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 February 26, 2017 Is Unity really a re-branded VNX2/VNX? Well, let’s nd out. In this SAN Enthusiast
EMC Storage, Storage post, we will take a closer look at the functions of Unity OE. This post 197 likes

architecture of dell emc is part II of Unity Architecture series. If you have not read the part I
unity, architecture of Unity,
click here (opens in new window) to read.
Auto-Tier, Capacity tier, dell Like Page Share
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unity, FAST CACHE, FAST Be the first of your friends to like this
VP, How read operation is
performed in Unity?, How Unity OE
write operation is
performed in Unity?,
The Operating System that runs on Unity hardware is called Unity OE
Lowest Available Tier,
Performance tier, Start (Operating Environment). Unity OE is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise
High then Auto-Tier, unity Server (SLES). Unity provides block and le access to hosts and clients.
API, Unity block features,
Unity is an Asymmetric Active-Active array and is ALUA aware.
unity compression, unity
Extreme performance tier,
Unity le features, unity
Highest Available Tier, unity
Inline Compression, Unity Multicore Cache
OE architecture, unity
replication, unity Each SP has a certain amount of Cache. In the older storage systems, usually
snapshots, unity storage
the cache is divided into Read Cache and Write Cache and most of the times
pools, unity storage pools
expansion, unity system it will be a static partition and does not dynamically change according to the
drives, vvols in unity, what IO served. Unity’s Multicore Cache is dynamic and the amount of Read and
is the operating system
Write cache is dynamically adjusted according to the read and write
base of unity oe
operation. The main aim of this approach is to minimize forced ushing
when the high watermark level on the cache is reached. An additonal layer
of SSD Cache can be added to a hybrid pool by leveraging FAST Cache
technology.

Unity Block and File Storage

Using FC and iSCSI protocol, Unity provides block access of storage to hosts.
Without any special hardware, Unity also provides le access to hosts via
NAS Servers (virtual) that can be created in Unity OE. The most fundamental
part of Unity storage is the Uni ed storage pools. Unity allows all types of
storage resources such as Block LUNs, VVols, and NAS le systems to be

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 placed in the same storage pool. The following diagram shows various
storage resources residing in the same storage pool.

Unity storage pools

Storage Pools

The disks that are residing in DPE and DAE can be grouped together to form
storage pools. In a pool, there can be three tiers,

 Extreme performance tier (SSD)

 Performance tier (SAS)
 Capacity tier (NL-SAS)

RAID protection is applied on the tier and not at the pool. In Unity, All Flash
system the pool will contain only extreme performance tier and they are
called All Flash Pools. In hybrid systems, it is possible to create an all ash
pool with only SSD’s and later on expand the pool with SAS or NL-SAS
disks. Each tier in the pool can have di erent RAID levels applied. For
Example, extreme performance tier can have RAID 10 and performance tier
can be con gured with RAID 5 and the capacity tier can be con gured in
RAID 6 fashion. But the same tier cannot have di erent RAID types. A drive
that is part of one storage pool cannot be part of another storage pool.

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 FAST VP

FAST stands for Fully Automated Storage Tiering.  Con guring pools is the
rst step in provisioning storage in Unity. Unity uses FAST VP (Fully
Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools) algorithms to move hot data
to SSD and cold data to NL-SAS. The policy can be adjusted according to
business need via Unisphere. Following are the available Tiering Policies,

 Highest Available Tier

 Auto-Tier
 Start High then Auto-Tier (Default/Recommended)
 Lowest Available Tier

When FAST VP is enabled, the data is spread across the pool in 256 MB
slices. FAST VP is enabled on a storage resource such as LUN, Datastore
individually.

HIGHEST AVAILABLE TIER

With Highest Available Tier policy of FAST VP, new data slices are
provisioned from the extreme performance tier. If that gets full, new slices
are then provisioned from the next tier. With this policy, we should expect
superior performance and low latency as all data is kept in extreme
performance tier, only when it gets full the next tier is chosen. During the
next relocation schedule, the system tries to place the slice in the highest
tier only. Hot slices will take precedence over any other tiering policy. Hot
denotes frequently accessed slices and cold denotes less frequently accessed
slices.

AUTO-TIER

Auto-Tier policy is  very similar to highest available tier policy with two
primary di erences,

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 Even if a slice with auto-tier is more active than a slice with highest
available tier policy, during relocation the slice belongs to highest
available tier policy takes precedence.
When new storage resource with auto-tier policy is created, slices are
allocated from all tiers depending on the usage of each tier. If more
capacity is found in capacity tier, then the slices are allocated from
capacity tier initially.

START HIGH THEN AUTO-TIER

Dell EMC recommends using this policy on storage resources and it is the
default policy. When new slices are allocated,  this policy allocated slices
from the highest performance tier. Later on during relocation schedule,
slices are moved down if they are not frequently accessed. We can expect
good initial performance on the storage resource with this policy and later
on, for e ective capacity utilization it moved the cold slices down. It works
exactly like Auto-Tier policy and the only di erence is the initial allocation
of slices are from highest performance tier.

LOWEST AVAILABLE TIER

All slices of a storage resource reside always in the lowest tier i.e. the
capacity tier. If the lowest tier is full, all slices with this policy will be
compared and the one’s with the lowest activity will reside in the lowest
tier.

Following table is an excerpt from “EMC Unity: FAST Technology

Overview” white paper that summarizes the functions of each tiering
policy.

Corresponding Initial Tier

Tiering Policy Description
Placement

Highest Available Highest Available Tier Initial data placement and subsequent data
Tier relocations set to the highest performing tier of
drives with available space
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 Initial data placement optimizes Pool capacity,
Optimized for Pool
Auto-Tier then relocates slices to di erent tiers based on
Performance
the activity levels of the slices

Initial data placed on slices from the highest tier

Start High then
Highest Available Tier with available space, then relocates data based
Auto-Tier (Default)
on performance statistics and slice activity

Initial data placement and subsequent

Lowest Available
Lowest Available Tier relocations preferred on the lowest tier with
Tier
available space.

The following picture shows hot and cold slices before and after relocation.

Image source: emc.com

Expanding Storage Pool with additional drives

While expanding the pool with additional drives it is not mandatory to use
the same stripe width. For example, if the existing tier is con gured with
RAID 5 4+1 (this means the existing tier contains sets of 5 drives); we can
expand the pool in sets of RAID 5 (4+1) or RAID 5 (8+1) or RAID 5 (12+1). In

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 VNX2, it was a best practice to maintain the preferred drive count while
expanding i.e. 5 (as per our example). This is no longer the case in Unity,
Unity allows expanding a tier in pool with any supported stripe width.

System Drives

Unity OE occupies rst 4 disks in DPE. These drives are called as system
drives. Unity OE does not occupy the entire drive capacity instead it uses
107GB. The system drives are allowed to take part in the storage pool with
nonsystem drives.

FAST Cache

FAST Cache technology extends the existing cache in storage processor by

utilizing high-speed SSD’s. FAST Cache is applicable only for hybrid pools.
Frequently accessed data (64 KB chunks) in SAS and NL-SAS drives are
copied to Cache tier. The data is only copied and not moved; it still exists in
drives. Not only the frequently accessed data is copied, the algorithm also
copies data that may be read next. After copying FAST Cache memory map is
updated.

How read operation is performed in Unity?

For the incoming IO, rst, the system cache (DRAM) is checked. If the data
found to be residing in the system cache, the requested data is sent to host
completing IO request. If a Cache miss occurs, i.e the data is not present in
the system cache, FAST Cache memory map is checked. Obviously, FAST
Cache must be enabled and con gured for the memory map to exist. If FAST
Cache exists, its memory map is checked and the data is sent to host. This
improves system throughput and reduces response time. In case of system
and FAST cache read miss, the data is read from the drive, copied to system
cache and then sent to host.

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 How write operation is performed in Unity?

For all write request, the data is rst written in system cache and
acknowledgment is sent to host. During ushing, the data is written to pool.
For some reason, if the system write cache is disabled, the data is written to
FAST Cache (if present) and then written to pool.

Inline Compression

Unity has compression feature available for block LUNs and VMware VMFS
Datastores. This feature was added in Unity OE 4.1 release. Compression can
be enabled on storage resource while creating it or at a later point.
Compression can be enabled for resources that are in all ash pools only.
When a host sends data it is placed in system cache rst and
acknowledgment is sent to host. Compression of data happens inline
between system cache and all ash pool. Compression is not available for
VVols and le storage resources.

Management tools of Unity

Unity can be managed via Unisphere (HTML 5 GUI), Unisphere CLI and
REST API (Unity management functions only and no data access like S3).

Replication, Snapshots and other protection

Unity supports Sync and Async replication of storage resources such as

block LUNs, VMware Datastores. File storage resources can be protected by
Async replication. Unity also supports snapshots natively. Snapshot
supports block LUNs, VMFS Datastores, File systems and VMware NFS
Datastores. Data At Rest Encryption can be enabled on Unity. When enabled
all data in Unity will be encrypted. Unity also integrates well with other Dell
EMC products such as RecoverPoint for DVR like recovery.

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 This brings us to the end of the post. What we discussed is high-level
overview of Unity OE and its functions. I hope you found it helpful. Deep
dive posts of Unity features will soon be published.

Disclosure: I work for Dell EMC and this is not a promoted post.

Also published on Medium.

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