EMC Symmetrix VMAX physical layout

A visualization tool from EMC is called the Symmetrix System viewer and is available on their support site. Here is screenshot showing a 4 engine, 4 drive bay VMAX 40k configuration:

Symmetrix System Viewer

The system bay is where the front end connectivity to the SAN fabric will be made by customers, it is the middle cabinet in the picture above. Fibre connections will be made to the Symmetrix front-end modules(FAs) on the engine as required. Below is a picture of the engine with FC front-end ports and their labels of E0 to H1 per director. For the purposes of redundancy and best practices, it is best to not make FA connections to the same director per host.

So for example to make an FA fibre connection to 7H0 in the Symmetrix system bay you would find Engine 4 and on the odd director (7) it would port H0 on the right side.

For engine to director mappings and install order of the engine refer to the list of the System bay below:

VMAX Directors in Engine Layout and Order of installation

 Directors 15 & 16 in Engine 8 - 8th 
 Directors 13 & 14 in Engine 7 - 6th 
 Directors 11 & 12 in Engine 6 - 4th 
 Directors  9 & 10 in Engine 5 - 2nd 
 _______________________________
Directors  7 & 8 in Engine 4 - 1st  
 Directors  5 & 6 in Engine 3 - 3rd  
 Directors  3 & 4 in Engine 2 - 5th  
  Directors  1 & 2 in Engine 1 - 7th   

Finally below is a system layout with 8 Engines, 4 directly connected and 6 daisy chained storage bays. Generally storage bays and disk are installed by EMC support.

EMC VMAX 8-Engine system

Upgrading Brocade FOS and adding new Brocade FC switch

Steps to adding a new brocade(B-series) switch to an existing fabric. The new switch in will be an edge/subordinate switch in a core-edge topology.

Prerequisites:

• Brocade firmware version on new switch should be upgraded/downgraded as required by fabric/interop

Downgrade/Upgrade step if required:
swd21:admin> firmwaredownload
Server Name or IP Address: 10.2.1.3
User Name: anonymous
File Name: /v622b
Network Protocol(1-auto-select, 2-FTP, 3-SCP) [1]: 2
Password:
Server IP: 10.2.1.3, Protocol IPv4
Checking system settings for firmwaredownload...
System settings check passed.

You can run firmwaredownloadstatus to get the status
of this command.

This command will cause a warm/non-disruptive boot on the switch,
but will require that existing telnet, secure telnet or SSH sessions
be restarted.


Do you want to continue [Y]: y
Firmware is being downloaded to the switch. This step may take up to 30 minutes.
Preparing for firmwaredownload...
Start to install packages...
dir                         ##################################################
ldconfig                    ##################################################
 -------------------------output cut---------------------------------------
[5]: Jan 1 17:44:34 2012
Firmwaredownload command has completed successfully. Use firmwareshow to verify the firmware versions.

swd21:admin> firmwareshow
Appl     Primary/Secondary Versions
------------------------------------------
FOS      v6.2.2b
             v6.2.2b

• Setup 'switchname', snmp as required.
• Check date. set ntp server with 'tsclockserver set timezone' & 'tstimezone --interactive'
  
• Disable switch and set Domain ID (DID must unique)
• Check/clear config : cfgshow
• sw21:admin> cfgclear
  The Clear All action will clear all Aliases, Zones, FA Zones
  and configurations in the Defined configuration.
  cfgSave may be run to close the transaction or cfgTransAbort
  may be run to cancel the transaction.
  Do you really want to clear all configurations?  (yes, y, no, n): [no] yes 
• Now enable switch with 'switchenable'
 

Connecting new switch:

• You can connect the new switch via an ISL to the Core switch. ISL should be created similar SNMP message. You can also confirm via 'islsow' on both switches.

Info    Fabric Event    ISL [ Domain 21 (16) Port 16 (10) - Domain10 (a) Port29 (1c) ] Created    Jan 1 19:41:35 2012   

•  Clear port counters/errors on ISL and monitor.