Description
EMC CX4-960 Overview
EMC CLARiiON CX4 model 960 enables you to handle the most data-intensive workloads and large consolidation projects. The CX4-960 combines CLARiiON five 9s availability with innovative technologies like fully automated storage tiering, Flash drives, virtual provisioning, 64-bit operating system, and multi-core processors.
Meet your performance demands today and scale up to 1920TB to handle future growth. Enjoy UltraFlex technology, which gives you dual-protocol, online-expandable connectivity options, and the ability to integrate future technologies. And leverage advanced CX4 functionality to protect your data from unexpected events and to decrease energy use.
Leverage flexible connectivity options, online expansion, and the ability to integrate future technologies.
EMC CX4-960 Pricing, Maintenance & Support, Installation
Vilis Systems offers the best deals on used and refurbished EMC CX4-960 storage equipment. Either click on the Price Quote or Support Quote buttons above or call us at 952-314-5905 to get assistance from one of our solution architects today. If you’re looking to sell your EMC CX4-960 we have a great asset recovery program to help you get the most out of your idle IT storage equipment. We offer EMC CX4-960 Support & Maintenance for hardware you already own and newly purchased equipment from Vilis Systems for up to 5 years. Our EMC experts are also able to help you with the installation of any EMC CLARiiON solution.
CX4-960 Major Subassemblies
The minimum CX4-960 assembly consists of a single 4U storage processor enclosure (SPE), a 2U standby power supply (SPS, and a 3U 4Gb/s UltraPoint disk-array enclosure (DAE), for a total of 9U. A fully configured CX4-960 consists of the SPE and dual SPS, plus 64 3U DAEs, for a total of 201U. This requires the use of five additional cabinets. Minimum and maximum configurations for the CX4-960 assembly are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Minimum and Maximum CX4-960 Configurations
The dual SPS, SPE, and DAE assemblies are rackmounted for efficiency, and provide you with many different configuration options. The CLARiiON 40U cabinet—with industry-standard 19-inch racks—can house different configurations of CX4 Model 960 systems, as well as Fibre Channel switches (1U and/or 2U) and/or Ethernet network switches. The standard 40U cabinet comes with four Power Distribution Units (PDUs) and four Power Distribution Panels (PDPs). Power supplies on the left side of the cabinet use the left PDU; power supplies on the right use the right PDU. Additionally, all CLARiiON storage systems can be installed in non-EMC industry-standard cabinets.
CX4-960 Storage Processor
Each CX4-960 SP contains two 2.33 GHz Quad-Core Intel®Xeon®processors. This dual-storage processor architecture provides the power for enhanced performance, stability, and reliability in the CX4-960 storage system. Each CX4-960 SP has 16 GB of ECC protected system memory. There is a PCI Express-x8 CMI channel between the storage processors that is used for communication and messaging between the storage processors as well for mirroring data that is written to the portion of memory designated for write cache on the storage system.
Figure 2. CX4-960 Storage Processor and I/O Annex Area
Figure 2 shows a CX4-960 storage processor enclosure. LEDs provide indications of SP power, boot progress, and fault status. Separate link-port LEDs indicate the speed at which the front- and back-end ports are running. On 8 Gb/s FC modules, green indicates 2 or 4 Gb/s and blue indicates 8 Gb/s. On 4 Gb/s FC modules, green indicates 2 Gb/s and blue indicates 4 Gb/s. Each CX4 Model 960 SP has both iSCSI and Fibre Channel front-end ports.
Each CX4-960 SP connects to at least eight 4 or 8 Gb/s Fibre Channel front-end (FE) ports. These ports, which are small-form-factor pluggable (SFP) optical transceivers, are customer replaceable and have a default setting of auto-negotiate. Using Navisphere Manager or CLI, you can change the settings from auto-negotiate to 1, 2, or 4 Gb/s on 4 Gb/s modules and 2, 4, or 8 Gb/s on 8 Gb/s modules. These FE ports may be connected to a SAN through a transceiver on a switch, or they may be directly connected to a HBA on a server/host.
Each CX4-960 SP connects to at least two iSCSI FE ports. Using Navisphere Manager or CLI, you can change the settings on each iSCSI FE port. The 1 Gb/s iSCSI FE ports can be set to auto-negotiate, 10, 100, or 1000 Mb/s. The 10 Gb/s iSCSI FE ports can be set to either auto-negotiate or 10 Gb/s. These FE ports may be connected to a port on an Ethernet switch, or they may be directly connected to a NIC or iSCSI HBA on a server/host.
Each SP also connects to four (or eight) 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel back-end ports, which, along with the peer SP, form four (or eight) redundant FC back-end loops for disk connectivity and capacity expansion.
Figure 3. CX4-960 I/O and CPU Modules
Figure 3 shows the CPU module and the four I/O module slots for the CX4-960. The CPU module contains the two Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors and the memory DIMMs for each storage processor. Each I/O module slot can be populated with either one FC module or one iSCSI module at initial shipment or post-installation. Each module is a separate field-replaceable unit (FRU), which can be individually replaced should the need arise.
Figure 4. CX4-960 Management Module
Figure 4 shows the management module for the CX4-960. It has two 10/100/1000 Base-T LAN ports, one for Management and one for Service; two micro-DB9 communication ports, one for serial communication and one for SPS sensing; and one 5V USB port. The Management port is used to access and manage the storage processor with the software interface Navisphere, while the Service port is a dedicated port that EMC Customer Service Representatives can use to access the storage processor when they are onsite.
Figure 5. CX4-960 Power Supplies and Cooling
As shown in Figure 5, the CX4-960 SPE has four 24V blower modules and two 1200-watt power supplies. The power supplies and blower modules are front-serviced vertical field-replaceable units (FRUs).
CX4-960 Standby Power Supply
As shown in Figure 6, the CX4-960 SPE uses two 2.4-kilowatt SPSs to maintain power to the storage system during a power loss; this allows a full dump of the write cache to a reserved area on the persistent disk. In the case of the CX4-960, SPS power output connectors are used to power the SPE as well as to power the first DAE on the first back-end loop.
Figure 6. View of CX4-960 Standby Power Supply (SPS)
It is important to cable each SPS so it connects completely to either the A side or the B side. For example, if you are looking at the SPS from the back, they should be configured as follows:
- SPS on the right: Power-out and sense cables should connect to power supply A and SP A.
- SPS on the left: Power-out and sense cables should connect to power supply B and SP B.
If an SPS is cabled with the SPS sense cable going to SP A and the power-out cable going to power supply B (or vice versa), error conditions are displayed when the SPS is tested while it is charging.
