Intelligent Storage Components

Foreword


This chapter will examine the design and processes of storage
system components, including the controller enclosure, disk
enclosure, disks, interface modules, and enclosure connections.

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 Objectives

Upon completion of this course, you will learn about the:


Storage product forms

Functions and components of controller enclosures and disk enclosures

HDD and SSD designs

Cables and interface modules for connecting storage enclosures and the
connection methods

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosures
2. Disk Enclosures
3. Expansion Modules
4. Disks
5. Interface Modules

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Storage Product Forms

2 U, disk and 4 U, disk and Integrated

controller controller bay
integration separation

Note: The slide shows Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6.

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

System
Subrack

Controlle
r

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Controller Enclosure: Front View
Icon Description

Enclosure ID indicator

Enclosure location indicator

1. Blinking blue: The controller
enclosure is being located.
2U controller enclosure (disk and controller 2. Off: The controller enclosure
integration) 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: The slide shows Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6.

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Controller Enclosure: Rear View
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
Management
8
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 Fan
latch latch

Fan
module

Running/Alarm Running/Alarm
indicator of the indicator of the fan
BB BBU Front
U view

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Coffer Disk

2.5-inch coffer Palm-sized NVMe coffer

disk SSD
Alarm/Location Alarm/Location
indicator indicator
Running indicator Running indicator

Latch Latch

Handle Handle

Disk Disk

Label Label

Note: The slide shows the disks for Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6.

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Power Module

The controller enclosure employs an AC power module for its normal
operations. Running/
Alarm
Handl indicator Latc
e h

Power
socket
Note: The slide shows the power module of Huawei OceanStor Dorado
V6.

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosures
2. Disk Enclosures
3. Expansion Modules
4. Disks
5. Interface Modules

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

System
Subrack

Disk Drive
Module

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Disk Enclosure: Front View
Icon Description

Enclosure ID indicator

Enclosure location indicator

1. Blinking blue: The disk enclosure is being
located.
2. Off: The disk enclosure is not located.
2 U 25-slot SAS disk
enclosure Enclosure alarm indicator
1. Steady yellow: An alarm is reported by the
disk enclosure.
2. Off: The disk enclosure is working properly.
Enclosure power indicator
1. Steady green: The disk enclosure is on.
2 U 36-slot smart NVMe disk 2. Off: The disk enclosure is powered off.
enclosure Power indicator/Power button
1. The controller enclosure controls disk
enclosure power. The power button on the
Note: The slide shows the disk enclosures of disk enclosure is invalid and cannot control
Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6. disk enclosure power separately.

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Disk Enclosure: Rear View
4 No. Description
1 Serial port
Mini SAS HD expansion
2
port
3 ID display

1 2 3 5 4 Expansion module
5 Power module
2 U SAS disk
enclosure 6 Onboard expansion port
Onboard management
7
port
8 Power module

Note: The slide shows the disk

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

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosures
2. Disk Enclosures
3. Expansion Modules
4. Disks
5. Interface Modules

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Expansion Module
The expansion module connects to a controller enclosure through expansion ports.

Expansion module of a 2 U SAS disk enclosure

Expansion module of a 2 U smart NVMe disk

enclosure

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CE Switch
Rear
view

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

ports ports

Consol
e
Front
view

USB FAN1 FAN2 PWR PWR

port 1 2
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 Power socket
ports

Link aggregation
groups

Note: Huawei SNS2124 is used as an

example.
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Device Cables

1. Serial 2. Mini SAS HD 3. Mini SAS HD 4. AOC

cable electrical cable optical cable cable

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

QSFP28 cable cable cable optical fiber fiber

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosures
2. Disk Enclosures
3. Expansion Modules
4. Disks
 HDDs

SSDs

5. Interface Modules

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Disk Types
IDE
SCSI
SATA
1.8-inch SAS
Interface
2.5-inch FC
3.5-inch Dimensions
NVMe
5.25-inch ... Enterprise-
Application
... scenario class
Desktop-class
How many disk types are ...
there?
HDD Structur
SSD e
...

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

Spindle

Control circuit

Read/write Port
head

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HDD Design

Basic
operation The platter is
driven by a
Platte motor.
r Landing
zone
Spindl Magnetic
R/W e data
Head

The distance between the

The head head and the disk is
hovers over the small.
platter.

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Data Organization on a Disk
Secto Trac
r k Head

Cylinde D
r
Actuator
Platte arm
r
Moto
r
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

The superior processing speed of a CPU over a disk forces the CPU to wait
until the disk completes a read/write operation before issuing a new
command. Adding a cache to the disk to improve the read/write speed solves
this problem.

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Disk Performance Factors

Rotation The primary factor in the

speed throughput of sequential I/Os

The primary factor in random I/O

Seek speed performance

Single platter
An indirect factor for disk performance
capacity

The least important factor for disk

Port speed performance

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

Seek Latenc Wait

time y time
Dis
c
Data
Block
Seek

Track
s

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

Dis Dis
k c

Seek

Track
Extern s

al Interna
l
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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 using 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 of transmission for data streams. For example, if it takes
10s to write 10,000 files with a size of 1 KB each, 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 Serial
transmission transmission
1
2
3 8765432 1
4 Receiv Receiv
Sender 5 Sender
er er
6
7
8

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

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Disk Ports

A disk must provide a simple port for data access. Disks generally
provide the following physical ports:
IDE port
Used for the ATA
instruction
system
SATA port
Disk
Ports Parallel SCSI port
Used for the
Serial SCSI (SAS)
SCSI instruction port
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 stands for serial ATA.

SATA ports use serial transmission for a higher rate than IDE ports.

SATA uses a point-to-point architecture and supports hot swap.

SATA Line Code Transfer Throughput

Version Rate
1.0 8b/10b 1.5 Gbit/s 150 MB/s
2.0 8b/10b 3 Gbit/s 300 MB/s
Powe
r port 3.0 8b/10b 6 Gbit/s 600 MB/s
SATA
port

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SCSI Port

SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface.

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SAS Port

SAS stands for Serial Attached SCSI.

SAS is a point-to-point, full-duplex, and dual-port interface.

It is backward compatible with SATA.

It has a rate of 600 Mbit/s per channel.

It features high performance, reliability, and 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 interface for serial storage 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 transmission interface with lower latency and
higher speed, reliability, and throughput.

40-pin male FC-SCA II connector

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 Contents

1. Controller Enclosures
2. Disk Enclosures
3. Expansion Modules
4. Disks

HDDs
 SSDs

5. Interface Modules

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SSD Overview

SSDs exceed HDDs in performance, reliability, power efficiency, and portability.
SSDs have been widely used in a variety of industries.

SSD characteristics:

NAND flash saves data faster than HDDs.

Elimination of internal mechanical structure saves power, generates less heat, and
produces less noise.

Its service life is determined by the number of program/erase (P/E) cycles.

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SSD Architecture

An SSD has 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
pkg pkg ..
Controller .
Host Processor
Hos NAND Flash Flash
interfac flash
t
e pkg pkg ..
Interconne Buffer interface .
ct logic manager

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

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

Logical Unit
Page 1 Page 1

.
.
.
.
.
.

NAND flash is a non-volatile medium. Page P Page P
Block Block
A block must be erased before new 2 3

.
.
.
.
.
.
0
data is written to it. A P/E cycle is the Page 0 Page 0
Page 1 Page 1
process of erasing a block and then

.
.
.
.
.
.
Page P Page P
writing it again. Block Block
B B+1
Page Register Page Register
Plane Plane
Address Address
0 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- MLC- TLC- QLC-

SLC 1bit MLC 2bit TLC 3bit QLC 4bit
1. It supports 50,000 to 1. It supports about 3,000 P/E 1. It has higher data density and 1. The capacity is 33%
100,000 P/E cycles, cycles. supports only several hundred higher.
providing the best 2. It is slower than SLC. to 1,000 P/E cycles. 2. The performance and
reliability. 3. The storage capacity is 2. The reliability and life cycle are further
2. The storage capacity is relatively large. performance are low. reduced.
small. 4. The price is relatively low. 3. It is common in personal
3. The cost is the highest. devices due to the cost
advantage but is inadequate
for enterprise products.

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Flash Chip Data Relationship

Plan Di
e
1,478 2 e
blocks planes
Cel Pag Bloc
l e
146,688
k
768
...
cells pages

... ... ...

...
... ...

A page is the minimum read/write unit, and a block is the minimum P/E unit.

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Address Mapping Management
Logical block address (LBA) No. 26, XX Road, Binjiang District, Hangzhou
City, Zhejiang Province, People's Republic of
China
Physical block address (PBA) 120º 12' east longitude, 30º 16' north
latitude

HDD: The relationship between LBA and PBA is

fixed.

Overwrite
The Flash Translation
Layer (FTL) is for
SSD: The relationship between LBA and PBA is not conversion between the
fixed. LBA and PBA.

Non-overwrite: A block must be erased before new data
is written to it. New data and old data are at different
locations.
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FTL

Secto
r0
Secto
r2
Sector 3 Main controller
Secto
FTL mapping table: saved in
r1
the internal SRAM/DRAM,
external DRAM, or NAND Secto
Sector 2
r4
flash.
Secto Secto
Sector Sector 1 r3 r5
0

OS sector (512 FTL mapping. The Data is stored in the

bytes). File systems main controller NAND physical
read/write data in maps the addresses with the
units of 512 bytes. addresses with mapping table.
the mapping
table.

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SSD Write Process (1)

The following uses eight channels as an example to demonstrate how the host writes
data to the SSD.
Channel 0 Channel 1 Channel 2 Channel 3
Writes 4 KB block block block block
of data

Writes 16 KB
of data
4
KB SSD controller

Channel 4 Channel 5 Channel 6 Channel 7

block block block block
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SSD Write Process (2)

When the SSD is full, old data must be deleted to release space for new data. Deletion or
writing of data causes the data of some blocks to become invalid or aged.
Channel 0 Channel 1 Channel 2 Channel 3
block block block block

SSD controller

Channel 4 Channel 5 Channel 6 Channel 7

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

Reads 32
KB of data 4
KB SSD controller

Channel 4 Channel 5 Channel 6 Channel 7

block block block block

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

I/O I/O

IP/FC SAN
Seek time
Mechanical
latency 2 250
SSDs HDDs
Power
(W)
400
0 ≈
200 400x
0
vs
HDD storage system SSD storage system SS FC HDD
D

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Use of SSDs in Storage Systems

Class A applications: high-concurrency applications with random reads and writes, such as
databases

Class B applications: large files, images, and streaming media with 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 Enclosures
2. Disk Enclosures
3. Expansion Modules
4. Disks
5. Interface Modules

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GE Interface Modules

GE electrical interface 40GE interface 100GE interface

module module module

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SAS Expansion Module and RDMA Interface Module

25 Gbit/s RDMA 100 Gbit/s RDMA 12 Gbit/s SAS

interface module interface module expansion module

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SmartIO Interface Modules

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PCIe and 56 Gbit/s IB Interface Modules

PCIe interface 56 Gbit/s InfiniBand interface

module module

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

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

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

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

module module

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 Quiz
1. Which of the following are SSD types?
A. SLC

B. MLC

C. TLC

D. QLC

2. Which of the following affect HDD performance?

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 cable

HDD
Disk
SSD
Interface module

59 Huawei Confidential
More Information

Enterprise Huawei
Technical Enterprise
Support App Service App

60 Huawei Confidential
Recommendations


Huawei official websites

Enterprise business: [Link]

Technical support: [Link]

Online learning: [Link]

Popular tools

HedEx Lite

Network Document Tool Center

Information Query Assistant

61 Huawei Confidential
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.