Containers have been around for years at this point, but honestly it wasn’t until Dell EMC World this year that someone asked us if we were doing anything with them on VMAX. Cue the new project, or investigation anyway. I’ve probably mentioned I tend to have my hands full with normal VMAX/VMware stuff but when…
Customers will be happy to learn that the SRDF SRA which supports VMware SRM 6.5 is now GA. SRDF SRA 6.3 is released in conjunction with our newest HYPERMAX OS Q2 2017 release which was announced at Dell EMC World. You can get the SRA here. As I’ve noted in other posts, our SRA is tied to our VMAX…
About a year ago I published a post on integrating vRealize Automation 7 (vRA) with VVols. At that time the implementation was really a manual process because VMware had not created a Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) package for vRA 7, only version 6. In September of last year VMware finally updated the SPBM package…
The SRDF Adapter Utilities (SRDF-AU) is a free, optional plug-in that provides a GUI interface to modify the XML files that are part of the SRDF SRA for VMware SRM and used primarily in testing. The SRDF-AU only runs on Windows and therefore requires that one of the vCenters in an SRM configuration is running on Windows.…
This week at Dell EMC World I presented a session on the ways the VMAX platform integrates into VMware software. Essentially this is my job, figuring out where we can integrate and then whether we should integrate – and of course all that follows – researching, testing, documenting, etc. We already have lots of integration points…
Dell EMC today announced the impending availability of RecoverPoint (RP) 5.1 which is built for use with VMAX3 and VMAX All Flash (I’m just going to use VMAX3 from here forward). You may recall that RP is available on VMAX2 but can only be attached to a VMAX3 via VPLEX. I have a paper that actually uses both…
In conjunction with Dell EMC World, we have announced our latest HYPERMAX OS release (the software that runs on the VMAX3/VMAX All Flash). I’m never quite sure of the naming for these releases, but this one does not have the usual “SR” designation which is defined as a service release. If I were comparing it…
I mean who wants to do that? Well turns out lots of people. I’ve had my share of battling with the VSI plug-in but I expect it with all my development environments. It has come to my attention, though, that many customers also experience the joy of trying to uninstall the plug-in. This is a typical, frustrated…
When Dell took over EMC, there were a number of sub-company names created for the purposes of distinguishing products across our portfolio. While the company as a whole is known as Dell Technologies, the division I work for retained the EMC name so we are known as Dell EMC (hence my banner). (This is not…
A quick FYI for you about a VMware patch. VMware has released vSphere 6.5 p01 which, among other things, fixes a particular issue related to automated Guest OS UNMAP (does not impact automated UNMAP on datastores). The particular bug fix of note which can be seen in the KB is: Tools in guest operating system might send unmap…
Today we have some good news for those of our customers who use VMware SRM, the SRDF SRA, and the vCenter Virtual Appliance. Let’s start with some background information for context, though I am going to assume the reader is familiar with these technologies already. The EMC SRDF SRA is the Storage Replication Adapter which integrates…
I’m off the beaten path today courtesy of a friend and colleague in Chicago. We both used to work at Oracle so when he gives me a call it’s typically not about my VMAX/VMware fare. In this case he had a customer who wanted to use SnapVX to instantiate a physical standby database, i.e. Data Guard.…
