The
Clariion Environment is governed by FLARE Code and the Symmetrix / DMX
by Enginuity Code. FLARE Code was developed internally at EMC (Data
General) and so far to my knowledge (certain portions) have been
outsourced to EMC India for development purposes.
I have posted a detailed blog on EMC’s Enginuity Operating Environment in Dec 2008.
FLARE: Fibre Logic Array Runtime Environment
Clariion
name comes from Data General, where they designed the first 16bit
minicomputer called NOVA. Later NOVA was called NOVAII. NOVAII became
AVIION (letters rearranged). CLARiiON is a simple derivative of that
naming convention. AVIION name still exist with AX100, AX150 and AX-4.
EMC
Engineering is the crown of EMC, inventing new technology and pushing
the envelope in terms of defining future products, technologies and
markets. That is exactly what has happened with acquisition of Data
General by EMC. They have really taken the Clariion products, rebranded
them with tons of features and user interfaces to make it the flagship
product. If you asked anyone at EMC about 3 to 5 years ago about their
flagship product, the answer would have been Symmetrix, ask them now?
Clariion has dominated the SMB and the Mid Tier Enterprise market making
it the cash cow at EMC.
Unlike
the Enginuity Code, the FLARE Code is customer self upgradable. This
Code sits on the first 5 drives of the Clariion SPE or DAE (depending on
the model), the drives that are marked with numbers (0 to 4) and do not
remove stickers.
With
a Code upgrade, the FLARE Operating Environment gets loaded onto the
service processor and this can be performed while the machine is
running. The funny part is, a Clariion service processor is merely a PC
running Microsoft Windows XP 32 Bit (which might have changed with CX4
to possibly a Windows XP 64Bit Version). In short when you reboot your
Clariion service processors, Windows XP will start and load the FLARE
Operating Environment from the first 5 drives and bring the system
online.
With
these first 5 drives, do not to configure any user-host LUN Space on
them. Best bet, get 5 x 73GB 15K drives and only use it for FLARE Code
operation. The total space the FLARE Code occupies is 6GB per disk if
its release 19 and lower and for releases 24 and above its 33GB per disk
drive. Also along with the Flare Operating Environment on the first 5
drives is stored the PSM LUN (Persistent Storage Manager), Flare
Database LUN and Vault Data (Save Area for write cache in case of a
catastropic failure of SP). Do not move your drives around on the
Clariion. Also do not insert a different drive type when replacing the
first 5 drives.
From
the Data General days with the Clariion, the FLARE Operating
Environment is pretty open; in sense the customer can perform all sorts
of changes without any restrictions (unlike the Symmetrix and DMX) where
a lot of it is done through Hardware BIN file changes. Upgrades in
terms of hardware, software, etc can all be performed by the customer
themselves making it a neat product to work on.
As
new FLARE Code releases hit market, customers can download those FLARE
Code upgrades from EMC’s Customer Website (Powerlink) and self install
it (I believe if you have purchased Clariion from Dell, you have to
obtain FLARE Code through Dell).
The
service processors run the Flare Operating Environment along with the
first 5 drives. During a Non Disruptive Upgrade (NDU), the FLARE Code is
loaded on one SP at a time and then reboot is performed. In short if
your failover and redundancy is setup correctly you will not have any
outages. It is highly recommended you perform these changes during quite
times or possibly take your SQL and Oracle databases down before
performing this upgrade. Also a good practice would be to get EMC Grabs
out of the host that are connected to this Clariion and verify that they
are new FLARE Code compatible.
If
you are new to Clariion Environment, it is highly recommended you
perform the pre-installation steps or read release notes before
performing an upgrade or get professional assistance. It is very normal
for customers to go through multiple code upgrades during the 3 to 5
year life cycle of these machines.
These Service processors also sent you service alerts through an
email or sms system for proactive replacement and failing components
example: failing drive, failing SP, backend issues, data sector
invalidates, etc. The replacement of these parts should be carried out
by an EMC trained and qualified engineer.
It
is common knowledge, you can enter Engineering mode on FLARE Code using
keys Ctrl + Shft + F12 and using the engineering password. The
Engineering mode will allow you to perform certain functions not allowed
in a normal Admin or User mode.
Initially
with the FC series of Clariion, there was no web interface into the
Service Processors, which has been added with the CX series of machines.
With release 26 new features enhancing customers to perform a lot of
maintenance work themselves has been added including performing SP
Collects, etc.
FLARE Code version information is as follows.
For the sake of this blog we will limit our explanation only to CX, CX3 and CX4 platforms.
Generation 1: CX200, CX400, CX600
Generation 2: CX300, CX500, CX700 including the iSCSI flavors
Generation 3: CX3-10, CX3-20, CX3-40, CX3-80
Generation 4: CX4-120, CX4-240, CX4-480, CX4-960
(last three digits are the number of drives it can support)
(last three digits are the number of drives it can support)
The FLARE Code is broken down as follows (Please see the color coded scheme below).
1.14.600.5.022 (32 Bit)
2.16.700.5.031 (32 Bit)
2.24.700.5.031 (32 Bit)
3.26.020.5.011 (32 Bit)
4.28.480.5.010 (64 Bit)
The first digit: 1, 2, 3 and 4 indicate the Generation of the machine this code level can be installed on. For the 1st and the 2nd generation of machines (CX600 and CX700), you should be able to use standard 2nd Generation code levels. CX3 code levels would have a 3 in front of it and so forth.
These numbers will always increase as new Generations of Clariion machines are added.
The
next two digits are the release numbers; these release numbers are very
important and really give you additional features related to the
Clariion FLARE Operating Environment. When someone comes up to you and
says, my Clariion CX3 is running Flare 26, this is what they mean.
These numbers will always increase, 28 being the latest FLARE Code Version.
The next 3 digits are the model number of the Clariion, like the CX600, CX700, CX3-20 and CX4-480.
These numbers can be all over the map, depending what the model number of your Clariion is.
The
5 here is unknown, its coming across from previous FLARE releases.
Going back to the pre CX days (FC), this 5 was still used in there. I
believe this was some sort of code internally used at Data General
indicating its a FLARE release.
The
last 3 digits are the Patch level of the FLARE Environment. This would
be the last known compilation of the code for that FLARE version.
Again
if you are looking at the CX and the FLARE Code Operating Environment
it is pretty strong, powerful, lots of features a customer can use and
does blow away a lot of other manufacturers in the same market space.
Hope this information was useful in your endeavor while searching for Clariion Flare Code Operating Environment information.
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