The
technical overview topics provide information about the major concepts you need to understand in
order to use the Lenovo Storage V series
system.
Lenovo Storage V series overview
Each Lenovo Storage V series system is a virtualizing RAID storage system. Lenovo Storage V3700 V2, Lenovo Storage V3700 V2 XP, and Lenovo Storage V5030 systems are Lenovo Storage V series systems.
Array configurations
An array is an ordered configuration, or group, of physical devices (disk drive or flash drive modules) that is used to define logical volumes or devices. An array is a type of MDisk that is made up of disk drives; these drives are members of the array. A Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is a method of configuring member drives to create high availability and high performance systems.
Batteries Each node canister in a system contains a battery.
Canisters Canisters are hardware units that are subcomponents of enclosures.
Capacity indicators The system uses base-2 (binary numeral) as capacity indicators for volumes, drives, and other system objects. The management GUI and the command-line interface (CLI) use different abbreviations to indicate capacity, but the value for these capacity indicators is the same.
Copy offload
Offloaded data transfer (ODX) is a feature in Microsoft Windows Server 2012. ODX function frees up hosts and speeds the copy process by offloading the entire orchestration to a storage array.
Copy Services functions The system provides Copy Services functions that can be used to improve availability and support disaster recovery.
Data migration
The system allows you to migrate data across MDisks without interfering with any host applications that are simultaneously accessing or writing data.Lenovo Storage V series allows you to change the array MDisks and storage pools that store a volume's data.
Drives The system supports a range of enterprise-class, nearline-class or flash drives. A drive object represents the physical drive. The system creates this object automatically when a supported drive is detected and a drive ID is assigned.
Easy Tier function
The system includes Easy Tier®, which is a function that responds to the presence of drives in a storage pool that also contains hard disk drives (HDDs). The system automatically and nondisruptively moves frequently accessed data from HDD MDisks to flash drive MDisks, thus placing such data in a faster tier of storage.
Enclosures An enclosure is the basic housing unit for the system. It is the rack-mounted hardware that contains all the main components of the system: canisters, drives, and power supplies. The term enclosure is also used to describe the hardware and other parts that are plugged into the enclosure.
Encryption Lenovo Storage V5030 supports optional encryption of data at rest. Encryption protects against the potential exposure of sensitive user data that is stored on discarded, lost, or stolen storage devices. This system requires an encryption license for each enclosure that supports encryption.
External storage systems An external storage system, or storage controller, is a device that coordinates and controls the operation of one or more disk drives. A storage system synchronizes the operation of the drives with the operation of the system as a whole.
Host clusters A host cluster is a group of logical host objects that can be managed together. For example, you can create a volume mapping that is shared by every host in the host cluster. The systems use internal protocols to manage access to the volumes and ensure consistency of the data. Host objects that represent hosts can be grouped in a host cluster and share access to volumes. New volumes can also be mapped to a host cluster, which simultaneously maps that volume to all hosts that are defined in the host cluster.
Host mapping Mapping is the process of controlling which hosts or host clusters have access to specific volumes within the system.
Host objects
A host object is a logical object that represents a list of worldwide port names (WWPNs) and a list of iSCSI names that identify the interfaces that the host system uses to communicate with the Lenovo Storage V series system. Fibre Channel and SAS connections use WWPNs to identify the host interfaces to the systems. iSCSI names can be either iSCSI qualified names (IQNs) or extended unique identifiers (EUIs).
I/O governing
You can set the maximum amount of I/O activity that a host sends to a volume. This amount is known as the I/O governing rate. The governing rate can be expressed in I/Os per second or MB per second.
I/O groups A pair of nodes is known as an input/output (I/O) group. Depending on the model of your system, either one I/O group or two I/O groups can be configured.
Inventory information email An inventory information email summarizes the hardware components and configuration of a system. Service personnel can use this information to contact you when relevant softwareupdates are available or when an issue that can affect your configuration is discovered. It is a good practice to enable inventory reporting.
MDisks A managed disk (MDisk) is a logical unit (LU) of physical storage. MDisks are either arrays (RAID) from internal storage or LUs that are exported from external storage systems. MDisks are not visible to host systems.
Node canisters Each single processing unit is a node canister, which is also called a node. The two nodes within the enclosure make an I/O group that connects to host systems and optionally, to external storage systems.
Object naming All objects in a system have names that are user-defined or system-generated.
Object overview
The Lenovo Storage V series solution is based on a group of virtualization concepts. Before you set up your system, you must understand the concepts and the objects in the environment.
Performance statistics
Real-time performance statistics provide short-term status information for the Lenovo Storage V series system. The statistics are shown as graphs in the management GUI.
Power supply units Power supply units (PSUs) are subcomponents of enclosures. A PSU takes electrical power and distributes the power to other components in the system.
SAN fabric overview The SAN fabric is an area of the network that contains routers and switches. A SAN is configured into a number of zones. A device that uses the SAN can communicate only with devices that are included in the same zones that it is in. A system requires several distinct types of zones: a system zone, host zones, and disk zones. The intersystem zone is optional.
SANs A storage area network (SAN) is a pool of storage systems that are interconnected to the servers in an enterprise. A SAN administrator is the person responsible for administering the various resources that make up the SAN.
Secure Shell
Secure Shell (SSH) is a client-server network application. Lenovo Storage V series uses Secure Shell to access the Lenovo Storage V series command-line interface (CLI).
Standard and persistent reservations The SCSI Reserve command and the SCSI Persistent Reserve command are specified by the SCSI standards. Servers can use these commands to prevent ports in other servers from accessing particular LUNs.
Storage Management Initiative Specification
The Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) is a design specification of the Storage Management Initiative (SMI) that is launched by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).
Storage pools In general, a pool or storage pool is an allocated amount of capacity that jointly contains all of the data for a specified set of volumes. The system supports two types of pools: parent pools and child pools.
Switches A switch is a component of a Fibre Channel network that enables connections between devices on the network. If the Fibre Channel host interface adapter option is installed, a Lenovo Storage V3700 V2, Lenovo Storage V3700 V2 XP, or Lenovo Storage V5030 system uses switches to connect to host systems and storage devices on the storage area network (SAN). Switches from different vendors can be used together in the system configuration. (If the Fibre Channel option is not installed, the system might have a SAS or iSCSI host interface adapter. Lenovo Storage V series systems can also support 10 Gbps Ethernet host interface adapters for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity.)
System layers An Lenovo V series family system is in one of two layers: the replication layer or the storage layer.
Systems A volume storage system is a collection of control enclosures.
Throttles Throttling is a mechanism to control amount of resources that are used when the system is processing I/Os on supported objects. The system supports throttles on hosts, host clusters, volumes, copy offload operations, and storage pools. If a throttle limit is defined, the system either processes the I/O for that object, or delays the processing of the I/O to free resources for more critical I/O operations.
Updating hardware options
The Lenovo Storage V series hardware can be updated with options installed during the initial installation or at another time.
User roles
Each user of the management GUI must provide a user name and a password to sign on. Each user also has an associated role such as monitor, copy operator, service, administrator, or security administrator. These roles are defined at the clustered system level. For example, a user can be the administrator for one system, but the security administrator for another system.
Volumes A volume is a logical disk that the system presents to attached hosts.