pure storage – Page 2 – Cody Hosterman

July 16, 2020July 16, 2020

PowerShell Authentication with FlashArray REST 2.x

Purity 6.0 ships with a new REST version 2.2. 2.2 includes the endpoints to manage ActiveDR processes (demote/promote), tagging (more on that in a later post) and more.

REST 2.x is a new major release of our REST API that changes the underlying structure of the API, the endpoints, authentication, queries, etc. Our current PowerShell SDK uses REST 1.x (which is changing) but for folks who might want to write their own PowerShell against REST, or starting using it now–here is some help.

July 9, 2020

What’s New in Purity 6.0: ActiveDR

I have already posted about ActiveDR briefly here:

Pure Storage Data Protection Part II: FlashArray Replication Options

I wanted to go into more detail on ActiveDR (and more) in a “What’s New” series. One of the flagship features of the Purity 6.0 release is what we call ActiveDR. ActiveDR is a continuous replication feature–meaning it sends the new data over to the secondary array as quickly as it can–it does not wait for an interval to replicate.

For the TL;DR, here is a video tech preview demo of the upcoming SRM integration as well as setup of ActiveDR itself

But ActiveDR is much more than just data replication is protects your storage environment. Let me explain what that means.

February 27, 2020

Default FlashArray Connection With PowerShell

In the VMware Pure PowerShell module (PureStorage.FlashArray.VMware) there is a default array connection stored in a global variable called $Global:DefaultFlashArray and all connected FlashArrays in $Global:AllFlashArrays. The VMware/Pure PowerShell module automatically uses what is in the “default” variable.

The underlying “core” Pure Storage PowerShell module (PureStoragePowerShellSDK) does not yet take advantage of global connections. So for each cmdlet you run, you must pass in the “array” parameter. For example to get all of the volumes from an array:

Kind of annoying if you are interactively running commands and only have one array connection you care about (or one that you primarily care about).

November 13, 2019January 7, 2020

VMware Cloud Foundation and Pure Storage

A few weeks ago, VMware released the latest version of VMware Cloud Foundation, version 3.9. There were more than a few things in this release but one enhancement was around Fibre Channel:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Foundation/3.9/rn/VMware-Cloud-Foundation-39-Release-Notes.html

The release notes mention:

Fibre Channel Storage as Principal Storage: Virtual Infrastructure (VI) workload domains now support Fibre Channel as a principal storage option in addition to VMware vSAN and NFS.
vCF 3.9 Release Notes

So this leads to three questions:

What does this mean?
What does this mean for non-FC storage?
What was the stance around FC storage BEFORE this release?

Let’s answer the first question first.

October 28, 2019October 30, 2019

VMworld Europe 2019 and Pure Storage

It’s that time of the year again…again! Pure Storage is back at VMworld in Barcelona.

Before we get into what’s happening at Barcelona, let’s recap a bit what happened in the US conference. As the best way to look to the future sometimes is to analyze the past.

Also check out this panel session I did with Rubrik on VMworld US.

VMware Cloud on AWS was once again a major topic–this is increasingly getting more attention and something we are paying a close eye on. The most important step around this for Pure is our new offering that is now fully GA, called Cloud Block Store. Our FlashArray software (Purity) now fully running AWS. See my posts here and here on that.
VMware Cloud Foundations. This is the basis for pretty much all automated VMware stacks–SDDC manager allows you to deploy vCenter, NSX, vRealize (etc. etc.) and of course their lifecycles. SDDC Manager (the management point of vCF) provides the ability to create on “management” domain–this is where all of the VMware services are deployed, and also one or more “workload” domains. Workloads domains are basically a new vCenter server–which gets hooked in via ELM. When deploying a workload domain the storage options used to be only be vSAN or NFS. You could then add block after the fact. In the 3.9.0.0 release, you can now choose Fibre Channel storage as the option. Check out our KB here on it. I expect to hear more about this in Barcelona.
Containers, K8s, and more containers. VMware’s work since the Heptio acquisition has not slowed down. I would be fairly comfortable saying that the announcement of Project Pacific and Project Tanzu were the talk of the town during and certainly after VMworld. I have no doubt this will bubble up more in Barcelona. The use case around First Class Disks and vVols I think is particularly intriguing.
vRealize Automation Cloud and vRealize 8.0. vRealize Automation 8.0 is now GA. There are two major things here to unpack. First VMware Cloud Automation Services was renamed to vRealize Automation Cloud. This in and of itself doesn’t mean anything (VMware loves to name things) but what is actually important about that is the “traditional” vRealize Automation set. vRealize Automation 8 is now entirely based on the features/design/architecture of vRealize Automation Cloud. Meaning that what vRAC offers is what vRA on-premises offers (same tools, integrations, features). This makes choosing between the two easier (one question to ask, do I want to host it, or do I want VMware to?). I expect details on this to be expanded in Barcelona.
vVols. Did you think I wouldn’t bring this up?! Of course I would. vVols is coming back in a big way, and in no small part due to VMware’s renewed push on vVols in their products and with their partners. The automation, integration, and benefits of vVols are making more and more sense these days. VMware gets that, and so do the storage partners. A major topic around vVols is Site Recovery Manager support. Expect to see more vendors talking about that as they furiously work on vVol replication support.

October 1, 2019October 1, 2019

Installing the Pure Storage vSphere Plugin with vRealize Orchestrator

A few months back I published a new PowerShell cmdlet for installing the Pure Storage vSphere Client Plugin. Get-PfavSpherePlugin and Install-PfavSpherePlugin. This works quite well and we’ve had a fair amount of use of it so far, but another place we are certainly investing in right now is vRealize Orchestrator and continuing to enhance our plugin. Filling in any gaps around workflows and actions, especially on initializing an environment is important.

One of those gaps was installing the vSphere Plugin. One common use case we have seen around vRO is day 0 config, but day 2 stuff is done in vCenter (deploying VMs, datastores, etc). So the vSphere Plugin comes in handy here. So how do I install it from vRO?

June 11, 2019June 11, 2019

First Class Disks and VVols

One of the major advantages we have seen with VVols is making a virtual disk a first class citizen on the array. We can restore, copy, replicate them (and their VMs) as storage objects were meant to be restored, copied, replicated etc.

Though one thing about virtual disks is that by default–they are not first class citizens in vSphere, VVols or otherwise. To create one, it has to be associated with a VM.

To retrieve one in PowerCLI (for example) get-harddisk requires a datastore or a VM to return a result:

Same if I want to create a new one:

June 6, 2019June 6, 2019

Revamped PowerShell Module for Pure and VMware

About 6 months ago, my esteemed colleague Barkz blogged about our path forward with PowerShell. We have an official PowerShell SDK for managing the FlashArray–but it is limited to that: doing stuff to the FlashArray.

So to add value and make managing it within context of the layers you actually manage your infrastructure from (VMware, Microsoft, etc.) we created some value-add PowerShell modules to make it easier. Barkz talks about them here:

One Pure Storage PowerShell Module to Rule Them All.

February 13, 2019February 13, 2019

PowerCLI and VVols Part VIII: Running a Failover–Planned Migration

In the previous post in this series I explored how to run a VVol-based test failover of a virtual machine. Now I will walk through running an actual failover.

There are two types of failovers; a planned migration (everything is up an running) and a disaster recovery failover (part or all of the original site is down).

For this post, I will start with running a planned migration.

February 11, 2019February 13, 2019

PowerCLI and VVols Part VII: Synchronizing a Replication Group

In this post, I will overview how to synchronize a VVol-based replication group with PowerCLI. See previous posts below for more context:

This post is somewhat specific to Pure Storage–the cmdlets of course are universal, but behaviors may not correlate to your storage array. So if you are using VVols on a non-Pure array, certainly consult your vendor.

Furthermore, this is certainly specific to PowerCLI when it comes to the commands. With that being said, the fundamentals on how this works with Pure is common for all orchestration tools, so you should be able to use this information for other tools. Though of course the cmds/syntax will be different.