Detailed Introduction about VMAX | Overview to VMAX Models and Components

VMAX Introduction

Hi Guys,

Today we will see some important specifications or components by which EMC VMAX became world wide leader in SAN Storage.

To know more about the VMAX Generations, refer the page http://www.sanadmin.net/2016/06/detailed-about-emc-vmax-generations.html

This Symmetrix product is the main reason for the rapid growth of EMC in the 1990s, both in size and value, from a company valued hundreds of millions of dollars to a multi-billion company.

EMC VMAX

VMAX Models:

Single Engine (SE)

VMAX Series

Model comparison

Types of Bays:

Storage Bay / Disk Bay – It consists of Disks, Link control cards, Power supplies and Standby power supply.

System Bay – It consists of Engines, Directors ( Backend I/O module and Frontend I/O module), Fan modules, Power supply and KVM ( Keyboard virtual monitor).

Engine Front view

Engine Rear view Specifications 2

System and Storage Bay

We can configure maximum of 10 Storage Bays (5 on left and 5 on right side of the System Bay).

Components of a Storage Bay:

Components of a Storage Bay

A Storage Bay consists of either eight or sixteen Drive Enclosures, and eight SPS modules. Symmetrix V-Max arrays are configured with capacities of up to 120 disk drives for a half populated bay or 240 disk drives for a full populated bay. Each Drive Enclosure includes the following components: redundant power and cooling modules for disk drives, two Link Control Cards, and 5 to 15 disk drive.

In simple

1 Storage Bay consists of 16 DAE’s to maximum.

10 Storage Bay = 10 X 16 = 160 DAE’s.

1 DAE = 15 Disks.

1 Storage Bay = 15 X 16 = 240 Drives.

10 Storage Bay = 240 X 10 = 2400 Drives.

Key benefits over DMX:

Difference between DMX & VMAX

1 VMAX Engine with Storage Bays

1 Engine installation

The Symmetrix V-Max array requires at least one V-Max Engine in the System Bay. As shown, the first engine in the System Bay will always be Engine 4 as counted starting at 1 from the bottom of the System Bay. In this example, Engine 4 has two half populated Storage Bays. One bay is directly attached and the second is a daisy chain attached Storage Bay. This allows for a total of 240 drives. To populate the upper half of these Storage Bays with drives you will need to add another V-Max Engine.

2 VMAX Engines with Storage Bays