor GUI is integrated with Manager

Event Monitor is part of the Navisphere Agent

Event Monitor is designed to run in the background, without permanent

supervision by the operator

Once Event Monitor is initially configured, there is no further need to run

UI

Event Monitor relies on the text file navimon.cfg

Self-documenting text file included in Interface Kit

Does not require Event Monitor UI

Monitor Agents run on one or more hosts (or SPs) and watch over the
storage systems

When an event is detected, the agent notifies the user As defined by

navimon.cfg

Can send SNMP traps to Enterprise Management Platforms.

What are Vault drives and how much capacity they use?
Clariion Platform_____:Vault Drivers____:Vault overhead per drive

CX____________________:0-4______________:6.22 GB

CX3___________________:0-4______________:33 GB

CX4___________________:0-4______________:62 GB

AX4-5_________________:0-3______________:17.4 GB

Vault Drives:

All Clariions have Vault Drives. They are the first five (5) disks in all
Clariions. Disks 0_0_0 through 0_0_4. The Vault drives on the Clariion
are going to contain some internal information that is pre-configured
before you start putting data on the Clariion. Vault Drives contains Vault
area, PSM Lun, Flare database Lun and Operating System.

The Vault:

The vault is a ‘save area’ across the first five disks to store write cache
from the Storage Processors in the event of a Power Failure to the
Clariion, or a Storage Processor Failure.

The PSM Lun:

The Persistent Storage Manager Lun stores the configuration of the

Clariion. Such as Disks, Raid Groups, Luns, Access Logix information,
SnapView configuration, MirrorView and SanCopy configuration as well.

Flare Database LUN:

The Flare Database LUN will contain the Flare Code that is running on
the Clariion. I like to say that it is the application that runs on the Storage
Processors that allows the SPs to create the Raid Groups, Bind the
LUNs, setup Access Logix, SnapView, MirrorView, SanCopy, etc…
Operating System:

The Operating System of the Storage Processors is stored to the first

five drives of the Clariion.

How do you create a user and assign access rights?

Click on Tools > Click on Security > Click on User management

From the User Management windows Click on Add

Give the user name, Role, access level (Global or Local) and password

What is Private LUN?

The LUN becomes private LUN when you add it to the reserved LUN
pool. Since the LUNs in the reserved LUN pool are private LUNs, they
cannot belong to storage groups and a server cannot perform I/O to
them.

What is Reserved LUN Pool?

The reserved LUN pool works with replication software, such as

SnapView, SAN Copy, and MirrorView/A to store data or information
required to complete a replication task. The reserved LUN pool consists
of one or more private LUNs.

What are the significant features of Cache Memory?

Cache memory on an SP performs two tasks:

Staging: Temporary buffering of current read and write data.

Always performed on each I/O.

Storage: Repository for frequently accessed data.

Maintaining copies of read and write data.

User must explicitly enable this (for both read and write).

Burst Smoothing - Absorb bursts of writes without becoming “disk

bound”.

Write cache optimization.

Locality - Merge several writes to the same area into a single operation.

Increases write performance.

Immediacy - Satisfy user requests without going to the disks.

Read cache optimization prefetching of data for sequential reads.

SYMMETRIX

Can you explain about DMX Architecture?

The Symmetrix DMX features a high-performance, Direct Matrix

Architecture (DMX) supporting up to 128 point-to-point serial
connections. Symmetrix DMX technology is distributed across all
channel directors, disk directors, and global memory directors in
symmetrix DMX systems.

Can you briefly explain about symmetrix series products?

Symmetrix 8000/4 was the first symmetrix to introduce a dual bus

arcitecture, providing redundancy in the path to memory.

Symmetrix DMX800 is an incrementally scalable, high-end storage array

which features modular disk array enclosures.

Symmetrix Direct Matrix Architecture is storage array technology that

employs a matrix of dedicated serial point-to-point connections instead
of traditional buses or switches.

Symmetrix DMX2 is a channel director specification for the DMX with

faster processors and newer components.

Symmetrix DMX-3 and DMX-4 are the latest technology using redundant
global memory and largest capacity.

Can you explain Enginuity release code 5773.79.58?

57 represents the DMX3/4 Hardware

73 represents the microcode family
79 represents the field release level to the microcode
58 represents the field release to the service processor code

52 =Symm4, 55 =Symm5, 56 =DMX/DMX2, 57 =DMX3/4, 58 =VMAX.

How many Cache directors, Front-end directors and Back-end

directors we can use in DMX-4?

Cache Directors = 4 Min to 8 Max.

Front-end Directors = up to 12 max.
Back-end Directors = 6 Min to 8 Max.

What are the different types of Front-end directors and the purpose
of each one?

ESCON (EA) : for mainframe attachment and SRDF family links

FICON (EF) : provides the industry’s highest performance connectivity
Option for the mainframe.
Fibre (FA/DA) : Connectivity option for open systems direct and SAN
Attachment, and can be used for SRDF family remote Replication links.
iSCSI (SE) : Provides the industry’s first high-end Iscsi Implementation.
GigE (RE) : for SRDF family replication with compression support.

Explain Rule 17 in DMX?

Possible answers:
Rule of 17 ensured that FAs being used for host connectivity were in
different power zones.

The rule of 17 is simply a way to make sure that the paths you connect
your host to are not running on the same director, but one physically far
away from it.

The original Rule of 17 was put into place to ensure that there was a
path on each bus (odd and even).The bus architecture went away in
DMX-1 ( Symm6). But we had 2 power zones; one zone for directors 1-
8, and another zone for directors 9-16. So the Rule of 17 still had value.

but DIR 3 (odd) and DIR 4 (even) reside on different buses yet in the
same power zone, so even if you had your host connected to 3 and 4 ..if
that power zone went down ..Your hosts went down

What are the Management Tools for DMX?

Symcli (Symmetrix Command Line Interface)

SMC (Symmetrix Management Console)
ECC (EMC Control Center)

What are the Enginuity Operational Layes?

Symmetrix Based Application

Host Based Symmetrix Application
Independent Software vendor application
EMC Solutions Enabler API
Symmetrix Enginuity Operating Environment Functions
Symmetrix Hardware

What are the major components of System Bay and Storage Bay in
DMX?
System Bay Components:
Either six or eight disk directors and up to 12 channel directors
(Combined total = 16).
From four to eight global memory directors.
Up to eight power supplies, each of having a dedicated Battery Back
Up(BBU)
1U service processor with KVM (keyboard, video screen and mouse)
and dedicated UPS.
Three cooling fan assemblies (each containing 3 fans).

Storage Bay Components:

120 or 240 disk drives per storage bay
Each Drive Enclosure (DE) includes:
Two link control cards (LCC).
Redundant power supplies with BBUs to provide standby power.
The DMX-4 storage bay has 2N power zones with independent power
cables, each zone capable of powering the fully configured storage bay.
The storage bay can be populated with various combinations of currently
available DMX one-inch low-profile 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel disk drives
available in:
73 GB, 146 GB, 300 GB, and 400 GB Fibre Channel drives
73 GB and 146 GB Flash drives
500 GB and 1 TB SATA II disk drives

Can you explain about Read Hit, Read Miss and Fast Write and
Delayed Write?

Read Hit: In a read hit operation, the requested data resides in global
memory. The channel director transfers the requested data through the
channel interface to the host and updates the global memory directory.
Since the data is in global memory, there are no mechanical delays due
to seek and latency.

Read Miss: In a read miss operation, the requested data is not in global
memory and must be retrieved from a disk device. While the channel
director creates space in the global memory, the disk director reads the
data from the disk device. The disk director stores the data in global
memory and updates the directory table. The channel director then
reconnects with the host and transfers the data. because the data is not
in global memory, the symmetrix system must search for data on the
disk and then transfer it to the channel adding seek and latency times to
the operation.

Fast Write A fast write occurs when the percentage of modified data in
global memory is less than the fast write threshold. On a host write
command, the channel director places the incoming blocks directly into
global memory. For fast write operations, the channel director stores the
data in global memory and sends a “channel end” and “device end” to
the host computer. The disk director then asynchronously de-stages the
data from global memory to the disk device.

Delayed Fast Write: A delayed fast write occurs only when the fast write
threshold has been exceeded. That is the percentage of global memory
containing modified data is higher than the fast write threshold. If this
situation occurs, the symmetrix system disconnects the channel
directors from the channels. The disk director then de-stages the data to
disk. When sufficient global memory space is available. The channel
directors reconnect to their channels and process the fast I/O requires
as a fast write. The symmectrix system continues to process read
operations during delayed fast writes with sufficient global memory
present, this type of global memory operation rarely occurs.

How do you calculate number of cylinders for 120 GB LUN?

Maximum device sizes by Enginuity version

Enginuity version:__________:MBs:_______:CYLs:______:GBs
Enginuity 5874:_____________:245760:____:262668:____:240
Enginuity 5773 and earlier:_:61425:_____:65520:_____:59

Since DMX-4 supports maximum of 60GB hyper size, we have to create

two hypers and form a Meta devices as 120GB LUN.
To calculate cylinders for 60GB LUN use the below formula
Cylinders = 60GB/15 tracks* 8 sectors* 16 blocks * 512 bytes
Cylinders = 60000000000/15*8*16*512
Cylinders = 60000000000/983040
Cylinders = 61035 cyl

To calculate the number of cylinders (for pre-Symmetrix DMX), use

either of the following: blocks ÷ 960 or (size in megabytes) x 2.1333

To calculate the number of cylinders (for Symmetrix DMX and

Symmetrix V-Max arrays), use the following: 1 cylinder = 15 tracks; each
track is 64 KB, 15 x 64 tracks = .937 MB for each cylinder
What is the maximum hyper size in DMX-4?

Maximum Cylinders = 65520

Maximum Capacity = 59GB or 61425 MB

How many hypers can create in a Single disk in DMX4?

255 hypers per disk.

How many members can contain in one Meta?

1 Meta head + 255 members

What is Dynamic LUN addressing?

This feature will automatically selects and assigns the LUN IDs to the
devices while device mapping to the port Instead of manually assigning
address to the device while mapping

How do you add a new member to the existing Meta?

add dev XXXX to meta XXXX, protect_data=TRUE,

bcv_meta_head=XXXX;

or for multiple ranges:

add dev XXX1:XXX6 to meta XXXX, protect_data=TRUE,
bcv_meta_head=XXXX;

What is stripping and what is Concatenating?

Stripped Meta Devices:

Meta device addressing by striping divides each Meta member device
into a series of stripes, addressing a stripe from each device before
advancing to the next stripe on the first device. When writing to a striped
volume, equal size stripes of data from each participating drive are
written alternately to each member of the set.

Concatenated Meta Devices:

Concatenated devices are volume sets that are organized with the first
byte of data at the beginning of the first device. Addressing continues to
the end of the first device before any data on the next device is
referenced. When writing to a concatenated device, the first meta device
member receives all the data until it is full, and then data is directed to
the next member and so on
What are the DMX-4 supported disk types, no. of disks and
maximum capacity?

FC drives, iSCSI drives and Flash drives

15 drives per DAE
120 drivers per Cage
240 drives per Storage Bay
2400 drives per array If total of 10 storage bays connected
Maximum storage capacity is 1 PB.

Briefly explain the DMX-4 supported Device types?

Standard Devices: A Symmetrix device configured for normal Symmetrix

operation under a desired protection method (such as RAID-1,RAID-S,
and SRDF®).

Gatekeeper Devices: SCSI commands executed by SYMAPI are

transferred to the Symmetrix array via a Symmetrix device that is
designated as a Gatekeeper device. The gatekeeper allows you to
retrieve configuration and status information from the Symmetrix array
without interfering with normal device I/O operations.

Meta Devices: Allow individual devices to be concatenated to create

larger devices.

BCV Devices: Specialized devices used to create a local copy of data

contained in a standard Symmetrix device, which can be used for
backup, restore, decision support, and application testing.

SRDF Devices (R1, R2 and R21) Devices configured as RDF1 or RDF2

to support SRDF operations.
R1 is source device for SRDF operations
R2 is target device for SRDF operations
R21 is used for multi hop SRDF operations

Virtual Devices: A host-accessible device containing track-level location

information (pointers), which indicates where the copy session data is
located in the physical storage. Device copies use virtual devices to
support TimeFinder/Snap operations. Virtual devices consume minimal
physical disk storage, as they store only the address pointers to the data
stored on the source device or a pool of save devices.,

Save Devices: Special devices (not mapped to the host) that provide
physical storage space for pre-update images or changed tracks during
a virtual copy session of TimeFinder/Snap operations.

Device Masking (VCM)Devices: Symmetrix devices that have been

masked for visibility to certain hosts. The device masking database
(VCMDB) holds device masking records and typically resides on a 24 or
48 cylinder disk device..

DRV Devices: A non-user-addressable Symmetrix device used by the

Symmetrix Optimizer to temporarily hold user data while reorganization
of the devices is being executed. Typically, it is used by the Optimizer in
logical volume swapping operations.

What is Vault drives and Hot Spare?

Vault Drivers: At the time of emergency shutdown of an Array, what ever

the data in cache memory will be destaged/saved on temporary drives
called vault drives

Hot Spare: At the time of physical drive failure hot spare drives will take
place

What is Preview, Prepare and Commit while using Symconfigure

command?

The preview argument verifies the syntax and correctness of each

individual change defined, and then terminates the session without
change execution.

The prepare argument performs the preview checks and also verifies the
appropriateness of the resulting configuration definition against the
current state of the Symmetrix array; the argument then terminates the
session without change execution

The commit argument completes all stages and executes the changes in
the specified Symmetrix array

What are the possible device service states and device status
states?

Device Service States : Normal, Failed and Degraded

Device Status States : Ready, Not Ready and Write Disable.

How do you reserve the devices?

symconfigure -sid XXXX -f createdev.cmd -expire expiration date-owner
myself -comment "this devices are reserved for SRDF activity" reserve

How do you create the Disk Groups

We can not create Disk Groups, It should be done by changing BIN file
by CE.
We can rename the existing disk groups.
Example: symconfigure -sid 207 -cmd “set disk_group 4
disk_group_name = flash_dsks;” -v -nop commit

How do you check the free space by Disk group and Array as
whole?

By Disk Group : Symdisk -sid XXXX list -by_diskgroup

Array as whole : Symconfigure -sid XXXX list -freespace

How do you check the total assigned devices to a particular Host?

Symmaskdb -sid XXXX list devs -wwn "host hba wwn"

How do you check the total allocated storage of a particular Host?

symmaskdb -sid XXXX list capacity -Host hostname

What is pre check list to assign storage to the host?

Verify the available free space in the symmetrix array

symconfigure -sid SymmID [-v | -freespace [-units cylinders | MB]] list
symdisk -sid "SymID" list -disk_group "GroupNumber"

Verify the Symmetrix status

Symconfigure -sid "SymID" verify

If any hung activities found abort

symconfigure -sid "SymID" abort

Explain step by step procedure to provide storage to the Host?

1. Creating STD device

2. Meta Device Creation
3. Mapping
4. Masking
Example:
Create a commandfile with the following entry to create hypers.
Create dev count=8, size=12394, emulation=FBA, config=2-way-mir,
disk_group=2;

Execute the command file using symconfigure command with preview,

prepare and commit options.
Symconfigure -sid "SymID" -f Commandfile.cmd -v -noprompt commit

Verify the newly created devices

symdev -sid "SymID" list -noport

Create a commandfile with following entry to form metas and devices to

the meta head.
Form meta from dev 26CA, config=striped, stripe_size=1920;
add dev 26CB:26E4 to meta 26ca;

Execute the command file using symconfigure command with preview,

prepare and commit options.
symconfigure -sid "SymID" -f Commandfile.txt -v -noprompt commit

Verify the newly created meta devices

symdev -sid "SymID" list -noport

Find the host connected Director and Port details

symcfg -sid 4282 list -connections

Find the available addresses on that port

symcfg -sid "SymID" list -address -available -dir 7d -p 0

Create a commandfile with the following entry to map the device to the
FA port
map dev 26ca to dir 7d:0, lun=036;

Execute the commandfile using symconfigure with the preview, prepare

and commit options.
Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f Commandfile.txt -v -noprompt commit

Mask the devices to the host HBA and refresh the sym configuration
symmaskdb -sid "SymID" -wwn 10000000c93f62cf -dir 7d -p 0 add devs
26ca -nop
Symmask -sid "SymiD" -refresh
Rescan the disks and refresh the powerpath or reboot the server to get
the assigned devices at host-end

How do you check particular device geometry?

symdev -sid XXXX show dev 002C

How do you check the particular device is connected to which

Host?

symmaskdb -sid XXXX list assignment -dev 002c

What are the steps for storage reclamation?

Unmasking
Write Disable
Un-mapping
Dissolve meta
Deleting hypers

1. Unmasking devices from the host

symmaskdb -sid 4282 -wwn 10000000c93f62cf -dir 7d -p 0 remove devs
26ca

2. Refresh the Symmetrix Array

Symmask -sid 4282 -refresh

3. Write Disable the devices before unmapping from the Director port
symdev -sid 4282 write_disable 26ca -sa 7d -p 0 -noprompt

4. Create a cmd/txt file

Unmap dev 26ca from dir all:all;

5. Perform preview operation using symconfigure command

Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f unmap.txt -v -nop preview

6. Perform prepare operation using symconfigure command

Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f unmap.txt -v -nop prepare

7. Perform Commit operation using symconfigure command

Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f unmap.txt -v -nop commit

8. Verify that the device has been unmapped

Symdev -sid 4282 list -noport
9. To Dissolve meta, create a cmd/txt file
Dissolve meta dev 26ca;

10. Perform preview operation using symconfigure command

Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f dissolve.txt -v -nop preview

11. Perform prepare operation using symconfigure command

Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f dissolve.txt -v -nop prepare

12. Perform Commit operation using symconfigure command

Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f dissolve.txt -v -nop commit

13. Verify that the meta has been Dissoved.

Symdev -sid 4282 list -noport

14. To delete the hypers create a cmd/txt file.

Delete dev 26ca;

15. Perform preview operation using symconfigure command

Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f dissolve.txt -v -nop preview

16. Perform prepare operation using symconfigure command

Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f dissolve.txt -v -nop prepare

17. Perform Commit operation using symconfigure command

Symconfigure -sid 4282 -f dissolve.txt -v -nop commit

18. Verify that Hypers have been deleted.

Symdev -sid 4282 list -noport

How many mirror positions RAID-1 and RAID-5 will occupy?

RAID-1 occupies 2 mirror positions

RAID-5 occupies 2 mirror positions

How do you convert the concatenating meta device to stripped

meta?

convert meta XXXX, config=striped, stripe_size=1920,

protect_data=TRUE, bcv_meta_head=XXXX;
Host is unable to see the storage, how do you troubleshoot?

Check that the host is logged in to the Array

Check that the cable connectivity status by logging in to the host
Check that the HBA drivers are properly configured
Check the Zoning table by logging in to the switch
Check that the devices status in Array
Check the VCMDB for masking information, etc..

What is Thin Provisioning?

Thin provisioning is a method of optimizing the efficiency with which the

available space is utilized in storage area networks. Thin provisioning
operates by allocating disk space in a flexible manner among multiple
users, based on the minimum space required by each user at any given
time

How do you create thin pools and thin devices?

Creating Thin Pools

Creating Data devs and added these Data devs to Thin Pools
Creating TDEVs and bind these TDEVs to Thin Pool
Assign TDEVs to host.

Explain step by step procedure to setup new host?

Let us assume cable connectivity is done properly

Install HBA drivers in host.
Install Power path if required.
Check that the HBA ports are showing online
Create zoning at switch end.
Check that this host is logged in to the Storage array
Create LUN/hypers in storage array
Form meta devices if required
Map the devices to the FA port.
Mask the devices to the host hba (wwn).
Refresh the Array to affect the changes

How do you check the failed components in Symmetrix Array?

Symcfg -sid 150 list -env_data -service_state failed

How do you check the failed disks in the Symmetrix Array?

Symdisk -sid XXXX list -failed

What is the purpose of Gate Keeper device?

Low-level I/O commands executed using SYMCLI are routed to the

Symmetrix array by a Symmetrix storage device that is specified as a
gatekeeper.
The gatekeeper device allows SYMCLI commands to retrieve
configuration and status information from the Symmetrix array without
interfering with normal Symmetrix operations.
The gatekeeper must be accessible from the host where the commands
are being executed.

How many gate keeper devices are required per Array?

It depends on the Symmetrix management applications using in

management servers,
As per EMC recommendations 6 gatekeepers are required per
management host using symcli

How to list hosts and their EMC registered software, using

Solutions Enabler?

Symcfg -sid XXXX list -applications

What is VCMDB and how do you take the backup?

The device masking database (VCMDB) holds device masking records

and typically resides on a 24 or 48 cylinder disk device..
Symmaskdb -sid XXXX backup -f filename

How do you list the Hosts which are connected to particular

director port?

Symmaskdb -sid XXXX list database -dir XX -p X

How do you check the number of storage bays connected to the

system bay and number of disks in each storage bay?

Symcfg -sid XXXX list -env_data

How do you check the number of storage bays connected to the

system bay and number of disks in each storage bay?
Symcfg -sid XXXX list -env_data

How do check the devices which are not mapped and masked?

Symdev -sid 4282 list dev -noport

How do you check the devices which are mapped to FA but not
masked to any host?

Symmaskdb -sid 123 list no_assignment -dir ALL -p ALL

How do you check the login hosts in the Symmetrix Array?

Symmask -sid 4282 list logins

How to display and set the Symmetrix metrics?

Symcfg -sid XXXX -SA all list -v

Set Symmetrix MatricName=MatricValue

How do you check the configured environmental variables?

Symcli -def

Can windows, Linux, Solaris share the same FA in DMX?

Yes, if they share the same port flags

What are the Symmetrix External locks and how to check and
release?

Symmetrix external locks are used by SYMAPI (locks 0 to 15) and also
for applications assigned by EMC (>15) to lock access to the entire
Symmetrix arrayduring critical operations

We can check the external locks by giving the below command

symcfg -sid XXXX list -lockn

We can check the external locks by giving the below command

symcfg release -sid -lockn 15 -force
How to monitor performance of EMC Symmetrix?

Using Performance Monitoring feature in EMC Control Center

Using SYMSTAT symcli command

How do you check the cache activity of front-end directory?

symstat -sid 4282 -type cache -i 5 -c 4 -sa all

How do you check the I/O requests and throughput of selected

disk?

Symstat -sid 4282 -type disk -i 5 -c 3 -disk 2a,C,5

What are the available performance types in SYMSTAT command?

REQUESTS: Reports I/O requests and throughput for selected devices,

directors, or SRDF/A sessions. (This is the default type; if no type is
specified REQUESTS is used.)
BACKEND: Reports back-end I/O requests and throughput for selected
devices.
PORT: Reports performance statistics for a director port. ISCSI Report
Gig-E network statistics.
CACHE: Reports cache activity for selected front-end or remote link
directors, or SRDF/A sessions.
MEMIO: Reports cache memory to disk activity for selected devices.
PATH Report R-Copy path information for nonincremental sessions.
Symmetrix arrays that have all or some incremental sessions will report
an error.
CYCLE: Report cycle summary information for SRDF-A sessions.
DISK: Reports back-end I/O requests and throughput for selected disks.
PREFETCH: Reports track prefetch disk activity for selected back-end
directors only.DMSP Reports dynamic mirroring service policy (DMSP)
statistics for the selected device(s).
RDF: Reports SRDF statistics from the perspective of RA groups,
devices, or directors.

What is symmetrix optimizer and how it works?

Symmetrix Optimizer improves array performance by continuously

monitoring access patterns and migrating devices (Symmetrix logical
volumes) to achieve balance across the disks in the array
Step 1: Symmetrix Optimizer builds a database of device activity
statistics on the Symmetrix back-end.
Step 2: Using the statistical data collected, configuration information,
and the user-defined parameters, the Optimizer algorithm identifies busy
and idle devicesand their locations on the physical drives. The algorithm
tries to minimize average disk service time by balancing I/O activity
across physical disks. Optimizer determines which disks require
balancing by locating busy devices close to each other on the same
disk, and/or by locating busy devices on faster disks or faster areas of
the disks. Optimizer takes into account the speed of the disk, the disk
geometry, and the actuator speed to determine faster disks.

Step 3: Once a solution for load balancing has been developed, the next
phase is to carry out the Symmetrix device swaps. This is done using
established TimeFinder technology, which maintains data protection and
availability. we can specify whether swaps should occur in a completely
automated fashion, or if the device swaps require user approval before
the action is taken.

Step 4: Once a swap function completes, Symmetrix Optimizer

continues data analysis for the next swap.

What is Symmetrix QoS and how it works?

Quality of Service (QoS) allows more flexibility in managing Symmetrix

system’s performance. By increasing the response time for specific copy
operations on selected devices, we can increase the overall
performance of the other Symmetrix devices.

The QoS (Quality of Service) feature allows us to adjust the data transfer
pace on specified devices, or devices in a device group, for certain
operations.

The contention for cache access can be quality of service managed by

the least recently used (LRU) ring partitions in the Symmetrix cache.

We can control the priority service time of devices and control cache
partitions for different device groupings.

What is the purpose of Symmetrix Change Tracker?

To measure changes to data on a Symmetrix volume or group of

volumes.
Change Tracker data is often used to analyze and design TimeFinder
and Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) configurations.
Change Tracker (DeltaMark) session must be created using the symchg
create command. The symchg mark command is then used to perform a
timestamp and mark the selected area of disk storage occupied by a
data object using a DeltaMark bitmap

What is Dynamic Cache Partitioning?

A QoS feature, dynamic cache partitioning allows the Administrator the

means to dynamically control the cache area size, servicing a given
device group I/O, by defining flexible partitions through cache memory.

Dynamic Cache Partitioning divides the cache memory into multiple

partitions with unique names and their device path assignments.

Partition areas can be made static or dynamic in size. The dynamic

partitioning provides flexibility to the amount of floating memory that can
be allocated with a high and low watermark. This allows memory
resources to be temporarily donated to other partitions when needed.

The symqos command allows you to create partitions for different device
groupings in addition to the default partition that all devices belong to
initially. Each partition will have a target cache percentage as well as a
minimum and maximum percentage. In addition, you can donate unused
cache to other partitions after a specified donation time

What are the logs available at host-end and on symmetrix array?

Host-end logs are available in \Symapi\log folder

Event logs and Audit logs in symmetrix array

How do you monitor the real time events on symmetrix array with
example?

To monitor real time 100 event records with 600 seconds interval in the
symmetrix array
Symevent -sid 4282 monitor -i 600 -c 100 -warn/-error/-fatal

How do you track the history of events on symmetrix array with

example?

To list all events in symmetrix array

Symevent -sid 4282 list
To list specific period of time events in event logs
Symevent -sid 4282 list -v -start 9:00 -end 17:00

How do you check the audit logs on symmetrix array?

To show the details about audit log it self.

Symaudit -sid 4282 show

To list the audit log records of specific period of time.

Symaudit -sid 4282 list -v -start_time 7/11:9:00 -end_time 7/11:10:00

To monitor the real time audit logs 100 records with 30sec interval.
symaudit -sid 4282 monitor -i 30 -c 100

What is Symmetrix ACL?

To create access control list on symmetrix array to implement host level

or user level security.

What is Symmetrix ACL?

Explain step by step to setup the access controls on symmetrix

array?

Create Access Group:

(Create a command file with the following entries)
Create accgroup AccessGroupName;
(Execute the command file)
Symacl -sid 4282 commit -file commandfile

Add host access ID or user access ID to access group:

(Create a command file with the following entries)
Add host accid Id name Idname to accgroup GroupName;
Add user accid Id name Idname to accgroup GroupName;
(Execute the command file)
Symacl -sid 4282 -file "CommandFileName" commit

Create Access Pools:

(Create a command file with the following entries)
Create accpool AccessPoolName;
(Execute the command file)
Symacl -sid 4282 commit -file "commandfile"

Add devices to the access pool

(Create a command file with the following entries)
Add dev StartDevName:EndDevName to accpool AccessPoolName;
(Execute the command file)
Symacl -sid 4282 commit -file "commandfile"

Grant Rights to Access Groups:

(Create a command file with the following entries)
Grant access=Base/BCV/RDF to accgroup AccessGroupName to
accpool AccessPoolName;
(Execute the command file)
Symacl -sid 4282 commit -file "commandfile

How do you take the backup/restore of ACLs?

Symacl -sid 4282 backup -file "commandfile"

Symacl -sid 4282 commit -restore -f commandfile

What is Symmetrix User Authorization?

Set up or update the Symmetrix array user authorization information

Explain step by step procedure to setup user authorization on

symmetrix array?

User-to-role mappings have to be created:

(Create a command file with the following entry (ex:rolemap.txt))
Assign user H:Host\username to role Monitor;
Assign user D:Eng\username to role Admin;
(Execute the above file)
Symauth -sid 4282 -f rolemap.txt commit.
(Roles: None, Monitor, Storage admin, admin, Auditor, SecurityAdmin)

Enable the user authorization:

Symauth -sid 4282 enable

How do you perform backup and restore user authorization

information?

Symauth -sid 4282 backup -f backupfile.cmd commit

Symauth -sid 4282 restore -f backupfile.cmd commit

What is the purpose of bin file in SYMAPI database?

It is a database file in the host which stores the symmetrix array’s
configuration data. Can be used to get the configuration data offline

How do you prepare the Storage Capacity planning reports by host

wise?

1. By using EMC Control Center

2. By using symcli commands symcfg and symdisk
Symcfg -sid 4282 list -connections -capacity
Copy and past the output of the above command in excel file and format
according to the requirement.
Or
Symdisk -sid 4282 list -by_diskgroup
Copy and past the output of the above command in excel file and do the
format according to the requirement.

By using what symcli command we can check the HBA details?

Syminq hba -fibre

What are the business continuity tools for symmetrix array?

Power path - host end

TimeFinder - local replication
SRDF - Remote Replication

SRDF

What is Business Continuity?

Business Continuity is the preparation for, response to, and recovery

from an application outage that adversely affects business operations.

What are the Business Continuity tools available for symmetrix?

Power path at host end TimeFinder/Mirror, Clone and Snapshot for local
replication SRDF for remote replication.

Business Continuity addresses what?

Business Continuity Solutions addresses systems unavailability,

degraded application performance, or unacceptable recovery strategies.
What is RPO and RTO?

RPO refers to the maximum amount of data loss an application can

tolerate as measured in time. In other words, the amount of data loss
that can be tolerated (cost of transaction versus risk).

RTO refers to the maximum time a company budgets to bring an

application back online in the event of a disaster. In other words, the
time it takes to recover the data once a disaster or other recovery event
is declared (risk versus cost)

What are the different types of Device Groups?

Regular, RDF1, RDF2 and Composite group

Briefly explain baout Regular, RDF1 and RDF2 device groups?

Regular device groups are normally used for TimeFinder operations

RDF1 and RDF2 device groups are normally used for SRDF operatins

What is composit group?

A composite group is a user-defined group of device members that can

span multiple Symmetrix arrays and SRDF groups. The CG type may be
defined as REGULAR,RDF1, RDF2, or RDF21, and may contain various
device lists for standard, BCV, virtual (VDEV), RBCV, BRBCV, second
hop standard, and second hop BCV.

What is the difference between TimeFinder and SRDF?

Time Finder is for local replication operations

SRDF is for remote replication operations

What are the different types of Remote Link directors used for
SRDF?

RF (Fibre Channel directors)

RA (ESCON directors)
MPCD (Multiprotocol Channel Directors) available with these channel
connections
FICON
iSCSI for host
GigE (RE) for SRDF

How many dynamic RDF groups can be created in an array?

Symmetrix DMX supports up to 64 total RDF groups.

What are the different types of Link configurations for SRDF?

Unidirectional: If all primary (source or R1) volumes reside in one Array

and all secondary (target or R2) volumes reside in another Array, write
operations move in one direction, from primary to secondary. Data
moves in the same direction over every link in the SRDF group.
Bidirectional: If an SRDF group contains both primary and secondary
volumes, write operations move data in both directions over the SRDF
links for that group.
Dual-Directional: With a dual-directional configuration, multiple SRDF
groups are used; some groups send data in one direction, while other
groups send data in the opposite

How the SRDF synchronous mode of operation works?

Write I/O received from host/server at the source

The I/O is transmitted to the target
An acknowledgment is provided by target back to the source
The I/O is serviced to the host

How the SRDF semi synchronous mode of operation works?

An I/O write is received from the host/server at the source.

The I/O is serviced to the host/server.
The I/O is transmitted to the cache of the target.
An acknowledgment is provided by the target back to the source

How the SRDF Adaptive copy mode of operations works?

Write I/O received from host/server at the source

The I/O is serviced to the host I/O accumulates in/onSymmetrix cache in
Write Pending Mode R1 volumes in Disk Mode.
I/O is transmitted to the target.
An acknowledgment is provided by target back to the source.
What is Writing Pending and Disk Mode of Adaptive Copy?

I/O is accumulates in Symmetrix cache in Write Pending Mode

I/O is accumulates in R1 volume in Disk Mode

What is the purpose of Adaptive copy mode?

Adaptive Copy Mode is used primarily for data migrations and data
center moves.

How the SRDF Asynchronous mode of operation works?

Write I/O received from host/server at the source

The I/O accumulates in Source Symmetrix cache
The I/O is serviced to the host
The I/O is continually transmitted to the target
The I/O accumulates in Target Symmetrix cache

What is SRDF Domino mode?

Domino Mode is used in conjunction with other SRDF modes except

SRDF/A. It effectively stop all write operations to both source and target
volumes if target volume become unavailable, or if all SRDF links
become unavailable. User will need to manually re-enable the source
volumes. While such a shutdown temporarily halts production
processing, domino modes can prevent data integrity exposure that
causes the inconsistent image on the target volume.

How the SRDF domino mode works?

Write I/O received from host/server at the source

The I/O fails to transmit to the target
Both Source and Target become unavailable

How many R2 devices can be paired with one R1 device

concurrently?

Two

What are the restrictions of SRDF device group?

All devices in a disk group must be in the same Symmetrix ICDA

All devices must be of the same type (RDF1, RDF2, Regular)
A device can only belong to a single Device Group per SYMAPI
database
How do you check the connectivity status of SRDF link?

Symrdf –sid "SymID" ping

Symrdf –sid "SymID" -RA list all

What are the disaster recovery operations?

Failover: from the source side to the target side, switching data
processing to the target side.
Failback: from the target side to the source side by switching data
processing to the source side.
Update: the source side after a failover while the target side may still be
operational to its local host.

How will failover operation works?

Write Disable device(s) on SA at source (R1)

Suspend RDF link(s)
Read/Write Enable device(s) on RA at target (R2)

How will update operation works?

Suspend RDF link(s)

Merge device track tables between source and target
Resume RDF link(s)

How will failback operation works?

Write Disable device(s) on RA at target (R2)

Suspend RDF link(s)
Merge device track tables between source and target
Resume RDF link(s)
Read/Write Enable device(s) on SA at source (R1)

What are the decision support SRDF operations?

Establish:
Resume Normal SRDF operations
Preserves data on the source (R1) volumes, discarding changes to the
target (R2) volumes

Split:
Suspends link between source (R1) and target (R2) volumes
Enables read and write operations on both source and target volumes

Restore
Resume SRDF operations
Preserves data on the target (R2) volumes, discarding changes to the
source (R1) volumes

How the split operation will works?

Suspend RDF link(s)

Read/Write Enable device(s) on RA at target (R2) also.

How will establish operation works?

Write Disable device(s) on RA at target (R2)

Suspend RDF link(s)
Resume RDF link(s)
Merge device track tables between source and target
Resume RDF link(s)

How will restore operation works?

Write Disable device(s) on SA at source (R1)

Write Disable device(s) on RA at target (R2)
Suspend RDF link(s)
Merge device track tables between source and target
Resume RDF link(s)
Read/Write Enable device(s) on SA at source (R1)

Can you briefly explain about SRDF/S?

SRDF/S is a configuration of multiple Symmetrix units that maintains real

time copies of logical volume data in more than one location.
Facility for maintaining real-time or near-real-time physically separate
mirrors of selected volumes.
Uses no host CPU resources – Mirroring done at the storage level
Operating system independent
There is a performance impact on arrays
Limited distance

Can you briefly explain about SRDF/Asynchronous?

The Symmetrix array provides a consistent point-in-time image on the
target (R2) device, which is a short period of time behind the source (R1)
device. Managed in sessions, SRDF/A transfers data in predefined
timed cycles or delta sets to ensure that data at the remote (R2) site is
dependent write consistent.
SRDF/A provides a long-distance replication solution with minimal
impact onperformance that particularly preserves data consistency with
the database.
Promotes efficient link utilization resulting in lower link bandwidth.
Maintains a dependent write consistent copy on the R2 devices at all
times.
Supports all current SRDF topologies, including point-to-point and
switched fabric.
Requires no additional hardware, such as switches or routers.
Supports all hosts and data emulation types supported by the Symmetrix
array
Minimizes the impact imposed on the back-end DA directors.
Provides a performance response time equivalent to writing to local non-
SRDF devices.
Allows restore, failover, and failback capability between the R1 and the
R2 sites.

What are the factors that effects the SRDF/A implementation?

SRDF link Bandwidth, Symmetrix Cache and Workload.

What is SRDF Automated Replication?

SRDF/AR allows users to automate the sequence of SRDF and

TimeFinder mirror operations. The automated sequence, cycle, is
performed on a user-defined interval called cycle time. it is usually set to
operate in Adaptive Copy mode due to the long distance between local
and remote sites. This allows the users to save on network bandwidth
thus minimizing the network costs without compromising the integrity of
the data.
Allows business restart site to be at any distance away from source
Collaboration of SRDF and TimeFinder commands
Minimizes network costs

How do you change or set the SRDF mode of operations?

Examples:
symrdf -g "DgName" set mode sync
symrdf -cg set mode semi
symrdf -f FileName set mode async
symrdf -g "DgName" set domino on
symrdf -g "DgName" set domino off
symrdf -g "DgName" set mode acp_wp
symrdf -g "DgName" set mode acp_off
symrdf -g prod set mode acp_disk
symrdf -g prod set mode acp_off

What is the background process during the SRDF pairs full

establish?

The target (R2) device is Write Disabled to its local host I/O.
Traffic is suspend on the SRDF links.
All the tracks on the target (R2) device are marked invalid.
All tracks on the R2 side are refreshed by the R1 source side. The track
tables are merged between the R1 and R2 side.
Traffic is resumed on the SRDF links.

What is the background process during the failback?

The target (R2) device is Write Disabled to its local hosts.

Traffic is suspended on the SRDF links.
If the target side is operational, and there are invalid remote (R2) tracks
on the source side (and the force option is specified), the invalid R1
source tracks are marked to refresh from the target side.
The invalid tracks on the source (R1) side are refreshed from the target
R2 side. The track tables are merged between the R1 and R2 sides.
Traffic is resumed on the SRDF links.
The source (R1) device is Read/Write Enabled to its local hosts

How will the SRDF restore operation works?

The source (R1) device is Write Disabled to its local hosts.

The target (R2) device is Write Disabled to its local hosts.
Traffic is suspended on the SRDF links.
All tracks on the source (R1) device are marked as invalid.
All R1 tracks are refreshed from the R2 side. The track tables are
merged between the R1 and R2 side.
Traffic is resumed on the SRDF links.
The source (R1) device is read/write enabled to its local hosts.

Explain step by step procedure to perform SRDF/S?

SRDF/S normal operations
Creating device groups in source and target Arrays:
symdg -type RDF1 create "SourceDgName"
symdg -type RDF2 create "TargetDgName"

Adding devices R1 and R2 devices to source and target device groups

symld -g "SourceDgName" add dev "SymDevName"
symld -g "TargetDgName" add dev "SymDevName"

Setting SRDF mode of operation:

symrdf -g "DgName" set mode sync

SRDF normal operations:

symrdf -g "DgName" suspend
symrdf -g "DgName" resume

SRDF/S disaster recover operations

symrdf -g "DgName" failover
symrdf -g "DgName" update -remote
symrdf -g "DgName" failback

SRDF/S decission support operations:

symrdf -g "DgName" split
symrdf -g "DgName" restore
symrdf -g "DgName" establish

Explain step by step procedure to perform SRDF/Asynchronous?

Creating RDF group:

symrdf addgrp -label -rdfg "GrpNum" -sid "SymID" -dir "DirNum" -
remote_sid –remote_dir -remote_rdfg "RemoteRdfgNum"

Create device pair:

symrdf -file "DevFileName" -sid "SymID" -rdfg "GrpNum" -type r1 -
establish -g "DgName" createpair –noprompt

Changing SRDF mode :

symrdf -g "DgName" set mode async -noprompt

Explain step by step procedure to perform SRDF/AR for single

hop?
Create a device group:
symdg create "DgName" -type regular

Add the standard device to the device group:

symld -g "DgName" add dev "SymDev"

Associate the R1/BCV device:

symbcv -g "DgName" associate dev "SymBcvDev"

Associate the remote BCV device:

symbcv -g "DgName" associate dev -rdf -bcv

Prepare the mirror states and start the session:

symreplicate -g "DgName" start -option "Path" -setup -consistent

Stop the session:

symreplicate -g "DgName" stop -nop

Restart the session:

symreplicate -g "DgName" restart -nop

OR

Create a device group:

symdg create "DgName" -type regular

Add the standard device to the device group:

symld -g "DgName" add dev "SymDev"

Associate the R1/BCV device:

symbcv -g "DgName" associate dev "SymBcvDev"

Associate the remote BCV device:

symbcv -g "DgName" associate dev "SymBcvDev" -rdf -bcv

Establish the STD and R1/BCV:

symmir -g "DgName" establish -full

Split the STD and R1/BCV:

symmir -g "DgName" split -consistent

Resume SRDF link:

symrdf -g "DgName" resume -bc
Establish the R2 and remote BCV:
symmir -g "DgName" est -full -rdf -bcv

Split the R2 and remote BCV:

symmir -g "DgName" split -full -rdf -bcv

Establish the STD and R1/ BCV:

symmir -g "DgName" establish

How the symstar will be configured?

Uses concurrent and cascaded SRDF/Synchronous and

SRDF/Asynchronous links to replicate source data synchronously to a
nearby regional site and asynchronously to a distant remote site

How do you recover suspended or partitioned state session?

Using symrecover command

What are the access rights required if ACLs enabled?

BASE and CFGSYM access rights required

Can we migrate the R1 data to larger R2 device?

Yes, we can migrate the R1 data to larger R2 but we can not perform
device swap, SRDF/Star operations, we can not restore back to the R1
device and Concatenated meta devices are not supported.

How do you create groups for dynamic RDF pairs in a device file?

Creating dynamic pairs in a device file:

symrdf createpair -file "DevFileName" -sid 55 -rdfg 2 -type rdf1 -
invalidate r2 -g "DgName"

What is dynamic R1/R2 swap?

The dynamic R1/R2 swap feature swaps the SRDF personality of the
SRDF device designations of a specified device or composite group

What is link limbo and how do you specify?

feature allows you to set a specific length of time for Enginuity to wait
when a down link is detected before updating the link status. If the link
status is still Not Ready after the link limbo time expires, devices are
marked Not Ready to the link.
symrdf -sid 80 -rdfg 4 set link_limbo 60

How do you create/add the dynamic SRDF group?

symrdf addgrp -label "RdfGrpName" -rdfg "RdfGrpNum" -sid "SymID" -

dir "DirNum" -remote_rdfg 4 -remote_sid "SymID" -remote_dir
"RemDirNum"

How do you add dynamic SRDF pairs to dynamic SRDF group?

symrdf createpair -file "DevFileName" -sid "SymID" -rdfg "RdfGrpNum" -

type rdf1 -invalidate r2

What are the Symmetrix Array-wide parameter in SRDF/A?

Maximum SRDF/A Cache Usage and Maximum Host Throttle Time

How do you set the metrics on symmetrix for SRDF/A?

set symmetrix rdfa_cache_percent = 94;

set symmetrix rdfa_host_throttle_time = 0;

What is RDF group session priority parameter?

When SRDF/A needs ts drop sessions when the cache WP limit is

reached, the sessions will be dropped starting with priority values of 64
with a setting of 1 being the last to be dropped.

What is the SRDF mode of operation for SRDF/AR?

Adaptive copy mode.

What are the required options for symreplicate options file?

SYMCLI_REPLICATE_HOP_TYPE and one of

SYMCLI_REPLICATE_CYCLE or
SYMCLI_REPLICATE_CYCLE_DELAY

What is consitency and how to enable?

Consistent split allows us to avoid inconsistencies and restart problems
that can occur if you split a database-related BCV without first quiescing
the database.
symrdf -g enable

What is automatic tripping and manually tripping of composite

group?

Automatic Tripping - Occurs when one or more R1 source devices in an

consistency enabled Composite Group cannot propagate data to their
corresponding target devices.
Manual Tripping - Occurs when you invoke the symrdf –cg suspend or
split command.