emc use of scsi disks 1

[tgafford]

current emc systems seem to use mostly fibre channel disks.

are any current emc products using scsi disks?

which (if any) in the last 5 years or so used scsi disks?

any recommendations on resellers who break emc systems down and reconfigure them?

 

[comtec17]

Clarrion

 

[tgafford]

thanks, but which Clariion? can you point to any manuals? FC4700 and 5400 docs say they are all FC disks.

 

[maultier]

The Scsi clariions are in the C1000 thru C3000 series. Park Place Intl , BL Assoc and TLC are a few of the resellers I know of. There are others. Just search the net for Aviion or Clariion resellers.. There's one outfit on Ebay that's selling a lot of old DG gear. Might want to try there.

 

[tgafford]

thanks, that is very helpful. any systems since the SCSI Clariions that also use scsi drivees, or was that the end of the line? what technology did the EMC systems that were available contemporaneous with EMC's acquisition of Clariion use for disk connections?

 

[maultier]

I'm not sure I understand what your asking but, I'll give it a go. The FC4xxx and FC5xxx series replaced the Scsi Clariion product. That product line is currently being replaced by the CX series Clariion product (also fibre). The Aviion product line that EMC acquired with the Clariion when they purchased Data General, is capable of attaching either SCSI Clariion or the FC Clariion series raid boxes. The only difference is the the adapter used (SCSI or Fibre). Like many systems, the Aviions could have internal scsi disks unrelated to the Clariion product. Some used Mylex controllers to configure Raid solutions with the internal drives. Others were just configured with the standard Scsi configs. I think that should answer your question. If you want to know if you can use the drives inside the carriers for something else.. yes, but they'd have to be reformated to 512 bytes/sector. Clariion uses a 520 format.

 

[tgafford]

what were the model names of the system(s) emc sold right around the time they acquired Clariion?

did those use scsi drives?

am i correct that no current EMC system uses scsi drives?

 

[maultier]

EMC's current storage solutions use fibre channel scsi disks. Systems in production around the the time of the acquisition were the Aviion Numa AV25 and AV 35000. The low end was the AV1400 and some models in between. They did use internal scsi drives with the 68 and 80 pin interfaces (wide scsi).

 

[liamfogarty]

All EMC symm products (until the latest release DMX) use a scsi backend, so they are all scsi drives. This has been the case since the symmetrix series first came out.

The newer model uses fibre drives.


Liam

 

[tgafford]

thanks. any idea if these pre-dmx symmetrix models use any scsi bus repeaters in their internal scsi plumbing?

 

[liamfogarty]

The DMX design is based on the design of the EMC/DG clariion. So I do not believe there are any Scsi repeaters in there ( pretty sure )


try

https://powerlink.emc.com/LowFreq/P_PL_C1005_2_emc_symmetrix_dmx_series_ds_ldv.pdf

for the product manual

hope this helps
Liam

 

[Chacalinc]

As liamfogarty sais, all symm boxes before DMX use SCSI disks. Symmetrix (no DMX) does not use SCSI repeaters interbally.

>> any recommendations on resellers who break emc systems down and reconfigure them? <<

I installed 2nd hand Symmetrix a lots of time & I can tell you who can sell this (2nd hand) boxes... what is your exactly question? what do you want to do?

Cheers.

 

[tgafford]

thanks. What I want to do is to buy a scsi repeater / hub component from an EMC storage system. And buy a small example system, for some testing I want to do. It sounds like they just never used repeaters in any product.

Is EMC's architecture the sort where a SCSI controller local to the array drives the string of disks and they just don't need fancy SCSI plumbing or extension? other raid vendors have the controller far enough from the disk string that they need the repeater to drive the disk backplane, because it doesn't work well to connect a bunch of disks to the very end of a significant length of SCSI cable.

 

[Chacalinc]

Hi tgaffor,

I think you have a mistake about the Summetrix architecture. Inside the Symetrix you have directors, boards who controls either channel (SCSI, FC, ESCON, Parallel, Remote Directors), memory boards and disks (disk directors). Each disk director (DA in Symmetrix nomenclature) has 4 SCSI buses, each bus -depending of the symmetrix model- can have up to 16 scsi drives, so the length of the scsi bus (per bus) is not longer than 1 meter (12 feet).. with this length it does not need repeaters internally.

Take a look to the symmetrix 8000 product guide and you will see how is internally.

Cheers.

 

[tgafford]

thanks. I tried looking at the document linked a few posts above, but I am not a member of that emc group and my attempt to join is was rejected by emc since I don't own an emc product. Is there an open site where emc docs are posted?

It sounds like a 'director' has a port controller (SCSI or whatever) to link to the host, and several SCSI controllers that connect to disk strings located nearby, and presumably a processor to handle the transfers and housekeeping. Is it the case then, that there are *NO* EMC products that use SCSI repeaters / expanders / hubs? (that is, devices that don't occupy a bus ID and just connect one bus to another)

 

[Chacalinc]

Pls, download and read this product guide. Inside you will find the diagram of the architecture:

http://www.emc.com/pdf/products/symmetrix/c756_sym8k_pdg.pdf

hope this help you.