Today, vRO 7.6 was released, and one feature I was most looking forward to was a fully usable web client for creating/editing workflows! Time to finally ditch the java client!
vRealize Orchestrator 7.6 is released! Updated Web Client
Setting up iSCSI Port Binding with Standard vSwitches in the vSphere Web Client
Another how-to post on iSCSI. Essentially another “for the good of the order post” here. iSCSI is becoming increasingly common, so figured I would put a post together that covers the ins and outs of port binding with standard vSwitches.
For information on distributed switches (which I highly recommend using over standard vSwitches) check out this post here:
Setting up Software iSCSI Multipathing with Distributed vSwitches with the vSphere Web Client
So on to Standard vSwitches. Continue reading “Setting up iSCSI Port Binding with Standard vSwitches in the vSphere Web Client”
FlashArray Deprecation of TLS 1.0 Support and the vSphere Web Client Plugin
In the recent release of the Purity Operating Environment on the FlashArray we deprecated TLS 1.0 support due to the ever growing list of vulnerabilities in it. Communication will be restricted to TLS 1.1 and later. Unfortunately, this affects some plugins/integrations. This is not an exhaustive list, but related to the ones VMware customers probably touch the most. If something is not listed ping the relevant support organization for more information.
The following plugins are NOT affected and will continue to work with Purity 4.7:
- vRealize Operations Management Pack
- vRealize Orchestrator Workflow Package
- vRealize Log Insight Content Pack
The following are affected and will need to be upgraded to a specific version to work with Purity 4.7:
- Site Recovery Manager Storage Replication Adapter (this needs to be version 1.5, which will be out soon)
- vSphere Web Client Plugin (this needs to be version 2.0.10+)
- VSS Provider (this needs to be version 1.0.2)
- PowerShell SDK (this needs to be version 1.5)
Continue reading “FlashArray Deprecation of TLS 1.0 Support and the vSphere Web Client Plugin”
VMFS Snapshots and the FlashArray Part I: Mounting an unresolved VMFS
This is part 1 of this 7 part series. Questions around managing VMFS snapshots have been cropping up a lot lately and I realized I didn’t have a lot of specific Pure Storage and VMware resignaturing information out there. Especially around scripting all of this and the various options to do this. So I put a long series out here about how to do all of this. Let’s start with what an unresolved VMFS is and how to mount it.
The series being:
- Mounting an unresolved VMFS
- Why not force mount?
- Why might a VMFS resignature operation fail?
- How to correlate a VMFS and a FlashArray volume
- How to snapshot a VMFS on the FlashArray
- How to mount a VMFS FlashArray snapshot
- Restoring a single VM from a FlashArray snapshot
Continue reading “VMFS Snapshots and the FlashArray Part I: Mounting an unresolved VMFS”
Setting up iSCSI with VMware ESXi and the FlashArray
I’ve been with Pure Storage for about ten months (time flies!) and a noticeable trend I’ve seen in the past six or so months is in the number of customers who are deciding to use iSCSI as their storage protocol of choice. This is increasingly common in greenfield environments where they don’t want to invest in a Fibre Channel infrastructure. I’ve helped quite a few set this up in VMware environments so I thought I would put a post together on configuring ESXi software iSCSI with the Pure Storage FlashArray (I have yet to see a hardware iSCSI setup).
Before I begin, I highly recommend reading the following two documents from VMware:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/iSCSI_design_deploy.pdf
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmware-multipathing-configuration-software-iSCSI-port-binding.pdf
They are not long and provide very good insight into the how/what/why of iSCSI on VMware. Some of the images are a bit old, but the underlying concepts have not changed. Continue reading “Setting up iSCSI with VMware ESXi and the FlashArray”
Pure Storage vSphere Web Client Plugin 2.0 Released
The vSphere Web Client Plugin for the Pure Storage FlashArray has been updated and released and it is the largest update to the plugin since, well, it was first released. A lot of feature enhancements–the majority focused on integrating local and remote replication management into the plugin. Our long term goal is to offer feature parity of FlashArray management with the plugin as compared to our own GUI. It is getting close. Let’s take a look at the new features.
Continue reading “Pure Storage vSphere Web Client Plugin 2.0 Released”
PowerActions–The PowerCLI Plugin for the vSphere Web Client with UNMAP
The other day I stumbled upon a new VMware labs “Fling” called PowerActions. Basically it allows you to run in-context PowerShell/PowerCLI scripts right from within the vSphere Web Client. My mouth drooled at the promise of what this could deliver–and it really delivered! This is my new favorite tool by a landslide. See the announcement here from @alanrenouf http://www.virtu-al.net/2014/09/16/powercli-vsphere-web-clientannouncing-poweractions/. I’d recommend readin this first before you continue down with my post.
Continue reading “PowerActions–The PowerCLI Plugin for the vSphere Web Client with UNMAP”
Pure Storage Web Client Plugin version 1.1.13
I have done a few posts on here that involve the Pure Storage Plugin for the vSphere Web Client (here and here) since I joined. Well here is another. We just released a new version of the Web Client Plugin (I am going to refer to it as WCP for the rest of this post because I am a lazy typist). We bundle the WCP into Purity and therefore the WCP is installed, updated and uninstalled from our GUI/CLI to vCenter (yes we do also offer a mechanism to update it outside of upgrading Purity itself). Our latest release of Purity, 4.0.12, includes WCP version 1.1.13–while there is no new functionality there are two important fixes.
Continue reading “Pure Storage Web Client Plugin version 1.1.13”
Pure Storage Plugin for the vSphere Web Client Firewall Requirements
This is a question that has come up quite often and I have blogged about this for several different products in the past. What Firewall rules do I need to create to install and use the Pure Storage Plugin for the vSphere Web Client? Luckily this is fairly simple. For instructions on using and installing the Web Client plugin check out these posts here and here.
When you go to install the plugin from the array GUI and you see the following error it could very well be a network error:
Continue reading “Pure Storage Plugin for the vSphere Web Client Firewall Requirements”
Integrating Active Directory with the Pure Storage FlashArray
Ah access controls…always popular–who doesn’t want everyone to be admins?! Well…um…admins don’t! In this post I am going to run through integrating Active Directory with the Pure Storage FlashArray. Then talk about how it works with the vSphere Web Client Plugin because I would be ashamed if I didn’t at least mention VMware once in a post.
Continue reading “Integrating Active Directory with the Pure Storage FlashArray”