VSI 10.6

The VSI 10.6 release continues to add to its many capabilities across the suite of Dell storage platforms. This time the focus is on PowerFlex and PowerMax, the two systems I work with most frequently. As with many of the newer features of VSI, these were added to bring parity with other storage platforms that...

Proxmox

As I wrote in my KVM post, the changes Broadcom is making at VMware have many of their customers considering other virtualization options. One of these options is Proxmox, and as I've heard it bandied about a bit more often by customers, I thought it best to install it and get a feel for what...

SRM SRA logs missing/not created

We've had a number of strange support cases where the SRDF SRA log files do not appear to be generating, at all. These fall into two categories from what support has discovered. One is dependent on version, while the other can occur at any version (or with any SRA for that matter). SRDF SRA 9.2.0.1...

VCF redux – 5.1, PowerFlex and ESXi 8

Last fall, I wrote a post on running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.5 on PowerFlex, though at the time VCF 5.0 was available (June 2023). The reason I could not take advantage of version 5.0 was because its BOM included vSphere version 8 for the vCenter and ESXi hosts which, at the time, was not...

VMware SRM 9.0, VMware Live Site Recovery

VMware SRM 9.0 was released last week on 3/19 but I'm just getting around to it since it was not what I consider a major technical release, despite the number change. I think this is the first release post-Broadcom, and given how Broadcom has really asserted themselves over VMware, I suppose it is no surprise...

Linux KVM PowerMax white paper

My PowerMax version of Linux KVM is now published here: https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/en-US/t/using-dell-powermax-with-linux-kvm-implementation-guide/ It covers iSCSI, FC, and NFS.

Linux KVM DR failover with PowerMax

The final feature in my work with KVM I wanted to discuss is disaster recovery. DR is essential for any enterprise customer, and if you are considering moving off VMware to a more open source solution like KVM, you'll need to understand how it works, and perhaps how it is different than Site Recovery Manager....

Linux KVM storage domain import

In my PowerFlex KVM paper I discuss local replication (snapshots) of storage domains (~ VMware datastores) and the possibilities for using them in backups or testing. I thought it might be worthwhile to give a practical example. As you, my readers, are generally familiar with VMware, I will reference datastore cloning for comparison and clarity....

Linux KVM PowerFlex white paper

The Linux KVM doc I mentioned in this post has been published here: Using Dell PowerFlex with Linux KVM | Dell Technologies Info Hub

VSI 10.5

VSI 10.5 is available today and has a few features for PowerMax, though none for PowerFlex this time around. Let's do a quick run-through. Upgrade No new feature here just a PSA. There are multiple ways to upgrade VSI. The easiest way is to use the UI, but you can push a compressed tar and...