Intelligent Storage Components

Foreword

 This chapter describes the components of the storage system, including the controller enclosure, disk
enclosure, disks, interface modules, and connection modes between enclosures and their respective working
principles.

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 Objectives

Upon completion of this course, you will understand:

 Storage product forms
 Functions and components of controller enclosures and disk enclosures
 Working principles of HDDs and SSDs
 Cables and interface modules for connecting storage enclosures and the connection methods

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosure

2. Disk Enclosure

3. Expansion Module

4. Disk

5. Interface Module

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Storage Product Form

2 U, disk and controller 4 U, disk and controller Integrated bay

integration separation

Note: Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6 is used as the example.

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Controller Enclosure
 The controller enclosure uses a modular design and consists of a system subrack, controllers (with built-in fan modules), BBUs,
power modules, management modules, and interface modules.

Management
Power Module Module
Interface
Module

System Subrack

Controller

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Front View of a Controller Enclosure
Icon Description

Enclosure ID indicator

Enclosure location indicator

1. Blinking blue: The controller enclosure is being
located.
2U controller enclosure (disk and controller integration) 2. Off: The controller enclosure is not located.
Enclosure alarm indicator
1. Steady amber: An alarm is reported by the
controller enclosure.
2. Off: The controller enclosure is working
properly.

Power indicator/Power button

4U controller enclosure (disk and controller separation)

Note: Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6 is used as the example.

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Rear View of a Controller Enclosure
1 2 3 4 5

No. Description
1 Management port
2 Maintenance port
6 7 3 Serial port
4 Interface module
5 Power-BBU module
6 SAS expansion port
7 Interface module
8 Management module
9 Power module
8 9

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Controller
 A controller is the core component of a storage system. It processes storage services, receives configuration
management commands, saves configuration data, connects to disks, and saves critical data to coffer disks.

Controller enclosure
FE FE

Controller Controller
Cache Cache

CPU CPU

BE BE

Disk
enclosure
Cache data

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BBU and Fan Module

BBU latch Fan latch

Fan module

Running/Alarm indicator of the Running/Alarm indicator of the fan

BBU
BBU Front view

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Coffer Disk

2.5-inch coffer disk Palm-sized NVMe coffer SSD

Alarm/Location indicator Alarm/Location indicator

Running indicator Running indicator

Latch Latch

Handle Handle

Disk Disk

Label Label

Note: Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6 is used as the example.

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Power Module
 The AC power module supplies power to the controller enclosure, allowing the enclosure to operate normally at
maximum power. Running/
Alarm indicator
Handle Latch

Power socket
Note: Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6 is used as the example.

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosure

2. Disk Enclosure

3. Expansion Module

4. Disk

5. Interface Module

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Disk Enclosure
 The disk enclosure uses a modular design and consists of a system subrack, expansion modules, power modules, and
disks.
Power Module

Expansion Module

System Subrack

Disk Drive Module

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Front View of a Disk Enclosure
Icon Description

ID indicator of the disk enclosure

Location indicator of the disk enclosure

1. Blinking blue: The disk enclosure is being located.
2. Off: The disk enclosure is not located.
2 U 25-slot SAS disk enclosure
Alarm indicator of the disk enclosure
1. Steady yellow: An alarm is reported by the disk enclosure.
2. Off: The disk enclosure is working properly.

Power indicator of the disk enclosure

1. Steady green: The disk enclosure is powered on.
2 U 36-slot smart NVMe disk enclosure 2. Off: The disk enclosure is powered off.
Power indicator/Power button
1. The disk enclosure is powered on and off with the controller enclosure.
The power button on the disk enclosure is invalid and cannot be used to
Note: This slide shows the front views of a 2 U SAS disk enclosure and a 2 U power on or off the disk enclosure separately.
smart NVMe disk enclosure of Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6.

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Rear View of a Disk Enclosure
4
No. Description
1 Serial port
2 Mini SAS HD expansion port
3 ID display
4 Expansion module
1 2 3 5
5 Power module
2 U SAS disk enclosure 6 Onboard expansion port
7 Onboard management port
8 Power module

Note: This slide shows the rear views of the 2 U

smart SAS and smart NVMe disk enclosures of
6 7 8
Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6.
2 U smart NVMe disk enclosure

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosure

2. Disk Enclosure

3. Expansion Module

4. Disk

5. Interface Module

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Expansion Module

Expansion module of a 2 U SAS disk enclosure

Connects to a controller enclosure through expansion ports

Expansion module of a 2 U smart NVMe disk enclosure

Connects to a controller enclosure through expansion ports

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CE Switch
Rear view

48 x 10GE electrical ports 4 x 60 Gbit/s optical ports

Console
Front view

USB port FAN1 FAN2 PWR1 PWR2

Two Ethernet management ports (combo)

Note: Huawei CE6800 series switches are used as an example.

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Fibre Channel Switch

Management ports (serial

port and Ethernet port)
USB port 24 Fibre Channel ports Power socket

Three link aggregation groups

Note: Huawei SNS2124 is used as an example.

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Device Cables

1. Serial cable 2. Mini SAS HD electrical 3. Mini SAS HD optical cable 4. AOC cable
cable

5. 100G QSFP28 cable 6. 25G SFP28 cable 7. FDR cable 8. MPO-4*DLC optical 9. Optical fiber
fiber

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosure

2. Disk Enclosure

3. Expansion Module

4. Disk
 HDD
 SSD

5. Interface Module

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Disk Type
IDE
SCSI
SATA
1.8-inch SAS
Interface type
2.5-inch FC
3.5-inch Dimensions
NVMe
5.25-inch ... Enterprise-class
Application
... scenario Desktop-class
...
What are the types of disks?

HDD
Structure
SSD
...

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HDD Structure
 An HDD consists of platters, an actuator arm, read/write heads, a spindle, a port, and control circuits.

Platter
Actuator arm

Spindle

Control circuit

Port
Read/write head

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HDD Working Principles

Basic
operation The platter is driven by a
motor.
Platter
Landing zone

Spindle Magnetic data

R/W Head

The distance between the head and the

The head flies over the disk is small.
platter.

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Data Organization on a Disk
Sector Track
Head

Cylinder

Actuator arm
Platter

Motor
Motor

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Disk Capacity and Cache
 Disk capacity
 Disk capacity = Number of cylinders x Number of heads x Number of sectors x 512 bytes. The unit is MB or GB. The disk
capacity is determined by the capacity of a single platter and the number of platters.

 Cache
 Because the processing speed of a CPU is much faster than that of a disk, the CPU must wait until the disk completes a
read/write operation before issuing a new command. To solve this problem, a cache is added to the disk to improve the
read/write speed.

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Factors Relevant to Disk Performance

Primary factor that determines the throughput in the case of

Rotation speed sequential I/Os

Primary factor that affects the random I/O performance

Seek speed

Single platter
Indirect factor for disk performance
capacity

The least important factor for disk performance

Port speed

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Average Access Time
 The average access time is determined by:
 Average seek time
 Average latency time

Seek time Latency Wait time

Disc

Data Block

Seek

Tracks

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Data Transfer Rate
 The date transfer rate is determined by:
 Internal transfer rate
 External transfer rate/Interface transfer rate

Disk Disc

Seek

Tracks
External
Internal

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Disk IOPS and Transmission Bandwidth
 IOPS
 Input/Output operations per second (IOPS) is a key indicator to measure disk performance.
 IOPS is calculated by the seek time, rotation latency, and data transmission time.
 Transmission bandwidth (throughput)
 Indicates the amount of data that is successfully transmitted in a unit time, that is, the speed at which data streams are
transmitted. For example, if it takes 10s to write 10,000 files of 1 KB size, the transmission bandwidth is only 1 MB/s; if it
takes 0.1s to write a 10 MB file, the transmission bandwidth is 100 MB/s.

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Parallel and Serial Transmission
 For example, the methods for transmitting numbers 1 to 8 are as follows:

Parallel transmission Serial transmission

1
2
3 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Transmit 4 Receive Transmit Receive
end 5 end end end
6
7
8

Multiple lines are connected between two ends, and one number is Only one line is connected between two ends. Eight numbers are sent on this
transmitted on each line. line in sequence. The receive end has all numbers after eight transmissions.

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Disk Port Technology
 A disk must provide a simple port for users to access its data. Generally, disks provide the following physical ports:

IDE port
Used for the ATA
instruction system
SATA port

Disk Ports
Parallel SCSI port

Used for the SCSI

Serial SCSI (SAS) port
instruction system

Fibre Channel port

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IDE Disk Port
 The integrated drive electronics (IDE) port is also called the parallel ATA port.
 ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment.
 The ATA disk is also called the IDE disk.
 The ATA port uses the parallel ATA technology.

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SATA Port
 SATA is short for serial ATA.
 SATA ports use serial transmission and provide a higher rate than IDE ports.
 SATA uses a point-to-point architecture and supports hot swap.

SATA Version Line Code Transfer Rate Throughput

1.0 8b/10b 1.5 Gbit/s 150 MB/s
2.0 8b/10b 3 Gbit/s 300 MB/s
Power 3.0 8b/10b 6 Gbit/s 600 MB/s

SATA Port

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SCSI Port
 SCSI is short for Small Computer System Interface.

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SAS Port
 SAS is short for Serial Attached SCSI.
 SAS is a point-to-point, full-duplex, and dual-port interface.
 SAS is backward compatible with SATA.
 Rate: 600 Mbit/s per channel
 SAS features high performance, high reliability, and powerful scalability.

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Fibre Channel Port
 Fibre Channel disks use the Fibre Channel arbitrated loop (FC-AL).
 FC-AL is a dual-port serial storage interface based on the SCSI protocol.
 FC-AL supports full-duplex mode.
 Fibre Channel provides a universal hardware transmission platform for upper-layer protocols (SCSI and IP). It is a serial data
transmission interface that features high speed, high reliability, low latency, and high throughput.

40-pin Male FC-SCA II Connector

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosure

2. Disk Enclosure

3. Expansion Module

4. Disk
 HDD
 SSD

5. Interface Module

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SSD Overview
 Compared to HDDs, SSDs have absolute advantages in terms of performance, reliability, power consumption, and portability.
SSDs have been widely used in various industries.
 SSD characteristics:
 Uses NAND flash to save data, providing a faster speed than HDDs.
 Has no mechanical structure inside, so it consumes less power, dissipates less heat, and generates less noise.
 Its service life is determined by the number of program/erase (P/E) cycles.

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SSD Architecture
 An SSD consists of a control unit and a storage unit (mainly flash memory chips).
 Control unit: SSD controller, host interface, and DRAM
 Storage unit: NAND flash

RAM

Flash Flash
SSD Controller ...
Pkg Pkg
Processor
Host Host NAND Flash Flash
interface flash Pkg Pkg ...
Interconnect logic Buffer interface
manager

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NAND Flash
 Internal storage units in NAND flash include: Page 0 Page 0
Page 1 Page 1
LUNs, planes, blocks, pages, and cells

...
...

Page P Page P
Block 0 Block 1
 Operations on the NAND flash include erase, program, and
Page 0 Page 0
read. Page 1 Page 1

...
...
Logical Unit 0
 NAND flash is a non-volatile medium. A block must be erased Page P Page P
Block 2 Block 3
before new data is written to it. A program/erase (P/E) cycle

...
...
is the process of erasing a block and then writing it again. Page 0 Page 0
Page 1 Page 1

...
...
Page P Page P
Block B Block B+1

Page Register Page Register

Plane Plane
Address 0 Address 1

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SLC, MLC, TLC, and QLC
111 1111
1110
11 110 1101
1100
1 101 1011
10 100
1010
1001
1000
011 0111
01 010 0110
0101
0 001 0100
00 000
0011
0010
0001
0000

SLC-1bit MLC-2bit TLC-3bit QLC-4bit

SLC MLC TLC QLC
1. Supports 50,000 to 100,000 P/E cycles, 1. Supports about 3,000 P/E cycles. 1. Provides higher data density and supports only 1. The capacity is further improved by
providing the best reliability. 2. The speed is slower than that of SLC. several hundred to 1,000 P/E cycles. 33%.
2. The storage capacity is small. 3. The storage capacity is relatively large. 2. The reliability and performance are low. 2. The performance and life cycle are
3. The cost is the highest. 4. The price is relatively low. 3. Generally used in personal devices due to the further reduced.
cost advantage, but cannot meet the
requirements of enterprise products.

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Flash Chip Data Relationship

Plane Die
1478 blocks 2 planes

Cell Page Block

...
146688 cells 768 pages

... ... ...

...
... ...

Page is the minimum read/write unit, and block is the minimum program/erase unit.

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Data Write Process on an SSD (1)
 The following uses eight channels as an example to demonstrate how the host writes data to the SSD.

Channel 0 block Channel 1 block Channel 2 block Channel 3 block

Writes 4 KB of data

Writes 16 KB of data

4 KB
SSD controller

Channel 4 block Channel 5 block Channel 6 block Channel 7 block

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Data Write Process on an SSD (2)
 When the SSD is full, old data must be deleted to release space for new data. When a user deletes and writes data, data in some blocks
becomes invalid or aged.
Channel 0 block Channel 1 block Channel 2 block Channel 3 block

SSD controller

Channel 4 block Channel 5 block Channel 6 block Channel 7 block

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Data Read Process on an SSD
Reads 4 KB of Channel 0 block Channel 1 block Channel 2 block Channel 3 block
data

Reads 32 KB of
data 4 KB
SSD controller

Channel 4 block Channel 5 block Channel 6 block Channel 7 block

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SSD Performance Advantages
SSD Performance Advantages Power consumption under 100,000 read IOPS

I/O I/O

IP/FC SAN
Seek time
Mechanical latency
2 SSDs 250 HDDs
Power (W)

4000
About 400-fold
2000

VS
HDD storage system SSD storage system SSD FC HDD

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Use of SSDs in Storage Systems
 Class A applications: high-concurrency applications featuring random reads and writes, such as databases

 Class B applications: large files, images, and streaming media featuring sequential reads and writes
 Class C applications: data backup or rarely used applications

Access frequency
A SSD media
FC/SAS disk
SATA/NL-SAS/Tape

C
Data distribution

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosure

2. Disk Enclosure

3. Expansion Module

4. Disk

5. Interface Module

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GE Interface Modules

GE electrical interface module 40GE interface module 100GE interface module

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SAS Expansion Module and RDMA Interface Module

25 Gbit/s RDMA interface module 100 Gbit/s RDMA interface module 12 Gbit/s SAS expansion module

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SmartIO Interface Module

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Fibre Channel and FCoE Interface Modules
Power indicator/Hot Power indicator/Hot
swap button swap button Handle
Handle

16 Gbit/s Fibre
Channel port 10 Gbit/s FCoE port

Link/Speed indicator
of the port
Link/Speed indicator of
a 10 Gbit/s FCoE port

16 Gbit/s Fibre Channel interface module 10 Gbit/s FCoE interface module

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 Quiz

1. What are the types of SSDs?

A. SLC

B. MLC

C. TLC

D. QLC

2. Which of the following can be used to measure the performance of an HDD?

A. Disk capacity

B. Rotation speed

C. Data transfer rate

D. Average access time

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 Summary

Controller

Controller enclosure Coffer disk

Disk enclosure BBU

Expansion module
Expansion module
Intelligent storage components Device cables

HDD
Disk
SSD
Interface module

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 More Information

Enterprise Technical Huawei Enterprise

Support App Service App

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 Recommendations

 Huawei official websites

 Enterprise business: https://e.huawei.com/en/
 Technical support: https://support.huawei.com/enterprise/en/index.html
 Online learning: https://www.huawei.com/en/learning

 Popular tools
 HedEx Lite
 Network Document Tool Center
 Information Query Assistant

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Thank you. 把数字世界带入每个人、每个家庭、
每个组织，构建万物互联的智能世界。
Bring digital to every person, home, and
organization for a fully connected,
intelligent world.

Copyright©2020 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

All Rights Reserved.

The information in this document may contain predictive

statements including, without limitation, statements regarding
the future financial and operating results, future product
portfolio, new technology, etc. There are a number of factors that
could cause actual results and developments to differ materially
from those expressed or implied in the predictive statements.
Therefore, such information is provided for reference purpose
only and constitutes neither an offer nor an acceptance. Huawei
may change the information at any time without notice.