SPEED Unity Flashcards
What is the buffer cache size of each system?
380 - 33.5GB
480 - 55GB
680 - 112GB
880 - 244GB
What is the core count of each system
380 - Intel Broadwell 6 core
480 - Intel Skylake - 16 core
680 - Intel Skylake - 24 core
880 - Intel Skylake - 32 core
What is the front end connectivity of the 480 and higher?
8 x 10GbE or 8 x 25GbE optical - additional connectivity requires IO modules
How would you go about increasing bandwidth or drive count on a Unity 480 or higher?
adding SAS Buses
What benefit does write caching have on performance?
2 x CNA (FC or Ethernet) per SP
2x 10G BASE-T per SP
What are all the IO modules available for Unity?
4 port 32Gb FC
4 port 10Gb Base T
4 port 10GbE optical
4 port 25GbE optical
4 port 12Gb/s SAS (only for 480+)
What are the benefits of adding the 4 port SAS backend 12Gb module?
adds up to 4 more Buses
for systems that require more than 500 drives
can also increase max available bandwidth
What is a drawback of adding the 4 port backend module?
it takes up an expansion slot so leaves only two (1 pair)
shifts bottleneck to front end by limiting front end expandability
What do flash drives love for maximum performance?
queues
ability to process long queues and handle IO internally in parrallel
What is the relationship between DAEs and SAS Buses?
using only the drives in the DPE means only 1 SAS bus is active
What is true about small Unity configurations?
will almost always be drive bound by number of drives when it comes to performance
What is the benefit of adding front end IO Modules?
allows greater bandwidth and IOPS between clients and Unity
more efficiently spreads load across Unity ports and CPU
also improves availability through multi-pathing capabilities
What are the best practices for Unity hardware?
use as many front end ports as possible (spread workload across all available ports)
use all available back-end SAS Buses (cables DAEs to both on-board SAS ports - if SAS IO Module is installed cable DAEs to all 6 buses)
spread flash drives across all available Buses
When should you use 10K SAS drives vs NL-SAS drives for performance reasons?
10K SAS = good overall performance
NL-SAS = good for high bandwidth - use for large IO and sequential access
What is the general rule when it comes to selecting RAID widths?
smaller RAID widths have slightly better performance and availability
larger RAID widths have better usable capacity
What are the supported RAID widths in Unity XT?
RAID 5 = 4+1, 8+1, 12+1
RAID 6 = 4+2, 6+2 10+2 12+2, 14+2
RAID 1/0 = 1+1, 2+2, 3+3, 4+4
What is the rule with dynamic pools and RAID width?
will adopt the largest stripe width possible with the drive count used to create the pool
What is the required space allocation for metadata on Unity?
1-3%
fixed amount per object - variable amount as object grows
How is metadata stored on Unity?
physically separates all metadata from user data by placing them on separate slices within pool
metadata slices placed in highest tier (even if actual data is residing on Lowest Available tier)
FAST VP will promote any metadata slices that get allocated to lower tiers
What is true about RAID in Unity pools?
cannot change RAID type but can change RAID widths between drives in each pool
not optimal
What do the system drives store in Unity?
persistent database (system configuration)
What is the benefit of promoting metadata to flash?
removes most of the metadata lookup latency from the IO path
removes the metadata operations from spinning disks
allows for better optimizations for data access on spinning disk
What is true about thick LUNs on Unity?
same metadata capacity overhead as thin LUNs but provide lower IO overheads w/ less block map lookup required,
but also have no snapshot, replication, or DR capability
What is the result of thin LUNs having more IO overhead than thick LUNs?
increases CPU utilization and possible back-end drive IOPS
for systems that are CPU or drive bound - thin LUNs will have less performance
Why is IO overhead more on thin LUNs than thick LUNs?
must do a pointer operation that thick LUNs don’t have to do
How much capacity does a NAS Server take up on Unity?
3.5GB total (1GB of data and 2.5GB of overhead) - doesn’t grow
Why is maximum file performance on Unity typically half of its block performance?
file system access can result in multiple indirect access
writes can incure additional overhead as file metadata is updated
unity file systems require buffer cache for both data and metadata so they compete
How is data synchronized between SPs on Unity?
CMI interconnect
What is key to know about multi-core optimization for Unity?
for block protocols specifically
assigns a single CPU core to service all IO on a given front end port (IO processing most efficient when completely serviced by the same core)
What kind of multipathing does Unity have?
FE - IO redirection between SPs to improve availability
BE - both SPs have direct SAS connections to drives - CMI can transfer data for higher efficiency between SPs