Description
EMC CX4-480 Overview
EMC CLARiiON CX4 Model 480 provides high-capacity networked storage that meets the needs of demanding OLTP workloads and large-scale e-mail environments. With the CX4-480, you can scale seamlessly up to 960TB of storage capacity and consolidate two times the workload in one array than any other storage provider.
Benefit from proven CLARiiON five 9s availability and innovative technologies like fully automated storage tiering, Flash drives, virtual provisioning, 64-bit operating system, and multi-core processors. 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 decrease energy use.
Leverage flexible connectivity options, online expansion, and the ability to integrate future technologies.
EMC CX4-480 Pricing, Maintenance & Support, Installation
Vilis Systems offers the best deals on used and refurbished EMC CX4-480 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 CX4-480, we have a great asset recovery program to help you get the most out of your idle IT storage equipment. We offer EMC CX4-480 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.
CX4-480 Major Subassemblies
The minimum CX4 Model 480 assembly consists of a single 2U storage processor enclosure (SPE), a 1U standby power supply (SPS), and a 3U 4 Gb/s UltraPoint disk-array enclosure (DAE), for a total of 6U. A fully configured CX4-480 consists of the SPE and dual SPS, plus 32 3U DAEs, for a total of 99U, and requires the use of two additional cabinets. Minimum and maximum configurations of the CX4-480 assembly are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Minimum and Maximum CX4-480 Configurations
The dual SPS, SPE, and DAE assemblies are rackmounted for efficiency, and provide many different configuration options. The CLARiiON 40U cabinet—with industry-standard 19-inch racks—can house different configurations of CX4-480, 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 two 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.
CX4-480 Storage Processor
Each CX4 Model 480 SP contains one 2.2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor. This dual-storage processor architecture provides the power for enhanced performance, stability, and reliability in the CX4-480 storage system. Each CX4-480 SP has 8 GB of ECC protected system memory. There is a PCI Express-x4 CMI channel between the storage processors that is used for communication and messaging between the storage processors as well for the mirroring of data that is written to the portion of memory that has been designated for write cache on the storage system.
Figure 2. CX4-480 Storage Processor
Figure 2 shows the air dam for a CX4-480 storage processor. LEDs provide indications of LAN connectivity, SP power, boot progress, and fault status, as well as power supply and blower status. The LEDs also 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 480 SP has iSCSI and Fibre Channel front-end ports.
Each CX4-480 SP connects to at least four 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 CX4-480 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 CX-480 SP also connects to four 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel back-end ports, which, along with the peer SP, form four redundant FC back-end loops for disk connectivity and capacity expansion.
The CX4-480 SP also has two 10/100/1000 Base-T LAN ports, one for Management and one for Service, as well as two micro-DB9 communication ports, one for serial communication and one for SPS sensing. The Management port is used to access and manage the storage processor via Navisphere, while the Service port is a dedicated port used by EMC Customer Service Representatives to access the storage processor when they are onsite.
Figure 3. CX4-480 Power Supplies and Cooling
The CX4-480 SPE uses four 400-watt power supplies supporting N+1 power and N+1 cooling per storage processor. The power supplies contain thermal sensors for Ambient Over-Temperature monitoring. Cooling is achieved through high-speed blowers attached to each power supply module.
A single power supply can power a single storage processor and a single blower can cool a single storage processor. The CX4-480 can run indefinitely with one power supply/blower module faulted or removed on each SP and still maintain high availability.
CX4-480 Standby Power Supply (SPS)
As shown in Figure 4, the CX4-480 SPE uses two 1-kilowatt SPSs to maintain power to the storage system during a power loss to allow for a full dump of the write cache to a reserved area on persistent disk. In the CX-480, both SPS power output connectors are used to power the SPE as well as the first DAE on the first back-end loop.
Figure 4. View of CX4-480 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.
