Best Practices for Deploying Celerra NAS IncludingEMC Proven EMC Professional Proven™ ProfessionalKnowledge Sharing Certification 2009 Ron Nicholl Systems Engineer Sr. [email protected] Large IT Division Table of Contents Introduction......................................................................................................................... 3 Celerra Backend Storage Layout and Configuration.......................................................... 4 CLARiiON Fibre Channel Drives .................................................................................. 5 CLARiiON ATA Drives................................................................................................. 5 CLARiiON Initiator Registration ................................................................................... 7 Symmetrix®..................................................................................................................... 8 Symmetrix Fibre Adaptor Requirements........................................................................ 8 Importing Devices into the Celerra Gateway...................................................................... 9 Implementing a Reliable and Flexible Network Configuration........................................ 10 Planning Windows Domain Interaction............................................................................ 15 Best Practices for Backing up the Celerra Environment .................................................. 17 Quick Reference for adding a Tape Device to the Celerra ............................................... 20 Monitoring the Performance of the Celerra Solution ....................................................... 21 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 24 Additional Resources........................................................................................................ 24 Biography.......................................................................................................................... 24 Disclaimer: The views, processes or methodologies published in this article are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect EMC Corporation’s views, processes or methodologies. 2009 EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 2 Introduction Deploying Celerra® Network Attached Storage (NAS) involves many pieces of the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure ranging from backend storage, network topology, and beyond. Choosing a solid design can make the difference between mediocre performance and exceeding expectations. NAS solutions are quickly becoming a viable alternative to mitigate the cost of a wholly Storage Area Network (SAN) based storage solution. A Celerra NAS solution can offer much of the same functionality seen traditionally on the storage array over Internet Protocol (IP). This functionality includes replication, checkpoints, mirroring and more. You will improve performance and reliability by applying best practices to your design. This article will describe: 1. How to layout the backend storage devices 2. How to implement a network configuration for greater flexibility and reliability 3. Planning Windows domain interaction 4. Best practices for backing up the Celerra environment 5. Monitoring the performance of the Celerra solution There are many components to a successful NAS design. You can leverage the network topology to provide greater scope of service. You can configure the Common Internet File System (CIFS) and network file systems (NFS) clients for greater performance and reliability. Applying standards can lower cost of ownership and improve reliability. This information will help you to optimally configure the Celerra. 2009 EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 3 Celerra Backend Storage Layout and Configuration Layout and configuration of the backend storage is the first consideration to optimize the Celerra. Celerra Gateway is the focus. The integrated Celerras are configured at the time of installation. Pre-defined storage templates that have been tested to uniformly balance performance and availability are applied. The CLARiiON® backend is the most common and cost effective primary storage used in conjunction with the Celerra. You must analyze existing workloads before any CLARiiON can be considered. Individual storage processor (SP) utilization should be well under 50% to accommodate existing performance levels as well as the addition of new NAS activity. Dedicating RAID Groups (RG) to NAS workloads is recommended. Competing workloads will impact performance and make performance estimates difficult; the more spindles you can dedicate to NAS the better. Use the following general settings when creating new Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs): LUN ID: Select the first available value Element Size: 128 Rebuild Priority: ASAP Verify Priority: ASAP Enable Read Cache: Selected Enable Write Cache: Selected Enable Auto Assign: Cleared (off) Number of LUNs to Bind: (see drive type and RAID configuration) Alignment Offset: 0 LUN size: Must not exceed 2 TB 2009 EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 4 CLARiiON Fibre Channel Drives RAID Types: 4+1 or 8+1 RAID 5, 1+1 RAID 1, No restriction RAID 6 Create two LUNs of equal size using the total sum of the RG. Assign LUN to the opposite default owner SP to equally utilize both SPs. CLARiiON ATA Drives RAID Types: 4+1 or 8 + 1 RAID 5, No restriction RAID 6, 4+1 RAID 3 (create one LUN using the entire RG). We recommend RAID 3 for ATA drives with performance coming close to FC for sequential workloads. Create two LUNs using the entire contents of the RG in an 8+1 or a single LUN in a 4+1 RG. Each LUN within the RG needs the same default owner SP to provide the best performance. Only one SP can address the RG at a time. Alternating LUN ownership by RG will evenly distribute utilization across the storage processors. 2009 EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 5 Once the RAID groups have been carved, create the storage group and select the new LUNs. It’s important to change the Host ID (HLU) to 16 or above when adding LUNs to a storage group. The CLARiiON will default to starting with zero for the first LUN added to the storage group. HLU’s 0 -16 are reserved for the Celerra’s internal control volumes. Avoid setting the HLU below 16 because it can cause serious issues. Illustration follows on next page. 2009 EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 6 CLARiiON Initiator Registration Manually register the initiators once the Celerra Gateway has been zoned to the CLARiiON. Always use redundant zoning practices. CLARiiON initiator settings: Hostname: Celerra Gateway Name IP Address: 192.168.1.2 (The data movers do not have a CLARiiON agent. I have chosen the internal IP address for each data mover) Initiator Type: CLARiiON Open Array CommPath: Disabled Failover Mode: 0 Unit Serial Number: Array 2009 EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 7 Symmetrix® The Symmetrix platform can be used for data volumes and is generally recommended as the location for the Celerra’s internal control volumes. We do not recommend the use of Symmetrix meta volumes. Instead, use standard hyper volumes. The Celerra can use standard mirrors, parity RAID, and RAID 5. Standard mirrors are typically used for the highest possible performance. It is important to choose a consistent protection standard if you plan to use the Celerra Automatic Volume Management (AVM). The Celerra will compile all of the devices into a single AVM pool “symm_std.” Just like the CLARiiON, spindle count is important with the Symmetrix. Keeping the hyper sizes small and uniform helps meet this requirement to realize the best performance. Create devices in multiples of eight for use with AVM. If multiples of eight are not possible, use even numbers (8, 4, and 2.) The hyper emulation type must be CELERRA_FBA. An example follows: symconfigure -sid XXX -f filename -nop -v (preview, prepare, commit) Device File: create dev count=X, size=12394, emulation=CELERRA_FBA, config=2-way-mir; Symmetrix Fibre Adaptor Requirements The Celerra requires that Fibre Adaptor (FA) ports have specific configurations. The ports should not be shared with other host types due to these specific FA requirements. Validate current port configuration settings. 2009 EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 8 Specifically check the following: Protocol Flag: State: Common_Serial_Number Disabled Avoid_Reset_Broadcast Enabled Volume_Set_Addressing Disabled symconfigure -sid XXX -f filename -nop -v (preview, prepare, commit) Device File set port XX:X attribute=enable|disable; Importing Devices into the Celerra Gateway Import the devices once they have been created and zoned to the Celerra Gateway using Celerra Manager. Expand the Storage folder and then Systems. You will see a list of the storage systems imported into the Gateway and their health status. Below that is the “rescan” button. This will initiate the scan and subsequent import of new devices across each data mover including the standby. Run the following command on a per data mover basis. server_devconfig server_x –p – scsi –disks to preview what devices will be added during the import process. Example of the output truncated: server_2 : SCSI disk devices : chain= 58, scsi-58 : no devices on chain chain= 59, scsi-59 : no devices on chain chain= 60, scsi-60 : no devices on chain chain= 61, scsi-61 : no devices on chain chain= 62, scsi-62 : no devices on chain chain= 63, scsi-63 : no devices on chain