The technical overview topics provide information about the major concepts you need to
understand to use the
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, Lenovo Storage V5030, and Lenovo Storage V5030Fsystems are Lenovo Storage V series systems.
Array configurations An array is an ordered configuration, or group, of physical devices (drives) 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 that provides sufficient power to the node canister to allow an orderly shutdown in the event of a loss of power from the electrical utility.
Call Home Ensure that call home is configured on the system to send notifications to the support center. Call home connects the system to support personnel who can monitor and respond to system events to ensure that your system remains up and running.
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.
Copy offload
Offloaded data transfer (ODX) is a feature in MicrosoftWindows 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.The system allows you to change the array MDisks and storage pools that store a volume's data.
Data Reduction Estimation Tool
The Data Reduction Estimation Tool (DRET) is a command-line, host-based utility for estimating the data reduction savings on block storage devices. To help with the profiling and analysis of existing user workloads that must be migrated to a new system, we provide the highly accurate DRET to support both deduplication and compression. The tool scans target workloads on various legacy storage arrays, merges all scan results, then provides an integrated system-level data reduction estimate.
Drives The system supports a variety of different types of drives and drive classes. These drives are used to create arrays that provide capacity for pools and volumes.
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 Enclosures are rack-mounted hardware that contains several components of the system. Enclosures can be used to extend the capacity of the system. The term enclosure is also used to describe the hardware and other parts that are plugged into the enclosure.
Encryption To use encryption on the system, you must purchase an encryption license, activate the license on the system, enable encryption, and create copies of the keys. If you have not purchased a license, contact a customer representative to purchase an encryption license.To use encryption on the system, an encryption license is required for each enclosure that supports encryption. Only certain models support 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.
Heartbeat notifications Every 24 hours, the system sends a heartbeat notification to support as part of the call home function. Heartbeat notifications are similar to inventory notifications, but are not sent to any local user that is defined on the system. If the system uses call home with cloud services to transmit notifications, the heartbeat notifications are automatically configured and sent to support. If you use call home with email notifications, this notification is automatically sent to support but requires at least one email server is configured, one or more support email users are defined, and the email server is started on the system.
Hosts A host system is a computer that is connected to the system through supported connection protocols. The system supports host connections through Fibre Channel interface, serial-attached SCSI (SAS) connections, or an IP network. To use Fibre Channel or Fibre Channel over Ethernet connections to a storage area network (SAN), an optional host interface adapter must be installed.
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 system uses 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.
I/O governing rate
The I/O governing rate sets the maximum amount of I/O activity that a host sends to a volume. The governing rate can be expressed in I/Os per second or MB per second.
I/O group 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. When a write operation is performed to a volume, the node that processes the I/O duplicates the data onto the partner node that is in the I/O group. After the data is protected on the partner node, the write operation to the host application is completed. The data is physically written to the disk later.
Storage Insights Storage Insights is an IBM Cloud software as a service offering that can help you monitor and optimize the storage resources in the system and across your data center.
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.
Management GUI The system includes an easy-to-use management GUI to help you to monitor, manage, and configure your system.
MDisks A managed disk (MDisk) is a logical unit of physical storage. MDisks are not visible to host systems. MDisks are either arrays (RAID) from internal storage or volumes from external storage system.
Node canisters Each single processing unit is a node canister, which is also called a node. The two nodes within the control enclosure make an I/O group that is attached to the SAN fabric. 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
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 system. To access these performance statistics, click Monitoring > Performance in the management GUI. In addition, the management GUI displays an overview of system performance, in the Performance section on the Dashboard.
Power supply units Power supply units (PSUs) are subcomponents of enclosures. A PSU takes electrical power from the rack Power Distribution Units (PDUs) and distributes the power to other components in the enclosure.
SAN fabric The SAN fabric is an area of the network that contains routers and switches. A Storage Area Network (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. The system uses Secure Shell to access the system 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 standard pools (parent pools and child pools) and data reduction pools.
Support assistance Support assistance enables support personnel to access the system to complete troubleshooting and maintenance tasks. You can configure either local support assistance, where support personnel visit your site to fix problems with the system, or remote support assistance. Both local and remote support assistance uses secure connections to protect data exchange between the support center and system. More access controls can be added by the system administrator.Assistance can be provided at your location or through a remote connection to your system.
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 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. systems can also support 10 Gbps Ethernet host interface adapters for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity.)
System layers
The system layer affects how the system interacts with a SAN Volume Controller system and other external Lenovo Storage V series systems.
Systems Volume storage systems are collections of control enclosures.
Throttles
Throttles are a mechanism to control the 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 system hardware can be updated with options installed during the initial installation or at another time.
Updating the system code
Lenovo recommends that you update to the latest revision of software on the system. Installed hardware options might require a specific revision level to enable the hardware functionality.
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 or security administrator. These roles are defined at the 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.