HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform Administrator Guide (5697-0934, May 2011)

1 SAN Virtualization Services Platform overview
Figure 1 (page 9) shows the relationships of the major components that comprise the HP
StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP) solution. In describing the solution, this
document uses the following terms:
• SVSP domain—The two Data Path Modules (DPMs), two Virtualization Services Manager
(VSM) servers, and the arrays that are providing block-based storage services to the host
servers and SVSP devices.
• Data Path Module—Performs the I/O re-mapping from the address as seen by the server to
the location on a particular array. The DPMs do multipathing for the arrays, error recovery,
and synchronous mirroring.
• DPM groups—Pairs of DPMs in the domain that view the same storage.
• Virtualization Services Manager—Performs two functions:
◦ Primarily manages the location of the data, as in defining the maps used by the DPM.
◦ Secondarily moves data in the background as required for data migration, local mirroring,
and remote replication services.
Figure 1 SAN Virtualization Services Platform overview
Non-virtualized I/O6Customer servers1
VSM servers7Customer SAN, dual-fabric2
SVSP domain8Virtualized I/O as seen by server3
HP Command View management platform (optional)9Virtualized I/O as seen by array4
Data Path Modules5
Data Path Modules
One way to think of the pair of DPMs is as being similar to a pair of array controllers, only with
8 host ports and 8 back-end ports per controller. Said another way, the even ports on the DPMs
are the SCSI/FCP targets for all I/O requests initiated by your application servers. The odd ports
of the DPMs act as the SCSI/FCP initiators to the controller host port targets. In this release of SVSP,
Data Path Modules 9