Accelerated SAN Essentials

Course overview

This 5-day course provides a comprehensive and accelerated understanding of SAN technologies and concepts. Students will gain the experience needed to tackle the challenges of working in enterprise class SAN environments.

Prerequisites

• Basic technical understanding of networking and storage, concepts and terminology.
• Experience managing Windows or UNIX systems.
• Recommended free web-based training: SAN Fundamentals (U5527aae)

Audience

• This course is designed for technical professionals seeking an accelerated learning path that includes both conceptual knowledge of Fibre Channel SAN technologies and experience in heterogeneous SAN environments

Ways to save

Next steps

• EVA 1: Managing HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (UC420S)
• HP StorageWorks XP 1: Configuration and Management (H6773S)

Benefits to you

Course outline

Introduction

• What is a SAN? / Why a SAN?
• Definition of a SAN
• HP SAN goals
• Fast backup and restore
• Business continuance
• High availability
• Server and Storage consolidation
• Efficiency improvements
• Centralized management
• DAS, NAS and SAN
• Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
• Network Attached Storage (NAS)
• Storage area Network (SAN)
• SAN considerations
• Comparing SAN and NAS
• DAS versus NAS versus SAN
• Comparison by purpose
• SAN components
• Host, target and interconnect device characteristics
• Power-on sequence

Fibre Channel - Basics

• Why not SCSI?
• SAS vs. parallel SCSI
• World Wide Name (WWN)
• Fibre Channel WWN
• Nodes, Ports and Links
• SAN Topologies
• Point-to-point topology
• Arbitrated loop topology
• Arbitrated loop hubs
• Private and public loop
• Switched fabric topology
• Topology comparison
• Fibre Channel port types
• Fibre Channel architecture - Functional levels
• FC-0 - Physical level
• Transceivers
• Fibre Channel cabling
• Multi and single-mode fiber
• Single-mode step-index fiber
• Attenuation
• Dispersion
• Cable bends and damage
• FC-1 Coding layer and encoding process
• FC-2 - Signaling Protocol level
• Fibre Channel terminology
• Frame structure and header
• Cisco EISL header
• SCSI (FCP) write operation
• Class of service
• FC-3 Common Services
• FC-4 ULP mappings

Fibre channel switches

• Principal switch
• Upstream and Downstream links
• Frame routing - FSPF
• Flow- and Exchange-based routing
• ISL bandwidth aggregation
• B-series Trunk
• C-series portchannel
• FSPF and host-based load balancing
• Virtual fabrics
• B-series virtual fabrics
• C-series virtual SANs (VSANs)
• Switches and Directors
• B-series and C-Series product families
• Device management

SAN hosts

• Hosts and Fibre Channel
• Virtualization for hosts
• HP Integrity Virtual Machines
• NPIV - N_Port Virtualization
• Brocade Access Gateway
• Cisco N_Port Virtualixation
• Boot from SAN
• Host preparation and install
• HBA installation
• Windows connectivity - Device Manager
• Windows Disk Manager
• Local HBA management
• Verifying HBA installation hp-uxv
• HBA interrogation
• Agile addressing hp-ux 11i v3
• Multiple paths to storage
• Multi-path concepts
• Automatic path failover
• Load balancing
• Microsoft Multi-Path I/O (MPIO)
• Microsoft storage stack
• MPIO driver modules
• DSM utilities
• Secure Path introduction
• File systems - properties
• Secure Path introduction
• Secure Path Management Tool

Disk targets

• Disk Drives
• Standard disk driver interfaces
• Parallel ATA/IDE and SCSI
• SATA (Serial ATA)
• SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
• SAS device limitations
• Solid State Drive Technology
• SCSI-3 command set and encapsulation
• RAID - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
• Disk enclosures
• Disk drive connections
• LUN masking
• Storage Virtualization
• Fabric Based virtualization
• Hp StorageWorks SVS200
• HP StorageWorks arrays
• Array Configuration Utility - MSA 1000, 1500, 2000
• Command View EVA
• Command View XP AE

Fibre Channel advanced

• Fibre Channel addressing
• FC-AL Loop IDs and AL-Pas
• Addressing public NL_Ports
• Loop ID to ALPA conversion
• Ordered sets and primitives
• Primitive signals and sequences
• Flow control
• FCP write I/O class 2
• Link services
• Fabric login
• N_Port login sequence
• Well known addresses
• Fabric services
• Name Server detail
• Registered State Change Notification
• Fabric zoning and zone members
• Zone enforcement
• Zoning granularity
• Traffic Isolation Zones
• QoS Zones
• Fabric segmentation

SAN design

• SAN architecture choices and considerations
• Planning process
• Defining the infrastructure requirements
• Approaches to simplified design
• HP Standard SAN topologies
• Design using HP SAN topologies
• Cascaded Fabric
• Ring, meshed and core-edge Fabrics
• Initial cost of deployment
• Data locality
• Topology data access usage
• SAN infrastructure performance factors
• Level 1: Single connectivity fabric
• Level 2: Single resilient fabric
• Level 3: Single resilient fabric with multiple device paths
• Level 4: Multiple fabrics and device paths
• HP StorageWorks SAN Design Reference Guide
• B-Series, C-Series and M-Series port topology maximums
• Review - Solution design and complexities

iSCSI

• IP storage and protocols
• Overview of iSCSI
• iSCSI/FC SAN
• iSCSI stack and encapsulation
• iSCSI packet and Host Driver
• iSCSI initiators
• iSCSI name support and structure
• iSNS
• iSCSI target discovery and operations
• iSCSI authentification
• iSCSI CHAP example
• IP security
• iSCSI advantages over FC
• LeftHand Networks
• LeftHand SAN/iQ
• Network RAID-ADP
• Virtual Ip Address (VIP)
• Snapshot Mechanism using SAN/iQ
• Clustering using SAN/iQ
• Disaster Recovery using SAN/iQ

SAN extension

• What is a SAN extension?
• Why extend the SAN?
• HP Supported SAN extension technologies
• SAN Extension - distance summary
• Long Wave Transceivers
• Dense and coarse Wave Division Multiplexing
• Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP)
• FCIP Encapsulation and Virtual Channels
• FCIP Jumbo Packets
• FCIP performance
• Brocade Fastwrite
• Cisco Write Acceleration
• FCIP compression
• IP network considerations and best practices
• FCIP security - encryption and advantages
• FCIP hardware
• Fibre Channel routing overview
• Fabric and VSAN independence
• SAN scaling
• Fabric services limits
• Fibre Channel routing implementations
• B-Series and C-Series routing differences
• Routing through an IP network

FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet

• FCoE Overview
• What is FCoE
• FCoE I/O consolidation
• Preservation of Native Fibre Channel Format
• FCoE Encapsulation and Frame Format
• Lossless Ethernet
• FCoE and ethernet traffic
• FC and FCoE address mapping
• Comparison FCIP, iSCSI and FCoE

SAN management

• Storage management tasks
• Why storage management?
• Storage Resource Management
• HP Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)
• Information Lifecycle Management
• SAN management concepts
• HP SAN Management strategy
• SAN performance management
• Storage capacity management
• SMI-S
• Storage Essentials
• Standard versus Enterprise Edition plug-ins
• Description of Base Components
• System Manager
• Capacity Manager
• Performance Manager
• Application Viewer
• Policy Manager
• Event Manager
• Database Viewer
• Exchange Viewer
• File System Viewer
• Backup Manager
• HP StorageWorks Fabric Manager
• HP Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM)
• Cisco Fabric Manager

Data Protection

• Challenges in Data Protection
• Recovery Operations
• Protection and Recovery methods
• Data Protection Technologies
• Direct backup - tape
• Centralized server backup
• Automated centralized backup
• Centralized SAN backup
• Tape Libraries
• Zoning for backup
• Backup performance considerations
• Virtual Tape Libraries
• Disk to Tape
• Data replication
• Split-mirror backup concept
• Snapshot backup concept
• De-duplication
• How Accelerated De-duplication Works
• How Hash Based Chunking Works
• How Hash Based Chunking Performs restores
• Disk to Dsik and virtual library portfolio with duplication
• Remote replication
• HP StorageWorks Continuous Access EVA (CA EVA)
• Synchronous and Asynchronous replication
• Comparing replication modes
• HP OpenView Storage Mirroring
• OVSM mirroring - full and file difference

Data protection

• Protection and recovery methods
• Data protection technologies
• Direct backup -- tape
• Tape libraries
• Zoning for backup
• Backup performance considerations
• Virtual Tape Libraries
• Disk to Tape
• Data replication
• Split-mirror and snapshot backup concepts
• Remote, synchronous and asynchronous replication
• Comparing replication modes
• HP StorageWorks Storage Mirroring

SAN performance

• SAN performance objectives
• Performance factors
• PCI-X performance balancing
• Bus and Device Utilization
• I/O Performance Data
• Fibre Channel technology
• Fibre performance
• ISL Oversubscription
• Hop latency
• Data Priority - Quality of Service
• Device attachment points
• Distance considerations and maintaining performance in an extended SAN
• Distributed fabrics
• Extended distance topology
• Disk drive performance
• RAID and RAID selection
• RAID/disk selection and performance
• Drive selection and performance
• Planning a Disk System
• Data caching technologies and write-back caching
• Cache coherency in dual controller configurations
• Effects of cache
• Large sequential read environment
• Server Application
• Selecting Chunk Size
• Improving Performance
• Comparing Vraid1 and Vraid5
• EVAPerf
• Top Talker B-Series