Using PowerCLI to correlate VMware VMFS and ScaleIO volume info

In my previous post I wrote about expanding a ScaleIO volume in a VMware environment. During that procedure there is a requirement  to correlate the EUI of the device hosting the VMFS to the ScaleIO identifier so that you can ensure that you actually expand the correct volume. Especially important in large environments. So I thought is there a way to script this correlation in a simple fashion to save you some work? Can the whole process be automated?

The answer to both is yes!

intro

Continue reading “Using PowerCLI to correlate VMware VMFS and ScaleIO volume info”

Adding capacity to ScaleIO in a VMware environment

When initially installing/configuring ScaleIO in a VMware environment the creation of a storage pool and adding capacity to it is included in the setup process. Obviously every time you want to add a storage pool, add capacity or simply create a new volume you don’t want to have to run the setup process again–that would be silly. And of course you do not have to, nor should you. So how do you add more capacity without adding additional nodes? Let’s find out!

My current environment has four ESXi hosts and one SDS/SDC VM per host (my SDCs and SDSs are the same VM in my environment). Each SDS currently has one virtual disk using the full capacity of a VMFS on top of a physical disk. The plan is to double the capacity of each SDS by adding a new physical disk to each ESXi host and presenting the full capacity (minus the space on the disk reserved for VMFS metadata) via a virtual disk to each SDS. The below image shows the current environment for one ESXi host and also how it will look after the capacity is added.

scaleio_environment Continue reading “Adding capacity to ScaleIO in a VMware environment”

VMware VAAI with EMC ScaleIO

I’ve started recently playing a lot with EMC ScaleIO (version 1.2 just came out) and deployed it in my VMware environment. VERY easy to deploy and use.

During my investigation of the product I noticed in the vSphere Client that my ScaleIO datastore was marked as supported for VAAI. I looked around for some documentation saying so and I haven’t been able to find any off the bat (if anyone does let me know).

scaleio_vaai1

Continue reading “VMware VAAI with EMC ScaleIO”