Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Understanding the accumulation of data

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EMC Symmetrix WWN Calculator

Stephen Foskett’s Symmetrix World Wide Name Calculator

Version 4.0

This calculator allows you to convert EMC Serial and Port Numbers into their corresponding Fibre Channel World Wide Names for use with Volume Logix and other applications. You can also convert WWNs back to Serial Numbers and ports! This calculator has now been updated to function with the new 4-port Fibre cards or DMX Symmetrix! These use two-letter port identifiers like AA and BB. You must specify old one- letter ids in this new format: use AA for A and BA for B.

This app is written in JavaScript so you can save the page and use it without being connected to any server.

Tested in Navigator 4 and IE 5. Different browsers may offer limited or non-functional support for JavaScript, so this calculator may not work for you. Be sure to verify the results by hand using the formula below until you are comfortable with the results.

Enter Symmetrix Information:
Serial Number:
(eg: 123456789)
World Wide Name:
(eg: 50060481D6F34542)
Port Number:
(eg: 03a)

Use AA for A and BA for B!

The Sekrit Al Gore Rhythm!

Here’s how the SSN/WWN conversion works. Reverse the process to convert from WWN to SSN.

Remember that this is for EMC Symmetrix ports only, not Sun HBAs. The only known way to get an HBA WWN is to look for it when the card is configured on bootup.

  1. All EMC WWNs begin 5006048. These are your first 7 digits.
  2. Find the Serial Number for a Symmetrix. This is a 9-digit number and can often be found printed inside the Symmetrix cabinet or in the EMC Control Center software. (eg: 123456789)
  3. Convert the serial number to binary. (eg: 111010110111100110100010101)
  4. Remove the last two bits of the binary serial number and set these aside. (eg: 01)
  5. Convert the remaining binary number to hexadecimal. This is your next 7 WWN digits. (eg: 1110101101111001101000101 becomes 1d6f345)
  6. Find the FA port number and letter. (eg: 03a)
  7. Encode the port letter as follows: AA (or A) becomes 00, BA (or B) becomes 01, AB becomes 10, and BB becomes 11. (eg: AA in our example becomes 00)
  8. Place these two binary digits at the end of the two bits saved above. (eg: 0100)
  9. Convert this to hexadecimal. This is your next WWN digit. (eg: 4)
  10. Finally, subtract one from the port number and convert this to hexadecimal. This is your final WWN digit. (eg: 3 becomes 2 which converts to 2 in hex)
  11. This should give you a 16-digit hexadecimal number corresponding to the WWN for that port. (eg: SSN 123456789, port 03AA becomes 50060481D6F34542)

CLARiiON Call

Want to calculate a WWN for a CLARiiON? Tough – you can’t. But you can derive the port number from the WWN! Here’s how:

  1. All CLARiiON WWNs look like this: 5006016XYYYYYYYY. The X encodes the port number, and the YYYYYYYY SHOULD encode the serial number, but it doesn’t.
  2. Take out the X – that’s the 8th digit. It will be a hex number (0-F).
  3. Values 0 through 7 are for SP A, and 8 through F are SP B.
  4. For SP A, just use the number (ie, 2 is SPA2, 0 is SPA0).
  5. For SP B, subtract 8 and use that (ie, 8 is SPB0, b is SPB3).
  6. The YYYYYYYY part looks to be unique to each CLARiiON frame, but I couldn’t munge it into the serial number. Odd.

Important! If someone from EMC (or anyone else who knows) reads this and wants to help correct my algorithms, I would appreciate it! And if anyone from HDS, HP, IBM, Sun, etc want to contribute their algorithms, please do!