PowerMax and VMAX All Flash Solutions Design (PowerMax and VMAX All Flash Device Management)

Question 1

What tools are used to manage thin devices (TDEVs)?

Answer 1

Solutions Enabler
SYMCLI

Question 2

What are gatekeeper devices?

Answer 2

devices that have a capacity of three cylinders (6MB)

Question 3

Besides TDEVs what other devices can be managed with SYMCLI and Solutions Enabler?

Answer 3

thin BCV devices
thin SRDF devices

Question 4

What devices come preconfigured and can’t be managed w/ SYMCLI or Solutions Enabler?

Answer 4

data devices that are used in the data pools and internal thin devices the Data Services Hypervisor VMs use

Question 5

What is the Data Services Hypervisor?

Answer 5

PMax/VMAX OS provides a hypervisor running natively

provides storage infrastructure services through VMs

internal thin devices provide storage to these VMs

Question 6

What is the default attribute of TDEVs?

Answer 6

dynamic SRDF capable
SCSI-3 persistent reservation attribute

Question 7

What is the Data Integrity Field (DIF)?

Answer 7

setting on a device that is relevant to Oracle environments

Oracle objects built on devices that have the DIF attribute send 520-byte Command Descriptor Blocks (CDBs) rather than normal 512-byte CDBs

Question 8

What is the affect of DIF attribute being applied and sending 520-byte CDBs instead of 512-byte CDBs?

Answer 8

extra 8 bytes are a checksum that validats the 512 bytes of data

when array receives a CDB on a DIF device it validates Oracle data - if the checksum and data don’t match it rejects the write

Question 9

What format of DIF is supported on PMax/VMAX?

Answer 9

DIF1

Question 10

When is the AS400_K attribute required?

Answer 10

when an AS400 device is used w/ IBM server Task Manager (STM)

also used w/ Celerra NAS

Question 11

What is the SCSI3 attribute used for on TDEVs?

Answer 11

UNIX and Windows cluster software

Question 12

How are TDEVs created?

Answer 12

using the Create Volume wizard

using Storage Group wizard or provision wizard under Service Levels

Question 13

What devices are supported using the Create Volume wizard?

Answer 13

TDEV
thin BCV devices (BCV + TDEV)
thin gatekeepers (virtual gatekeepers)

Question 14

How do you create TDEVs from SYMCLI?

Answer 14

Use the symdev create command

The symconfigure create dev can also be used

Question 15

What does the symconfigure create gatekeeper command result in?

Answer 15

creation of thin devices with 3 cylinders

Question 16

What is the max capacity that can be allocated to a TDEV?

Answer 16

64TB

Question 17

How can you increase the capacity on TDEVs?

Answer 17

online device expansion

Question 18

How can a TDEV be deleted?

Answer 18

using the symconfigure delete or symdev delete commands