Unified Lun Presentation - HP P2000 G3 MSA Technical White Paper

Technical white paper | HP P2000 G3 MSA
The P2000 G3 arrays are 2U storage area network or direct connect solutions (OS and protocol dependent) offering a choice
of five controllers—two FC, one SAS, one 10GbE iSCSI and the newest model features a four port 1 Gb iSCSI. The first Fibre
Channel controller is a high-performance, 8 Gb dual port model. The second offering is a unique dual-purpose Combo
controller with two 8 Gb Fibre Channel ports with the addition of two 1GbE iSCSI ports. The third controller choice is 6 Gb SAS
with four ports per controller. There is also the recent addition of a two port 10 Gb iSCSI, while the latest controller
introduction features four 1 Gb iSCSI ports per controller.
The dual-protocol P2000 G3 MSA FC/iSCSI Combo Controller gives exceptional flexibility. The 8 Gb FC ports support a full FC
SAN while the two 1GbE iSCSI ports can serve two purposes. With this combination you can economically share the array
storage resource with a smaller department accessing it over iSCSI or enable the new optional Remote Snap functionality
over iSCSI protocol (also available over FC).
The P2000 G3 SAS is the follow-on product to the MSA2000sa G2, adding the latest 6 Gb SAS technology to the four host
ports per controller. The P2000 G3 SAS array is designed for directly attaching up to four dual-path or eight single path rack
servers. SAS array support for BladeSystems will continue to come from the MSA2000sa G2.
The P2000 G3 10GbE iSCSI, brings the very latest in high-performance host connection with technology generally found
only in higher priced arrays. The bandwidth it provides in conjunction with server consolidation is highly advantageous in
shared storage configurations. Array connection to 10GbE switches that are in turn connected to 1GbE NICs is commonplace.
Directly attached server support requires the server units to have 10GbE NICs.
The most recent addition is the P2000 G3 iSCSI controller featuring four 1 Gb iSCSI Ethernet ports, double the number of the
G2 model. This allows an array that keeps the price of the components, particularly the interconnects, low while markedly
increasing the performance capabilities.
All P2000 G3 models can be equipped with single or dual controllers, feature the same scalability, and offer 6 Gb SAS back-
end transmission speed to drives and JBODs. Significant data protection advances are delivered by the all P2000 G3 arrays.
First, all G3 units come standard with 64 snapshot capability at no extra cost and there is an option for the G3 series of 512
snapshots. Volume Copy (clone) also comes standard. In a further move to protect the user's data, optional Remote Snap
(replication) capability is offered on the FC or FC/iSCSI versions (only).
The controller-less P2000 chassis is offered in two models—one comes standard with twelve Large Form Factor (LFF) 3.5-
inch drive bays, the other can accommodate twenty-four Small Form Factor (SFF) 2.5-inch drives. Both are able to
simultaneously support enterprise-class SAS drives, SAS Midline, and archival-class SATA Midline drives. Either chassis can
have one or two matching P2000 G3 controllers (same protocol) and are available with AC or DC power supplies.
Additional capacity can easily be added when needed by attaching either the MSA2000 12 bay drive enclosure, the MSA70
drive enclosure, or the D2700 drive enclosure. Configurations utilizing the SFF drive chassis can grow to a total of 149 SFF
drives. The LFF drive chassis can grow up to a total of 96 drives.
Note
Larger hard drives are always in test; refer to hp.com/go/p2000 to get the latest hard drive capacity limits.
In addition to support for Windows® and Linux on x86 and x64 server platforms, the P2000 G3 continues support for HP-UX,
OpenVMS, Windows, and Linux on powerful Integrity servers depending on the protocol.

Unified LUN Presentation

The P2000 G3 uses the concept of Unified LUN Presentation (ULP). ULP can expose all LUNs through all host ports on both
controllers. The interconnect information is managed in the controller firmware. ULP appears to the host as an active-active
storage system where the host can choose any available path to access a LUN regardless of Vdisk ownership.
ULP uses the T10 Technical Committee of INCITS Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) extensions, in SPC-3, to negotiate
paths with aware host systems. Unaware host systems see all paths as being equal.
Overview
ULP presents all LUNs to all host ports
Removes the need for controller interconnect path
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Presents the same World Wide Node Name (WWNN) for both controllers
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