PowerMax and VMAX All Flash Solutions Design (Virtual Provisioning Overview)

Question 1

What is virtual provisioning?

Answer 1

ability to present a logical unit to a compute system w/ more capacity than is physically allocated to the LUN

Question 2

What is the shared storage pool called in PowerMax/VMAX?

Answer 2

Storage Resource Pool

Question 3

What is inside the Storage Resource Pool?

Answer 3

contains one or more data pools with one or more internal devices called Data Devices

Question 4

How do writes work on PMax and VMAX?

Answer 4

when write is performed to portion of thin device the array allocates a minimum allotment of physical storage from the SRP

storage than mapped to a region on the thin device including the region that is targeted by the write

Question 5

How are writes allocated?

Answer 5

performed in small units of storage called virtually provisioned device extents

each VPDE is 128KB

Question 6

What are the elements related to thin provisioning on PowerMax?

Answer 6

disk groups
virtual provisioning pools
storage resource pools
service levels
storage groups

Question 7

What thin provisioning elements come preconfigured on the array?

Answer 7

disk groups
data pools w/ data devices (TDATs)
storage resource pools
service levels

Question 8

What is the relation between Solution Enabler and Unisphere w/ thin provisioning?

Answer 8

preconfigured elements can be viewed through SE and Unisphere but no modifications are allowed

Question 9

What thin provisioning element can be reconfigured in Solution Enabler?

Answer 9

storage groups that are logical collections of thin devices

Question 10

What is a TDAT?

Answer 10

a device that provides physical storage for thin pools

Question 11

What is a TDEV?

Answer 11

thin devices that are provisioned physical storage through TDATs

Question 12

How can you view configured SRPs in Unisphere?

Answer 12

Storage > Storage Resource Pool

Question 13

How can you view configured SRPs in Solutions Enabler?

Answer 13

using the symcfg list -srp -v -sid <SymmID> command.</SymmID>

Question 14

What is a Service Level?

Answer 14

defines the expected average response time target for an application

Question 15

What is the default service level for a storage group?

Answer 15

Optimized

Question 16

What are the workload types available for service levels on VMAX?

Answer 16

small block OLTP
large block DSS

Question 17

What is a small block OLTP workload?

Answer 17

online transactional processing

typically involves inserting, updating or deleting small amounts of data in a database

mainly deals with a large number of transactions by a large number of users

Question 18

What is a large block DSS workload?

Answer 18

decision support system

information system that supports business or organizational decision making activities

Question 19

What are the predefined service levels available on PMax?

Answer 19

Optimized
Bronze
Silver
Gold
Platinum
Diamond

Question 20

Why have workload types been abandoned on PowerMax service levels?

Answer 20

system can handle workload changes without affecting the response time of the chosen SL

Question 21

What is selecting the workload type used for for service levels on VMAX?

Answer 21

to refine the service level which narrows the latency range

specify whether to account for any overhead to account for for replication purposes

Question 22

How can you view service levels on Solutions Enabler?

Answer 22

symcfg list -sl -detail -sid <SymmID> command.</SymmID>

Question 23

What should be considered about a TDEV upon creation?

Answer 23

associated w/ the default SRP and Optimized SL

device automatically in ready state

device inherits SRP and SL from SG