In the immortal words of Silicon Valley: “It’s a box“. But the Nexsan Unity NV10000 is a box with some fairly decent specifications packed in a small form-factor, including support for various 1DWPD NVMe SSDs and the latest Intel Xeon processors.
Protocol Support
Protocol support, as would be expected with the Unity, is broad, with support for File (NFS, SMB), Block (iSCSI, FC), and Object (S3) data storage protocols within the one unified platform.
Performance Enhancements
These were hinted at with the release of Unity 7.0, but the Nexsan Unity NV10000 boosts performance by increasing bandwidths of up to 25GB/s, enabling you to scale performance up as your application needs evolve.
Other Useful Features
As you’d expect from this kind of storage array, the Nexsan Unity NV10000 also delivers features such as:
High availability (HA);
Snapshots;
ESXi integration;
In-line compression;
FASTier™ caching;
Asynchronous replication;
Data at rest encryption; and
Storage pool scrubbing to protect against bit rot, avoiding silent data corruption.
Backup Target?
Unity supports a comprehensive Host OS matrix and is certified as a Veeam Ready Repository for backups. Interestingly, the Nexsan Unity NV10000 also provides data security, regulations compliance, and ransomware recoverability. The platform also supports immutable block and file and S3 object locking, for data backup that is unchangeable and cannot be encrypted, even by internal bad actors.
Thoughts
I’m not as much of a diskslinger as I used to be, but I’m always interested to hear about what StorCentric / Nexsan has been up to with its storage array releases. It strikes me that the company does well by focussing on those features that customers are looking for (fast storage, peace of mind, multiple protocols) and also by being able to put it in a form-factor that appeals in terms of storage density. While the ecosystem around StorCentric is extensive, it makes sense for the most part, with the various components coming together well to form a decent story. I like that the company has really focussed on ensuring that Unity isn’t just a cool product name, but also a key part of the operating environment that powers the solution.
In short, there’s a fair bit that’s gone into this release, and I’ll cover these below.
Protocol Enhancements
The Unity platform already supported FC, iSCSI, NFS, and SMB. It now supports S3 as well, making interoperability with data protection software that supports S3 as a target even simpler. It also means you can do stuff with Object Locking, and I’ll cover that below.
.
[image courtesy of Nexsan]
There have also been some enhancements to the speeds supported on the Unity hardware interfaces, and FC now supports up to 32Gbps, and support for 1/10/25/40/100GbE over Ethernet.
Security, Compliance and Ransomware Protection
Unity now supports immutable volume and file system snapshots for data protection. This provides secure point-in-time copies of data for business continuity. As I mentioned before, there’s also support for object locking, enabling bucket or object-level protection for a specified retention period to create immutable copies of data. This allows enterprises to address compliance, regulatory and other data protection requirements. Finally, there’s now support for pool-scrubbing to detect and remediate bit rot to avoid data corruption.
Performance Improvements
There have been increases in total throughput capability, with Varanasi telling me that Total Throughput has increased up to 13GB/s on existing platforms. There’s also been a significant improvement in the Unity to Assureon ingestion rate. I’ve written a little about the Unbreakable Backup solution before, and there’s a lot to like about the architecture.
[image courtesy of Nexsan]
Thoughts
This is the first time that Nexsan has announced enhancements to its Unity platform without incorporating some kind of hardware refresh, so the company is testing the waters in some respects. I think it’s great when storage companies are able to upgrade their existing hardware platforms with software and offering improved performance and functionality. There’s a lot to like in this release, particularly when it comes to the improved security and data integrity capabilities. Sure, not everyone wants object storage available on their midrange storage array, but it makes it a lot more accessible, particularly if you only need a few 100TB of object. The object lock capability, along with the immutable snapshotting for SMB and NFS users, really helps improve the overall integrity and resiliency of the platform as well.
StorCentric now has a pretty broad portfolio of storage and data protection products available, and you can see the integrations between the different lines are only going to increase as time goes on. The company has been positioning itself as a data-centric company for some time, and working hard to ensure that improved security is a big part of that solution. I think there’s a great story here for customers looking to leverage one vendor to deliver storage, data protection, and data security capabilities into the enterprise. The bad guys in hoodies are always looking for ways to make your day unpleasant, so when vendors are working to tighten up their integrations across a variety of products, it can only be a good thing in terms of improving the resilience and availability of your critical information assets. I’m looking forward to hearing what’s next with Nexsan and StorCentric.
The new Unity models announced are the 3300 and 7900. Both models use two controllers and vary in capacity between 1.6PB and 6.7PB. They both use the Intel Xeon E5 v4 Family processors, and have between 256GB and 448GB of system RAM. There are hybrid storage options available, and both systems support RAID 5, 6, and 10. You can access the spec sheet here.
Use Cases
Unbreakable
One of the more interesting use cases we discussed was what StorCentric refer to as “Unbreakable Backup”. The idea behind Nexsan Unbreakable Backup is that you can use your preferred data protection vendor to send backup data to a Unity array. This data can then be replicated to Nexsan’s Assureon platform. The cool thing about the Assureon is that it’s a locked down solution. So even if you’re hit with a ransomware attack, it’s going to be mighty hard for the bad guys to crack the Assureon platform as well, as StorCentric uses a Key Management System hosted inside StorCentric, and provides minimal privileges to end users.
Data Migration
There’s also a Data Mobility Suite coming at the end of Q3, including:
Cloud Connector, giving you the ability to replicate data from Unity to 18 Public clouds including Amazon and Google (for unstructured data, cloud-based backup); and
Flexible Data Migrations – streamline Unity implementations, migrate data from heterogeneous systems.
Thoughts and Further Reading
I’ve written enthusiastically about Assureon in the past, so it was nice to revisit the platform via this announcement. Ransomware is a scary prospect for many organisations, so a system that can integrate nicely to help with protecting protection data seems like a pretty good idea. Sure, having to replicate the data to a second system might seem like an unnecessary expense, but organisations should be assessing the value of that investment against the cost of having corporate data potentially irretrievably corrupted. Insurance against ransomware attacks probably seems like something that you shouldn’t need to spend money on, until you need to spend money recovering, or sending bitcoin to some clown because you need your data back. It’s not appealing by any stretch, but it’s also important to take precautions wherever possible.
Midrange storage is by no means a sexy topic to talk about. In my opinion it’s a well understood architecture that most tier 1 companies do pretty well nowadays. But that’s the beauty of the midrange system in a lot of ways – it’s a well understood architecture. So you generally know what you’re getting with hybrid (or all-flash) dual controller systems. The Unity range from Nexsan is no different, and that’s not a bad thing. There are a tonne of workloads in the enterprise today that aren’t necessarily well suited to cloud (for the moment), and just need some block or file storage and a bit of resiliency for good measure. The Unity series of arrays from Nexsan offer a bunch of useful features, including tiering and a variety of connectivity options. It strikes me that these arrays are a good fit for a whole lot of workloads that live in the data centre, from enterprise application hosting through to data protection workloads. If you’re after a reliable workhorse, it’s worth looking into the Unity range.
Disclaimer: I recently attended Dell Technologies World 2019. My flights, accommodation and conference pass were paid for by Dell Technologies via the Media, Analysts and Influencers program. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated in any way for my time at the event. Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.
Dell EMC Unity XT
As part of their storage announcements this week, Dell EMC announced the new Unity XT. Here’s a photo of one from the show floor at Dell Technologies World.
There are two variants of Unity XT, and you can grab the All-Flash data sheet here, and the Hybrid data sheet here. The spec sheet for both flavours is here. There are 8 models in all, and the smallest one in hybrid and all-flash won’t support NVMe (to keep the cost down for smaller customers). I’m told the largest model will scale up to 1500 drives, with Dell EMC revisiting the kind of specs that they had with the VNX 7600 and 8000 range.
From an efficiency perspective, Dell EMC are claiming
Up to 5:1 data reduction
85% system efficiency
Wait, what about performance? Dell EMC are telling me the Unity XT delivers up to:
2x More Performance (IOPS)*
75% Lower Latency**
67% Faster performance than competition***
Like all performance claims, there are a few caveats:
Dell EMC have announced that Early Access is coming soon for Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services Integrated with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for File.
[image courtesy of Dell EMC]
Ideal for HPC applications, analytics, media and entertainment, life sciences, etc.
Backed by enterprise SLAs
Pay-as-you-use pricing
Proactive monitoring, maintenance, and hardware life- cycle management
They’ve also announced that Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services is now available.
[image courtesy of Dell EMC]
Fast – High-speed, low latency connection to the cloud;
Trusted – Durable, persistent storage with up to 6-9’s availability and enterprise grade security; and
Flexible – Control your data with multi-cloud agility; Independently scale capacity and compute.
DR Services
The cool thing about cloud data services is that you can do cool things with them, such as using VMC on AWS for Automated Disaster Recovery
[image courtesy of Dell EMC]
Dell EMC tell me it’s a:
Seamlessly integrated VMware environment;
Delivering automated DR operations;
With enterprise-grade, pay- as-you-go DRaaS;
You only pay for compute in the cloud when failover occurs; and
This gives you access to lower RPOs and RTOs
It’s a multi-cloud world though, so you can also access multiple cloud providers for Disaster Recovery.
[image courtesy of Dell EMC]
The benefits of this approach are numerous, including:
No secondary DC to manage;
Enterprise-grade infrastructure;
A Pay-as-you-go model;
Only pay for compute in the cloud in the event of a failure; and
Lower RPOs.
And it wouldn’t be multi-cloud capable if you couldn’t do other cool stuff like workload migration, analytics and more:
Flexible, multi-cloud support;
No vendor lock-in with data independent of the cloud;
Leverage cloud(s) of choice based on application needs;
Reduce risk with centralised, durable storage; and
Fast, low cost set up – no additional infrastructure to setup or manage.
Cloud Data Insights
Proactively monitor and manage infrastructure and data with intelligent cloud-based analytics. With CloudIQ you get access to a few neat things, including:
Predictive Modelling
Capacity Forecasting
Competing Workload Analysis
Accelerated Resolution
3X Faster Insight
Performance Anomaly Detection
Broader Support
Primary Storage Portfolio
VMware
Connectrix
Isilon and PowerVault*
[image courtesy of Dell EMC]
Dell EMC ClarityNow
Single pane of glass view of all file and object storage;
Accelerated scan and indexing of unstructured data;
High-speed search across heterogeneous storage;
Detailed reporting with chargeback views; and
Data mobility for self-service archive in cloud.
[image courtesy of Dell EMC]
Thoughts and Further Reading
The Unity XT is an evolution of the Unity line, rather than a revolutionary array. Dell EMC are doing all the things you’d expect them to do with their midrange line, including improving performance and adding support for NVMe on most of the models. I imagine people still have questions about the breadth of Dell EMC’s storage portfolio, with a range of products available from Unity to SC to XtremIO to PowerMax. There’s also Isilon dominating the file options, and ECS delivering some interesting object capabilities. It’s clear there’s still some room for consolidation, but I think it’s smart that Dell EMC have stuck with the “portfolio company” line. Instead of having too many options, the idea is that they can see you exactly what you want. They are, after all, in the business of making money. And if people want to keep buying Compellent, then Dell EMC are going to keep selling it to them. At least in the near term.
The Cloud Data Services announcements are also interesting. I’ve seen plenty of those cloud-native folks question why you’d want something like Isilon running on GCP. But those people aren’t really the ones who’l’ benefit from these types of solutions. Rather, it’s the enterprise who’ve built up particular workloads that rely on file, but still need to shift some of those workloads to a public cloud provider. Remember, not every tech company goes out and builds products without having a user base that has asked for said products. Dell EMC are very much in the camp of not doing things without having a quantifiable appetite from the customer base.
I’m glad I don’t work in a job where I have to manage lots of storage devices anymore. Because I’m not so sure I’d like to do it on my mobile phone. But the ability to view the health of these devices via an app is appealing. Sure, you’re not going to necessarily want to use element managers on your phone, but whne you need to know that status of something without diving too deep, something like CloudIQ becomes super useful. As does the ability to see all of your devices in one place with ClarityNow.
I didn’t hear anything revolutionary in Dell EMC’s storage announcements this year, but they continue to stay the course, and they’re setting the scene for bigger things to come. For another perspective, you can read Max’s thoughts on the storage announcements here. I’m looking forward to digging in to what Dell Technologies Cloud really means, and hope to have something out on that in the next week or so.
Disclaimer: I recently attended Dell Technologies World 2018. My flights, accommodation and conference pass were paid for by Dell Technologies via the Press, Analysts and Influencers program. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated in any way for my time at the event. Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.
Here are my rough notes from the storage.38 session. This was presented by Stephen Wright and covered Dell EMC Unity: Performance Best Practices. Firstly, though, you should read Dell EMC’s Unity Best Practices Guide.
“The ability to do the requested work in the required period of time”
IOPs (small transactions), MB/s (bulk data)
Latency and Response Time (Individual transactions)
Window, Job (Batch transactions)
What are Best Practices?
Configuration Guidance
Recommendations for options
Advice based o experience
Responsive to your application
Best behaviour for your needs
Evolution of Storage Best Practices
Unity Simplicity
Removes the need for detailed tweaking
Let the system do the right thing for you
Unified File and Block – same recommendations apply
One set of common guidance
Flash – changes the game for storage performance
Stress on other components
Quantum Leap of Flash
Recommended maximum IOPS per drive – don’t use these for sizing – these numbers are speed limits and are generally based on small-block random workloads.
NL-SAS – 150 IOPS
SAS 10K RPM – 250 IOPS
SAS 15K RPM – 350 IOPS
Flash – 20000 IOPS
The Flash Effect, and CPU utilisation
Flash is fast, and Dell EMC Unity can support hundreds of drives
Driving a lot of Flash can take a lot of CPU power
Provide best practices around CPU utilisation
Average CPU Utilisation
Below 50%
50% to 70%
70% to 90%
Above 90%
Latency
Yes
Yes
Yes
Caution
High Availability
Yes
Yes
Caution
No
Approaching Best Practices: AFA or Hybrid?
Hardware Considerations
All-Flash
Drives are most likely not a bottleneck
Focus on maximising other hardware resources
Hybrid
HDD performance can be determining factor
A little Flash can add a lot of capability
Features
Data reduction
Snapshots
Replication
Both block and file
CPU Power and Flash Considerations
With All-Flash, CPU becomes the driving factor
CPU power has largest impact on achievable performance
Memory has largest impact on scalability
As of 4.3 online data-in-place conversions now available
Balanced Access – Back-end SAS
At least use the two onboard
Maybe you also want the SAS expansion? (Up to 6 buses)
Largest impact is on bandwidth. Dell EMC advertise 5GB/s of bandwidth through the SAS bus.
Flash drives per bus recommendation? Take how ever many you have, and spread them across the buses you have
Balanced access – FC Ports
For HA, zone 1 initiator to 1 port from SPA, 1 port from SPB
For HA + load balancing, zone 2 ports per SP
Cable and use as many front-end ports as possible
We recommend at least 4 ports per SP in U3x0 and U4x0
At least 6 ports per SP in U5x0 and U6x0
Balanced Access – Unity File
Balance resource utilisation with file
Means multiple NAS Servers
Using multiple Ethernet ports (can leverage LACP)
Failsafe Networking (FSN)
Front-end port considerations
Speed is good – use faster ports when available
Understand port limits – consult best practices guide
Use more ports – better distribution across cores
Hybrid Considerations
All previous considerations
Size for HDD constraints
Leverage Flash Tier, FAST VP
Configure FAST Cache
FAST VP is at the pool level, FAST Cache is a global resource
Feature Considerations
Features Overview
In Dell EMC Unity, all system resources are always available
Architectural philosophy
CPUs are note reserved for any particular process
Features requires resources
Use additional CPU and may add drive IOPS
CPU cycles can shift as defined workload changes
e.g. RAID 6 may take a little more CPU than RAID 1/0. Same goes for Snapshots, data reduction and replication.
Decision Tree for Enabling Features
Understand that enabling a feature may increase CPU utilisation
This chart represents average CPU before implementing feature
Average CPU Utilisation
Below 50%
50% to 70%
70% to 90%
Above 90%
Snapshots / Replication
Yes
Yes
Caution
No
Data Reduction
Yes
Caution
Caution
No
Data Reduction
Prior to 4.3, offered compression
As of OE v4.3, deduplication has been added, and together these provide data reduction
Data reduction
Block and file objects
All-Flash pools
Enabled together
Automatically licensed
How does it work?
Data acknowledged in write cache
Check for patterns
Compress data if needed
Improved Performance
Reduced overhead when pattern is found
Code optimisations
Considerations
Latency impacts
CPU resource consumption
Refer to decision tree
Snapshots
Use less aggressive snapshot schedules (number of objects increases – decrease the snapshot schedule frequency)
Stagger snapshot schedules
Asynchronous replication
Leverages snapshots
Similar considerations
RPO = snapshot schedule
Longer RPOs with lots of replicated objects
Consider port capabilities
Multiple links per SP
Higher speed ports
Synchronous Replication
Real-time replication over FC link
Latency is key
Zone so that clients are not on the replication link
Summary
Appropriate Model
Choose the right model, based on CPU power
Online Data-in-place conversions to move to more powerful model
Nexsan announced their new range of Unity arrays a few weeks ago. I finally had the opportunity to talk to Gary Watson about the new line, and thought it was worth covering here.
Hardware
The Unity range of arrays are standard midrange offerings. They use two controllers and offer some useful block and file access options. Capacity is pretty good too. My favourite feature (based on past experience) is the data mobility, thanks to the Connected Data acquisition. I was a big fan of the consumer version of the Transporter, and think that delivering these kind of features in a corporate environment is a great way to get around the problem of widespread Dropbox use in the enterprise. (Not that I’m not a fan of Dropbox, but people need to be mindful of what they do with corporate data in the name of “convenience”.) Here’s a snazzy box shot.
You can read some press coverage on the announcement here and here. Nexsan’s press release can also be found here. Dell EMC don’t like talking about it, but you’ve probably noticed two different companies are using Unity as a product name for their midrange storage line. You can read El Reg’s coverage of that here.
The Unity arrays do everything you’d expect a modern midrange array to do, with the added bonus of some neat enterprise file sharing capability thrown in for good measure. In the storage industry we love to focus on what we think people will find sexy. Right now this seems to be two things: all flash storage and massively scalable object storage. Don’t get me wrong, both of those technology solutions are neat, and it’s certainly an exciting time to be witnessing what can be done with that technology. That said, I don’t think the midrange storage array is dead just yet. There are plenty of companies in the hunt for storage platforms that just work and deliver reasonable performance for a decent price per GB. As evidenced by Dell EMC’s continued interest and investment in the midrange market, there’s still plenty of life left in it. If you’re in the market for some solid midrange storage with a variety of storage options and capacities, coupled with some neat file synchronisation and replication technology, then it’s worth looking into the Nexsan offering.
Disclaimer: I recently attended Dell EMC World 2017. My flights, accommodation and conference pass were paid for by Dell EMC via the Dell EMC Elect program. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated in any way for my time at the event. Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.
Midrange Overview
Dell EMC today announced a number of new midrange storage models and enhancements. According to Dell EMC the midrange is still a big market and they estimate 7% growth over the next 5 years (I may have misheard though). As such, they’re positioning the new midrange family, comprised of the Unity and SC (Compellent) platforms. The goal is to provide common tools for management, mobility and protection (namely PowerPath, ViPR, VPLEX, RecoverPoint, Connectrix, and Data Domain).
Positioning?
Glad you asked. Dell EMC are positioning the two sides of the family as follows:
Unity
All Flash – simple, flash density, inline efficiency, consistent response time, cloud tier
Unified – unified file and block, app, software defined or converged, data in place upgrades
SC Series
Hybrid – granular tiering, 0-100% Flash, efficiency for hybrid
Best economics – intelligent compression and dedupe, persistent software licenses
It’s obviously not always going to be that cut and dried, but it’s a start.
Unity
So, what’s new with Unity? There’ll be new “F” models available from Q2 2017. There’ll also be new code released to support the new line. This will be installable on previous-generation Unity models as well. Note that, according Dell EMC, Unity hybrid isn’t going anywhere.
Speeds and Feeds
Unity 350F
Unity 450F
Unity 550F
Unity 650F
Processor
6core / 1.7GHz
10core / 2.2GHz
14core / 2.4GHz
14core / 2.4GHz
96GB Memory
128GB Memory
256GB Memory
512GB Memory
Capacity
150 Drives
250 Drives
500 Drives
1000 Drives
2.4PB
4PB
8PB
16PB
Volume
1000 @ 256TB
1500 @ 256TB
2000 @ 256TB
6000 @ 256TB
9000 @ 64TB
9000 @ 64TB
13500 @ 64TB
30000 @ 64TB
1000 @ 256TB
1500 @ 256TB
2000 @ 256TB
4000 @ 256TB
Snaps
8000
14000
20000
30000
256 per volume
256 per volume
256 per volume
256 per volume
Management
Do you hate Java? I do. As do most people who had to use Java-based Unisphere. With Unity Dell EMC have provided a more modern, user-friendly approach to array management.
HTML-5 based Unisphere
CloudIQ
Unified CLI and REST API
Architected for All Flash
Dell EMC tell me the Unity array is “architected for all flash”. It certainly has a lot of the features you’d expect from an all flash array, including:
3D TLC NAND flash drive for all IO types;
Multi-core optimized for best CPU utilisation and low latency;
Automatic flash wear balance;
Zero impact drive firmware based garbage collection;
Per object in-memory log for consistent low response time;
Write coalescing with full stripe writes to minimise IO;
Inline compression; and
Mix different flash drive types and capacities for lowest cost.
Density
If you’ve been tracking the Unity you may have noticed the continuous introduction of support for larger drives. With the introduction of the “Dense Shelf”, you’re now looking at 500TB of capacity per RU. That, as they say, is a lot of capacity.
Q2 2016
3.2TB (32TB usable per RU)
Q3 2016
7.6TB (76TB usable per RU)
3.84TB (38TB usable per RU)
Q4 2016
Inline compression (300TB effective per RU)
15.4TB (152TB usable per RU)
Q2 2017
Dense shelf – 500TB effective per RU – 80 drives in 3RU form factor
Dynamic Pools
Unlike standard pools you can now add single drives (distributes the spare capacity and improves the rebuild time). I’ll be digging into this feature a bit more in the future (hopefully).
File System
The u64 file system was introduced with the Unity and has had a bit of an uplift in terms of capacity. It now scales to 256TB usable capacity per file system with 10M+ sub-directories and files. The cool thing is it also supports inline compression on the file system using pointer-based snaps with simple space reclaim and low IO impact. There’s also a cloud archiving and tiering capability. This provides policy-based transparent archival of files to public or private cloud (Virtustream by preference, but I believe there’s also support for Azure and AWS).
Snapshot Mobility
As of Q2 you’ll have the ability to move snapshots from array to array (local to remote to cloud).
Thin clones
Deduplicate / shared data set
Independent LUNs
Independent snap / replication schedules
Fast create / populate and restore
Migration
Dell EMC are keen as beans for you to have a good experience getting stuff onto your shiny new Unity array. As such they offer a built-in, integrated migration tool (that you run from Unisphere). It:
Supports FC, iSCSI, NFS (2H 2016) and SMB (H1 2017) migration from VNX;
Migrates LUNs, file systems, quotas, ACLs and exports; and is
Transparent to file applications and minimally disruptive for block.
Existing Unity customers will also be able to do data in place (DIP) upgrades online (from 2H 2017).
SC Series
Speeds and Feeds
I haven’t kept up with the SC line in recent years, so I found this table handy. You might too.
SCv20X0
SC 5020
SC 7020
SC 9000
Processor
4core / 3.6GHz
8core / 2.4GHz
2x8core / 2.5GHz
2x8core / 3.2GHz
16GB Memory
128GB Memory
256GB Memory
512GB Memory
Capacity
168 Drives
222 Drives
500 Drives
1024 Drives
672TB
2PB
3PB
4PB
Protocols
iSCSI, FC, SAS
iSCSI, FC, SAS
iSCSI, FC
iSCSI, FC, FCoE
6Gb SAS BE
12Gb SAS BE
12Gb SAS BE
12Gb SAS BE
Volumes
1000 LUNs / Vvols
2000 LUNs / Vvols
2000 LUNs / Vvols
2000 LUNs / Vvols
500TB per volume
500TB per volume
500TB per volume
500TB per volume
Snapshots
2000
4096
16384
32000
Note a DIP upgrade from SC 4020 can also get you to the SC 5020.
Flexible Configuration
Dell EMC are positioning the SC line of arrays as a flexible approach to configuration. Offering a range of performance options, pricing and configurations.
All flash, some flash or no flash
Start with one configuration and convert to another
Designed to fit any workload and budget
Drive Efficiency
Activate on lowest tier of media
Easy on/off selectable by volume
data efficiency works in the background on “inactive” data
post-process operation ensures no impact to active data IO after data has been moved from active to inactive tier
best for environments (hybrid) that do not require 24x7x365 consistent response time
Intelligent Compression and Deduplication
The SC range has always been about the efficient storage of data. Dell EMC think they’re onto a good thing with intelligent deduplication and compression. I’m keen to see it working for myself before I get too excited.
Directs all incoming writes to dynamically partitioned “write” space (R10) on Tier 1 drives
Moves inactive data from “write” space to space efficient space (R5/6) on same or other tiers
Post-process operation compresses / dedupes inactive data
Investment Protection
Dell EMC don’t want you to feel like you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You may have been an EMC customer before Dell acquired them. Or maybe you’ve dabbled with EqualLogic arrays. That’s okay, you get a certain level of “Investment protection” via cross platform replication.
SC Series <-> PS Series via Replication
SC Series <-> VMAX, XtremIO, Unity via RecoverPoint VM Replication
Migration
Time to throw out your MD devices? Never fear, there’s a built-in migration path from “Legacy”.
Migrates LUNs (no snaps) from PS and MD (2H 2017) series to SC Series
Built-in solution: self-service without requiring any third-party tool
Offers both offline and online thin import depending on use case
Online minimally disruptive: requires unmount and mount
Management
Dell EMC offer both centralised and web-based management for the SC series.
HTML5-based Unisphere for SC (that’s right!)
Compatible with most modern browsers
Unisphere style modern look and feel
No separate download or install required
CloudIQ
Central monitoring and reporting for midrange
Cloud-based
Support for planning and optimisation
Dell Storage Manager
Central management and monitoring of SC and PS arrays
Advanced features
Supports up to 10 arrays
Conclusion
In terms of “family”, this announcement positions the midrange offering from Dell EMC as more Brady Bunch than Manson family. This is a good thing in my opinion. I’ve seen firsthand some of the opposition put up by EMC or Dell customers prior to the merger, and other vendors have certainly been licking their chops hoping the whole thing would prove too hard and Dell EMC would lose their way. Whilst it would be overly optimistic (and naïve) to expect them to consolidate the midrange platform to one line of arrays in such a short amount of time, the Unity and SC lines cover all the bases and show signs of future, further streamlining activities.
I cut my teeth (figuratively) on an old CLARiiON FC4700 and have watched the progression over the years of the EMC midrange offering. Similarly I have plenty of customers who’ve helped themselves to PS, SC and MD arrays. It’s nice to see all this cool tech coming together. While midrange isn’t anywhere near as sexy as massively scalable object storage, it performs an important function for a wide range of businesses small and large and shouldn’t be ignored. As with other product announcements I cover here, if you have particular queries about the products I recommend you engage with your local Dell EMC team in the first instance. The new Dell EMC Unity All-Flash models will be orderable this month and available in July. The SC5020 is orderable this month and will be generally available in June. If you want it from the horse’s mouth, you can read blog posts from Dell EMC covering the announcements around Unity here and SC series here.
I covered EMC‘s announcement of their new Unity platform in an earlier post, and thought it would be worthwhile following up on a few key points around data protection and protocol support.
Data Protection with Unity
You can do a bunch of the high level local and remote protection management through Unisphere, including:
Scheduling snapshots
Viewing system defined schedules
Modifying protection options
Customizing schedules based on your SLAs
Configuring replication
Managing replication operations such as session failover and failback
Viewing replication session states and statuses
Unified Snapshots provide:
Point-in-time snapshot copies of data;
Snapshots for both block and file resources (finally!); and
Snapshots are used as the foundation for native asynchronous replication on Unity.
The following table provides information on the limits with snapshots on the Unity platform.
You can asynchronously replicate file and block data from Unity to Unity or Unity VSA, VNXe, or vVNX. How do I get my VNX data onto the Unity array? EMC say that RecoverPoint is your best bet for array replication activities from the VNX1 or 2 to the Unity platform. If you’re looking at data migration options, the following table may help.
Protocols and Filesystems
There’s a fair bit of support for more “modern” iterations of SMB and NFS. These are outlined below:
SMB share options
Continuous Availability
Protocol Encryption
Access Based Enumeration (ABE)
Distributed File System (DFS)
Branch Cache
Offline Availability
Umask
Supported Features
Dynamic access control
Hyper-V shared VHDX
Antivirus
NFS V4.0 & 4.1
Unity introduces support for NFS v4.0 & 4.1
Functionality described in RFC 3530 & RFC 5661
Includes NFS ACL
Stateful protocol unlike earlier NFS versions
Note, however, the following exceptions
No pNFS
No directory delegation
FTP/SFTP
Unity supports accessing NAS Servers via FTP and SFTP
This can be enabled and disabled independently
Accessible by Windows, Unix, and anonymous users
Access control lists
Enable or disable access for users, groups, and hosts
FTP/SFTP auditing can be configured on the NAS Server
Client IP, time of connection, uploaded/downloaded files
Log directory and maximum log size are configurable
EMC have also delivered a new scalable filesystem. This filesystem is a 64-bit filesystem that delivers range of file services, including:
Scalability to 64TBs;
Space efficient Snapshots;
The ability to shrink a file system and reclaim that space;
Support for up to 256 VMDK clones;
Fast failover;
In-Memory Log Replay is an improvement to the file system’s ability to quickly recover its state in the event of an ungraceful shutdown. The advantage of this is a faster failover time; and
Improved quota management
The following table provides some more information on the supported configuration maximums for filesystems across the Unity platform.
FAST Cache
The following options are available for FAST Cache configuration on the new Unity arrays.
Note also the following improvements (both of which I think are pretty neat from an operational perspective)
FAST Cache supports online expansion – up to the system maximum; and
FAST Cache supports online shrink – you now have the ability to remove all but 1 FAST Cache pair.
Maintenance Options
EMC have been paying attention to the like of Pure and Nimble with their long life maintenance programs designed to be a little kinder to customers wanting to keep their systems for more than five minutes. As such EMC customers can now “Xpect More” for all-flash systems, with Unity (all-flash) customers being guaranteed:
Lifetime maintenance pricing for their Unity all-flash;
Investment protection on flash drives that need to be replaced or repaired; and
Lifetime flash endurance protection.
Obviously I recommend reading the fine print about this program, but on the face of it it certainly warrants further investigation.
CLI
You’re probably asking if there is a CLI available for Unity, like naviseccli (Navisphere Secure CLI). After all, naviseccli is pretty awesome, and you’ve no doubt spent hours getting a bunch of stuff automated with just naviseccli and a dream. The good news is that yes, you can run UEMCLI commands from your workstation or via SSH on the system. The bad news is that previous custom scripts using naviseccli will not work using Unity UEMCLI.
Other Notes
Here are a few other points that I found interesting:
Inline compression is due before the end of the calendar year, and a deduplication option is yet to be made available for the platform.
There is a limit of 10 DAEs, 250 drives per bus (same as the VNX2).
Unity doesn’t have 60 or 120-drive DAEs, but there is a plan under consideration to support a higher number of drives.
Data At Rest Encryption (D@RE) is optional software that is only offered at the point of sale and cannot be enabled after the system is purchased. EMC don’t offer D@RE in certain restricted countries, including China and Russia.
Further Reading and Conclusion
[Update] There are a few nice articles that I didn’t see at the time of publication that I think are worth looking at. Dave Henry has a comprehensive write-up on Unity here, Rob Koper has some good coverage here, and Chris Evans has a typically thought-provoking article here that I recommend reading. Finally, Chad Sakac has a comprehensive write-up here that is well worth your time.
If you’ve had to use local protection tools on a unified VNX, you’ll be pleased to see the improvements that EMC have made with regards to coherent features and toolsets across file and block. Likewise if you’ve struggled with the lack of modern protocol support on previous unified offerings, then Unity will be a refreshing change. It’s a bummer that the CLI has changed, but this might be an opportunity to re-evaluate a number of the scripts you’ve been using to get things done previously. If nothing else, it should give me fodder for a few more blog posts along the lines of “I used to do x with naviseccli, now I do y with UEMCLI”. I’m looking forward to digging in further.
EMC recently announced their new midrange array “Unity“. The message from EMC that I’ve heard during various briefings has been that it “eclipses” the VNX and VNXe. What they mean by that is this. There is no VNX3 platform planned – Unity is EMC’s new midrange storage platform. Of interest though is that there are currently no VNX2 and VNXe EOL dates. EMC are positioning the Unity arrays in between the VNXe1600 and VNXe3200 and the 7600 and 8000 Hybrids. This will make a bit more sense as you read on. and while I’m at it, here’s a box shot, only because it wouldn’t be a product announcement without one of those.
Major Highlights
So what are the exciting parts of the announcement? Well, there are a few good bits that I’ll cover in depth further on.
HTML5 GUI – This is big. Java can finally go die in a fire. Or at least get updated on my laptop to something sensible;
Everything is now in 2RU of rack space – there are no more Control Stations, no more Data Movers.
Also of note is that within 90 days of GA VCE will be delivering these solutions as well.
New Models
There are four new models, with every model having an all-flash and hybrid option (all-flash being denoted by the F).
All models feature:
Proactive support
Self-service portal
System monitoring
CloudIQ dashboard and management platform.
EMC talked a bit about the density improvements as well, using the change from a base VNX5800 to the Unity 600F. In this example:
The footprint goes from 7RU – 2RU;
Cabling goes from 30 cables down to 6;
Power consumption is reduced from 1495W to 703W;
rack installation time goes from 60min – 2min; and
The hero number increases as well, with a benchmark as follows: 101K -> 295K IOPS (Thin LUN, Small block random workloads).
I haven’t put one of these things in a rack yet, nor have I had a chance to do my own testing, so I can only report what EMC are telling me. As always, your mileage might vary.
Architecture
Are we finally rid of Windows-based FLARE running on SPs? EMC tells me we are. If you’ve been following Chad’s blog you’d have a feel for some of the backgroundarchitecture that’s gone into Unity. In short, it’s a SUSE-based operating platform with everything (block, VVOLS and file) in a common pool. In my opinion this is kind of what we were hoping to see with VNX2, and it’s good to see it’s finally here.
Some of the features of the new architecture include:
A 64-bit, 64TB filesystem (wheee!);
Support for IP multi-tenancy;
Unified snapshots and replication (it was previously a bit of a mess of different tools);
Integrated data copy management (I need to read up on this);
Improved Quality of Service (QoS) and quota management;
Encryption and anti-virus services; and
“Modern” data protection choices.
Storage Pools
Storage Pools have been around since Release 30 of FLARE, but these ones are a bit more capable than their predecessors. All storage resources builds off storage pools. A few of the features include:
Modify operations include create, expand, modify, and delete (still no shrink, as best I can tell); and
Users can monitor and configure storage pools (good for shops with odd requirements).
Users can also view
Current and historical capacity usage;
FAST VP relocation and data distribution across storage pool tiers
Snapshot storage consumption thresholds and deletion policies
Here’s a handy table listing the maximum capacities for Storage Pools on each Unity model.
Note that the file components live inside what EMC calls “NAS Servers”, which are like virtualised data movers. I’ll be looking into these in more depth in the near future.
Speeds and Feeds
Here’s a table covering off the configurations for the various models (excluding the UnityVSA, which I’ll cover off later). Note that the Unity 500 (F) supports 350 drives initially, with 500 being supported in 2H 16. Note also that the Unity 600 (F) supports 500 drives with 1000 being supported in 2H 16.
A DPE has two Storage Processors (SPs), each with:
A single socket CPU Intel Haswell processor with 6-12 cores each
DDR4 DIMM slots
Embedded ports:
2x 1GbE RJ45 ports (management and service)
2x 10GbE RJ45 ports (front-end)
2x CNA ports (front-end; configured during OE install for either FC or Ethernet)
2x mini-HD SAS ports (12Gb SAS DAE connectivity)
1x USB port
Front end connectivity is IP/iSCSI & Fibre Channel
Back end connective to drives is 12Gb SAS
All Unity Hybrid models support the 2U drive enclosure which supports up to twenty five 2.5” drives and/or the 3U drive enclosure which supports fifteen 3.5” drives. Note that the All-Flash models support only the 2U drive enclosure. There is no need for a 3U drive enclosure to be supported as that enclosure is for SAS and NL-SAS.
Here’s a table providing an overview of the (pretty reasonable) range of drives supported.
UnityVSA
You’ve already heard about vVNX. I even wrote about it. The UnityVSA takes that same concept and applies it to Unity, which is pretty cool. The following tables provide information on the basic configuration you’ll need in place to get it up and running.
There are a few different editions as well, with the 10TB and greater versions being made available on a yearly subscription basis with EMC Enhanced support. Pricing and capacity is as follows (note that these are US list prices):
4TB – Free, Community supported
10TB – $2995, EMC supported
25TB – $3995, EMC supported
50TB – $4995, EMC supported
Feature parity is there as much as it can be for a virtual system.
Unity Unisphere
I mentioned at the start of this post that Unisphere no longer uses Java. This is seriously good news in my opinion. As well as this, Unity’s new user interface has the following benefits:
Eliminates security concerns using browser plugins (that’s right no one likes you Java);
A sleek and clean look and feel; and
A flat UI, allowing all functions to be accomplished on the first screen in a category (be it file, block or VMware VVOLS).
As a result of the move to HTML5, a wide range of browsers are now supported, including:
Google Chrome v33 or later;
Internet Explorer v10 or later;
Mozilla Firefox v28 or later; and
Apple Safari v6 or later.
Here’s a screenshot of the new UI, and you can see that it’s a lot different to Navisphere and Unisphere.
Conclusion
I’ve worked with EMC midrange gear for a long time now, and it forms the bread and butter of a number of the solutions I sell and work on on a daily basis. While the VNX2 has at times looked a little long in the tooth, the Unity platform has (based on what I’ve been told so far) shaken off the rust and delivers a midrange array that feels a whole lot more modern than previous iterations of the EMC midrange. I’ll be interested to see how these things go in the field and am looking forward to putting them through their paces from a technical perspective. If you’re in the market for a new mid-range solution it wouldn’t hurt to talk to EMC about the Unity platform.
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