Home > Workload Solutions > SAP > Archive > SC Series Storage Configuration Best Practices for SAP HANA TDI > SC Series storage array
The Dell EMC SC Series is a radically simple, enterprise-grade storage platform. It is built on modular architecture that delivers next-generation storage virtualization, providing the ability to place the right data in the right place, at the right time, for the right cost.
SC Series arrays respond intelligently to real-world workload needs, automatically providing the best performance possible at the lowest price. Whether it be tiering among different media types, auto-provisioning and rebalancing RAID levels, or managing host mappings in multi-array environments, SC technology takes the guesswork out of cost savings and helps you get more out of your storage while spending less. The following figure shows the specifications for the SC Series product family.
Each SC array model features active/active dual-controller design, that is, twice the bandwidth and CPU performance of active/standby systems, with modern Intel Xeon processors and generous on-board memory. The array includes multiprotocol host/network I/O options such as Fibre Channel (FC), iSCSI, and SAS.
The SC9000, SC7020, SC5020, and SCv3000 models have hybrid drive configurations and can be configured to include all-flash drives. The SC7020F and SC5020F models are all-flash storage arrays.
The SC Series data progression feature is a fully integrated feature of the virtualized storage platform. Data progression intelligently classifies and migrates data to the best tier of storage by using real-time intelligence about how data is used throughout the data’s lifecycle. This method enables organizations to retain frequently accessed data on high-performance drives and to move infrequently accessed data to lower-cost drives. By maintaining all data online and optimizing placement across multiple storage tiers, organizations can increase the performance of their data storage platforms and purchase less storage overall. Data progression further enhances value by extending the benefits of tiered storage to all-flash configurations. By using expensive write-intensive (WI) drives for write operations and inexpensive read-intensive (RI) drives for read operations, the SC Series delivers the industry’s first all-flash solution at the price of disk storage. In addition, cooler data can be moved to more cost-effective storage such as SAS or NL-SAS spindle drives.
The storage virtualization and intelligence features work seamlessly across a wide range of applications and storage media types. The foundation on which the fluid data architecture is built enables the quick addition of new technologies. While traditional data progression algorithms run only once each day to optimize RAID levels and data tiering, flash-optimized data progression can move data across tiers throughout the day. For example, data that has recently been frozen in a replay (such as a snapshot) is now read-only and a good candidate to be moved to a RI tier of storage. This process happens in the background with little to no impact to the host. Moving the data to a RAID level and to storage media that has exceptional read I/O performance characteristics significantly reduces the cost of storing the read-only data. For example, data can be moved to space-efficient RAID 5 and inexpensive RI solid-state drives (SSDs).
The following figure shows the progression of data between tiers.
Storage profiles are a tiering policy feature of the SC Series storage platform. When a storage profile is assigned to a volume, the volume inherits the tiering attributes that are defined in the storage profile. For example, a flash-optimized storage profile directs all write operations to high-performance Tier 1 storage―write-intensive (WI) SSDs in RAID 10. On-demand data progression automatically converts replay and RI data to RAID 5 and places it on Tier 2 RI flash storage that has exceptional read performance characteristics. A cost-optimized storage profile enables the administrator to create a volume for applications such as backup and archive, as well as for low-priority applications. The storage profiles feature radically simplifies tiering management by enabling you to assign flash storage to the most active data while retaining the flexibility of storing cold data in a more cost-effective tier.
Volume provisioning, snapshots, clones, and replication are thin by default. Space is automatically allocated to servers on a just-enough and just-in-time basis, eliminating the need for manual provisioning and avoiding wasteful overprovisioning.
In addition to platform efficiency resulting from auto-tiering, RAID tiering, and thin methods, SC Series arrays also offer comprehensive data reduction with intelligent deduplication and compression on SSDs in all-flash configurations and on SSDs and HDDs in hybrid configurations.
The data reduction feature is applied to volumes that auto-tier across media types in a hybrid array. HDD-only configurations can still use compression, however. For the drive count requirement of SSDs for the deduplication feature, see the array documentation.
SC Series data reduction is fully integrated with data progression. You select which volumes you want to reduce, and the SC Series array operating system (SCOS) targets appropriate data within that volume to maximize cost savings while minimizing the performance impact.
The SC Series data reduction feature provides space-saving efficiencies for SAP environments. However, the raw advantages of applying data reduction to an optimized SAP HANA database might be highly data-specific. The SAP HANA database uses a column format for most of the tables. Because the column format is highly compressed, the additional SC Series data compression service might not have a significant additional impact in all scenarios. The data reduction rate of the deduplication depends primarily on the workload of the application running on top of the SAP HANA database.