• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
    • Stephen Foskett
      • My Publications
        • Urban Forms in Suburbia: The Rise of the Edge City
      • Storage Magazine Columns
      • Whitepapers
      • Multimedia
      • Speaking Engagements
    • Services
    • Disclosures
  • Categories
    • Apple
    • Ask a Pack Rat
    • Computer History
    • Deals
    • Enterprise storage
    • Events
    • Personal
    • Photography
    • Terabyte home
    • Virtual Storage
  • Guides
    • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • The iPad Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • iPad Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • Toolbox
      • Power Over Ethernet Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix WWN Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix TimeFinder DOS Batch File
    • Linux Logical Volume Manager Walkthrough
  • Calendar

Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Understanding the accumulation of data

You are here: Home / Toolbox / EMC Symmetrix WWN Calculator

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!

Primary Sidebar

The work of the information officer [should be] regarded as the natural dynamic extension of that of the librarian.

Douglas John Foskett

Subscribe via Email

Subscribe via email and you will receive my latest blog posts in your inbox. No ads or spam, just the same great content you find on my site!
 New posts (daily)
 Where's Stephen? (weekly)

Download My Book


Download my free e-book:
Essential Enterprise Storage Concepts!

Recent Posts

Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From Vroom

November 28, 2020

Powering Rabbits: The Mean Well LRS-350-12 Power Supply

October 18, 2020

Tortoise or Hare? Nvidia Jetson TK1

September 22, 2020

Running Rabbits: More About My Cloud NUCs

September 21, 2020

Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!

September 10, 2020

Remove ROM To Use LSI SAS Cards in HPE Servers

August 23, 2020

Test Your Wi-Fi with iPerf for iOS

July 9, 2020

Liberate Wi-Fi Smart Bulbs and Switches with Tasmota!

May 29, 2020

What You See and What You Get When You Follow Me

May 28, 2019

GPS Time Rollover Failures Keep Happening (But They’re Almost Done)

April 6, 2019

Symbolic Links

    Featured Posts

    Edward Snowden Is Right: We Must Protect The Internet

    March 19, 2014

    SMB 3 is Going to be Huge, in both Scope and Impact

    May 6, 2012

    The Prime Directive of Storage: Do Not Lose Data

    December 12, 2014

    Storage Changes in VMware vSphere 5.1

    September 4, 2012

    How To Keep Your Family Activities In Sync With A Shared Google Calendar

    April 18, 2010

    Marketers: Fudging the Meaning of Buzzwords Matters (To You!)

    December 2, 2015

    vSphere 6: NFS 4.1 Finally Has a Use?

    February 3, 2015

    Scaling Storage In Conventional Arrays

    November 19, 2013

    What’s the Difference Between a Jailbroken and an Unlocked Phone?

    May 5, 2012

    Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Software-Defined Future

    November 29, 2012

    Copyright © 2021 · Log in