Category: Pure Storage

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Latency-based PSP in ESXi 6.7 Update 1: A test drive

Yesterday, I wrote a post introducing the new latency-based round robin multipathing policy in ESXi 6.7 Update 1. You can check that out here:

Latency Round Robin PSP in ESXi 6.7 Update 1

In normal scenarios, you may not see much of a performance difference between the standard IOPS switching-based policy and the latency one. So don’t necessarily expect that switching policies will change anything. But then again, multipathing primarily exists not for healthy states, but instead exists to protect during times of poor health. Continue reading “Latency-based PSP in ESXi 6.7 Update 1: A test drive”

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Latency Round Robin PSP in ESXi 6.7 Update 1

This is my first (but certainly not last post) on the new path selection policy option in vSphere 6.7 Update 1. In reality, this option was introduced in the initial release of 6.7, but it was not officially supported until update 1.

So what is it? Well first off, see the official words from my colleague Jason Massae at VMware here:

https://storagehub.vmware.com/t/vsphere-storage/vsphere-6-7-core-storage-1/vsphere-6-7-u1-enhanced-round-robin-load-balancing/

Why was this PSP option introduced? Well the most common path selection policy is the NMP Round Robin. This is VMware’s built-in path selection policy for arrays that offer multiple paths. Round Robin was a great way to leverage the full performance of your array by actively using all of the paths simultaneously. Well…almost simultaneously.

Continue reading “Latency Round Robin PSP in ESXi 6.7 Update 1”

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VMware & Pure Integration Training Videos

A few months back I was reviewing our VMware training for our field (and after some direct feedback) realized it wasn’t really doing what our field needed. It was too nuts and bolts technical–which isn’t really what was needed by the masses. There was more of a desire to understand the value of the VMware product, the value of the integration and the value that we as Pure can bring to it.

The ones that wanted/needed more technical training could get that as needed.

In short, what they wanted to be able to do was have the “I’m staffing a booth at a conference and someone asks me about vRealize Orchestrator”. Not being an expert in the product, how to do I quickly understand the value, so I know if I am chasing the right product/solution and I should inquire further.

There are so many options out there, the “why” sometimes can be the most important question. Continue reading “VMware & Pure Integration Training Videos”

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Configuring Pure1 VM Analytics

If you are Pure Storage customer and you recently logged into Pure1 (which is our cloud-based management/analytics/support portal), you might have noticed a notification the first time you logged in this week:

What is this? Well this is the great thing about Pure1–we just add features all of the time and this is an exciting one. Two years or so ago I wrote this blog post:

Understanding VMware ESXi Queuing and the FlashArray Continue reading “Configuring Pure1 VM Analytics”

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Pure Storage and VMware PowerShell Module

I see a fair amount of requests around how to do different things with VMware PowerCLI and the Pure Storage PowerShell SDK. How do I correlate a VMFS to a volume? How do I create a new VMFS? How do I expand? Etc.

To help our customers I have written a module that includes a lot of the common operations people might need to “connect” PowerCLI to our PowerShell SDK.

The module is called Cody.PureStorage.FlashArray.VMware. Continue reading “Pure Storage and VMware PowerShell Module”

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Growing a VMFS datastore with PowerCLI

I am working on my PowerShell module for Pure/VMware operations and one of the cmdlets I am writing is for growing a VMFS. When perusing the internet, I could not find a lot of direct information on how to actually do this. There is not a default cmdlet for doing this.

The illustrious Luc Dekens talks about this problem here and even provides a great module for doing this:

VMFS Datastores – Expand and Extend

If you just need want to run a quick script you can use that. If you want to write it yourself here is a quick overview of what you need to do. I am talking about a specific use case of:

  • I have a datastore on one extent and that extent exists on a LUN (or device or volume or whatever you want to call it) on an array. That LUN has been grown on the array.
  • I want to grow the VMFS  to use the new capacity and not create a new extent, just grow it.
Continue reading “Growing a VMFS datastore with PowerCLI”
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PowerCLI and VVols Part IV: Correlating a Windows NTFS to a VMDK

My last post in this series was about getting a VVol UUID and figuring out what volume on a FlashArray it is. But what about the step before that? If I have a guest OS file system how do I even figure out what VMDK it is?

There is a basic option, which can potentially be used, which is correlating the bus ID and the unit ID of the device in the guest and matching it to what VMware displays for the virtual disks.

But that always felt to me as somewhat inexact.  What if you accidentally look at the wrong VM object and then do something to a volume you do not mean to? Or the opposite?

Not ideal. Luckily there is a more exact approach. I will focus this particular post on Windows. I will look at Linux in an upcoming one.

Continue reading “PowerCLI and VVols Part IV: Correlating a Windows NTFS to a VMDK”

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VMworld 2018 and Pure Storage

It is that time of the year again! VMworld 2018 is just around the corner.

We (Pure Storage) have a fair amount going on this year at VMworld and I am really looking forward to the show.

A big focus this year for us is VVols–we have seen excellent traction from our customer base–it didn’t take long for our VVol deployments to get to 100s of FlashArrays. We have a lot planned for VVols and there is a lot coming for the FlashArray around that.

So first off, how can you find out more about VVols? Well the simplest option is come stop by our booth–we will have demos galore around VVols and plenty of Pure employees to take your questions around them. Continue reading “VMworld 2018 and Pure Storage”

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PowerCLI and VVols Part III: Getting VVol UUIDs from the FlashArray

The next step if you want to do correlation between a VMware VVol VMDK pointer and its corresponding FlashArray volume using PowerCLI.

As a review, here are the previous posts in this series:

If you followed part 2, you now have your VVol UUID, so how do I correlate it to a volume? Well you could use the VM name and then look at the name of the volume and size, but this is not scientific, and certainly not exact.

Continue reading “PowerCLI and VVols Part III: Getting VVol UUIDs from the FlashArray”