"Remember kids, the only difference between Science and screwing around is writing it down" -Alex Jason (made popular by Adam Savage)
A bit different of a topic today for me–nothing to do with VMAX! A quick post to give a shout out to a project a few of my colleagues have been working on recently namely, Jim Ruddy (@darth_ruddy) and Ed Walsh (@vEddieW).
Some of you might have read about or maybe even used the Hadoop Starter Kit 1.0 EMC put out around VMworld US earlier this year. For those of you who haven’t heard of it check out some posts here:
As some of you are aware, myself and my colleague Drew Tonnesen (@drewtonnesen) write and update an EMC document called Using EMC Symmetrix Storage in VMware vSphere Environments. This document is what we call a “TechBook”. Essentially a very detailed explanation of the best practices of using VMware with Symmetrix storage as well as overviews of integration points. If you are using Symmetrix and VMware this is a document you should use/know.
Continue reading “Updated Symmetrix with VMware TechBook for vSphere 5.5”
I’m (Drew Tonnesen, @drewtonnesen) back for another guest post, this time continuing Cody’s theme of VSI 5.6. Besides the much anticipated (and long awaited) striped meta capability in Unified Storage Management (USM) 5.6 for VMAX, there is now VPLEX provisioning! For those of us who use VPLEX with VMware this simplifies the creation of datastores on VPLEX.
Continue reading “Virtual Storage Integrator 5.6: VPLEX Provisioning”
Hey all! So as many of you have heard we (EMC) has released the latest version of the Virtual Storage Integrator today (September 16th 2013). There are plenty of blogs/posts that go into all of the details of the new release so I will not regurgitate all of that here. But for those of you who have not seen these posts check them out at these links:
http://itzikr.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/virtual-storage-integrator-5-6-is-ga-grab-it-while-its-hot/
UPDATE: See a full video demo by Drew Tonnesen (@drewtonnesen) here:
https://community.emc.com/videos/6222
Continue reading “Virtual Storage Integrator 5.6: Provisioning VMAX Striped Metas”
On September 9th EMC released a new SR for Enginuity 5876.251. For the most part this is a variety of fixes and minor enhancements but there is one new hardware feature of note. VMAX has introduced support for 16 Gb FC I/O Modules. So if you have some hosts that are using 16 GB HBAs and want to make full use of them you are gonna want this Enginuity upgrade. Of course you will still have to purchase new front end ports for the VMAX as the current FC ports will not be the correct hardware to support 16 GB.
Continue reading “New VMAX Enginuity Release 5876.251 and Solutions Enabler 7.6.1”
So I (Drew Tonnesen, @drewtonnesen) am guest blogging again here at Cody’s site. I’ll add my name now in the beginning to avoid the confusion (yes there has been) that this post isn’t from Cody but given the blog URL I suppose it is inevitable no matter what I do. And since I am not starting my own blog which would more likely contain hints on how to avoid going insane with kids (yes alcohol helps) I trust the readers can figure it out. On to the post…
I’ve been working on this new release for EMC Storage Analytics (ESA) 2.0 for what seems like ages now. The first two releases of ESA (1.0, 1.5) supported the VNX platforms. The 2.0 release is the first with VMAX support! As the Symmetrix engineering contact for the VMAX component of ESA, I have had first-hand input and testing of the product, along with putting together a good part of the documentation. This post jumps the gun a little as the product will be officially revealed next week at VMworld but what’s a little pre-announcement among friends? I’ll give a brief run-down of the release below.
Continue reading “EMC Storage Analytics (ESA) 2.0 with VMAX arrays”
As with most events, EMC goes all out. This years’ VMworld 2013 is no exception. Besides the myriad of sessions, meet-ups and parties, the EMC Booth has a lot in store for those who stop by.
I cannot disclose everything the EMC booth will offer (tons of great surprises and *cough* prizes *cough* might be planned) but here is a little sneak peak!
Continue reading “The EMC booth at VMworld 2013!! Don’t miss it!”
A common recommendation from storage vendors is to change the default IOPS setting for VMwares’ Native Multi-Pathing (NMP) Path Selection Policy (PSP) Round Robin. The IOPS setting controls how many I/Os are sent down a single logical path before switching to the next path. By default this number is 1,000 I/Os. The VMAX recommendation is to set this to 1. The purpose of this blog post is not to debate the setting, but to help those who want to use it. Regardless, I have seen many customers benefit from this recommendation. Once they see a benefit they want to know–can I make this setting a default?
Continue reading “Changing the default IOPS value for VMware Round Robin and Symmetrix Devices”
This is a topic that I get asked about a lot and a recent internal email thread prompted me to write a post about it. On a Symmetrix array if you want a volume larger than 240 GB you need to create a metavolume. When creating a metavolume you have two configuration choices; concatenated or striped. There are many benefits to striped over concatenated (all of them performance-related) but one disadvantage. Due to their nature striped metavolumes are harder to expand. Until a few years ago thin striped metas couldn’t even be expanded online. So the decision was easy–do you think you will need to expand or not. In Enginuity 5875 and Solutions Enabler online expansion of striped metavolumes was allowed.
Today (August 14th 2013) EMC released the latest version of the EMC Storage Integrator, version 3.0. I blogged about ESI a few weeks back and the PowerShell cmdlets that it offered:
https://www.codyhosterman.com/2013/07/29/scripting-esi-powershell-cmdlets-and-vmware/
This release fills in some of the gaps that were present in earlier versions–especially when it comes to VMAX storage provisioning. The flagship features of this release though are: