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You are here: Home / All / Tech / Storage / EMC Symmetrix DMX-4: Components

EMC Symmetrix DMX-4: Components

MARCH 16, 2009 BY DEVANG PANCHIGAR2 COMMENTS
In my previous posts on EMC Symmetrix 3, 5, 8 Series and EMCSymmetrix DMX, DMX-2
Series we discussed some important components comprised in these systems. In this post we will
discuss components of EMC Symmetrix DMX-4.
EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 consist of 1 System Bay and (1 upto 8) Scalable Storage Bays. Each
Storage Bay can hold up to 240 Disk Drives totaling 1920 drive in 8 Storage bays or 1024 TB
System. Systems with special requirements can be configured to 2400 drives instead of standard
1920 drives.
The primary bay is the System Bay which includes all directors, service processor, adapters, etc,
while the Storage Bay contains all the disk drives, etc.

System Bay (1 Bay)

Channel directors: Front End Directors (FC, ESCON, FICON, GigE,iSCSI), these are the I/O
Directors.
Disk directors: Back End Directors (DA), these control the drives in the System.
Global memory directors: Mirrored Memory available with DMX-4, Memory Director sizes
range from 8GB, 16GB, 32GB or 64GB totaling 512GB (256GB mirrored).

Disk adapters: Back End Adapters, they provide an interface to connect disk drives through the
storage bays.
Channel adapters: Front End Adapters, they provide an interface for host connection
(FC, ESCON, FICON, GigE, iSCSI).
Power supplies: 3 Phase Delta or WYE configuration, Zone A and Zone B based Power
Supplies, maximum 8 of them in the system bay.
Power distribution units (PDU): One PDU per zone, 2 in total.
Power distribution panels (PDP): One PDP per zone, 2 in total, power on/off, main power.
Battery backup Unit (BBU): 2 Battery backup modules, 8 BBUunits, between 3 to 5 mins of
backup power in case of a catastrophic power failure.
Cooling fan modules: 3 Fans at the top of the bay to keep it cool.
Communications and Environmental Control (XCM) modules:Fabric and Environmental
monitoring, 2 XCM located at the rear of the system bay. This is the message fabric, that is the
interface between directors, drives, cache, etc. Environmental monitoring is used to monitor all
the VPD (Vital Product Data).
Service processor components: Keyboard, Video, Display and Mouse. Used for remote
monitoring, call home, diagnostics and configuration purposes.
UPS: UPS for the Service Processor
Silencers: Made of foam inside, different Silencers for System and Storage bays.

Storage bay (1 Bay Minimum to 8 Bays Maximum)

Disk drives: Combination of 73GB, 146GB, 300GB, 400GB, 450GB, 500GB, 1TB and
now EFDs 73GB, 146GB and 200GB available. Speed: 10K, 15K, 7.2K SATA are all
compatible, each RAID Group and each drive enclosure should only have similar speed
drives, similar type drives. 15 drives per Enclosure, 240 per bay, 1920 total in the
system. If the color of the LED lights on the drive is Blue its 2GB speed, if the color of
the LED is green, the speed is 4GB.
Drive Enclosure Units: 16 per Storage Bay, 15 drives per enclosure
Battery Backup Unit (BBU): 8 BBU modules per Storage bay, each BBU support 4 Drive
enclosures

Power Supply, System Cooling Module: 2 per drive enclosure

Link Control Cards: 2 per drive enclosure
Power Distribution Unit (PDU): 1 PDU per zone, 2 in total
Power Distribution Panels (PDP): 1 PDP per zone, 2 in total
In the next couple of post, we will discuss EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 and some of its design
features.

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FILED UNDER: STORAGETAGGED WITH: COMPONENTS, DMX4, EMC, SYMMETRIX

Gestalt - an organized field having properties that cannot be derived from the sum of
component parts; a unified whole
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