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What is EMC CLARIION SAN disk Array and Storage Area Networks SAN
its architecture ? basic L1 and L2 interview
question and answers
 22:13  Posted by Anil K Y Ommi  No Comments
Storage Area Networks (SAN) has
huge requirements and the
1) Explain Clariion architecture? popularity and importance of this
technology is increasing every year.
According...
The CLARiiON storage system is based on a modular architecture.
The first building block of the architecture is the Disk Processor Vi editor commands to edit
Enclosure, or DPE. The DPE houses the storage Processor(s) and files
the first Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) disks. Disk Array Also Read: IBM Spectrum Protect
Enclosures (DAEs) are interconnected using Link Control Cards (TSM) Basic Free Tutorials Also
(LCCs).The module architecture allows the customer to add drives as Watch: TSM Tutorial videos on
needed to meet capacity requirements. When more capacity is Youtube Channel - Subscribe Also

required, additional disk array enclosures (DAE or DAE2) containing Read...

disk modules can be easily added. LCC or Link Control Cards are Compressing and Archiving
used to connect shelves of disks. In addition, the LCC monitors the files in AIX Operating System
FRUs within the shelf and reports status information to the storage Also Read: IBM Spectrum Protect
processor. The LCC contains bypass circuitry that allows continued (TSM) Basic Free Tutorials Also
operation of the loop in the event of port failure. Watch: TSM Tutorial videos on
 Youtube Channel - Subscribe Also
Newer CLARiiON arrays have Read...

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
How to configure IBM Tivoli
Data Protection for Oracle
(TDPO) and take the oracle
database backup to TSM
Server storage ?
If you want to configure IBM Tivoli
Data Protection for Oracle to protect
your Oracle database, TDP for

Architecture is based on Oracle must be first installed on ...

intelligent Storage Processors Useful AIX commands used for

that manage physical drives on Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)
the back end and service host requests on the front end, be it Fibre 1) How to start TSM B/A Client
Channel or iSCSI protocols. Storage Processors communicate to schedule services in AIX in
each other over the CLARiiON Messaging Interface (CMI). Both the background? # cd
front-end connection to the host and the back-end connection to the /usr/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin # nohup
physical storage is 2Gb Fibre channel. dsmc sched &...

Use these troubleshooting tips

Also Read: Storage Area Network (SAN) Basic Free Tutorials to fix IBM TDP for SQL backup
and restore problems and
2) What are different types of Clariion models? improve its performance
To improve the performance of IBM
CX-200,300,300i,400,500,500i,600 and 700 Tivoli Data Protection (TDP) for SQL
CX3-10, 20, 40 and CX3-80 Backup & Restore , you have to use
CX4-120, 240, 480 and CX4-960 trail and error method to ch...

AX Series How to take TSM Database

FC Series backup when the TSM Server
is down
3) What are the management tools for Clariion? You can take TSM DB backup by
using DB2 commands even after
NaviCli TSM server is down. There are
NaviSphere Manager many situations where you need to
EMC Control Center take TSM DB ba...

SymCli Tivoli Storage

Manager for
4) Minimum number of disks required to create RAID 1/0 raid Virtual
group? Environments
4,6,10 (TSM VE) Introduction -
Components and Features
5) What is Access Logix? Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual

Access Logix provides LUN masking that allows sharing of storage Environments (TSM for VE)
otherwise known as Tivoli Data
system.
Protection for VMware (TDP
VMware) is used to ...
6) What are the significant features of Access Logix?
11.2 How to
LUN masking. Configure TSM
Presents a virtual storage system. Client Schedules
Maps CLARiiON LUNs (FLARE LUNs) to host LUNs. You can configure

Manages the Access Control List. automatic client tasks such as

backup, archive, restore etc on the
Manages Initiator Registration Records - Access Logix database
client machines by using TSM Client
entries.
Schedule features...

7) Why Access Logix has to be enabled? Latest IBM TSM Interview

If Access Logix is not enabled all LUNs are presented to all storage Questions and Answers by IBM
system ports. Any host that connects to the storage system will then IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)
have access to all of the LUNs on that storage system. In all rounds interview questions and

environments where multiple hosts attach to the storage system, this answers to a one candidate.
Interview took place in IBM India
will cause problems. Windows systems may attempt to take
and it t...
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.

8) 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

9) How many initiators can be connected per port in CX500

CX600?
CX500 – 64 Initiators/Port
CX600 – 32 Initiators/Port

10) What is CMI? Clariion Message Interface?

Storage Processors communicate to each other over the CLARiiON
Messaging Interface (CMI).
11) What is SP Collects and how do you gather SP Collects?
Sp collect 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.

Also Read: DAS vs SAN vs NAS

12) Explain step by step procedure to assign a LUN to existing

Host?

First check if there is 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

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

13) 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.

14) What are the 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

15) 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.

16) What is the recommended ratio of Read and Write cache?

80% Read and 20% Write Cache

17) 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.

18 ) 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+

19) 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.

20) 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.

21) 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.

22) What are the Clariion Operating Layers?

EMC Control Center/ Clariion Based Applications

Navisphere Manager/NaviCli
FLARE Operating Environment
Clariion Hardware

23) 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.

24) 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

25) 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.

26) 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.

27) 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.

28) How do you monitor Clariion alerts?

Using Clariion Event Monitor

29) 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.

30) 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.

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