PowerMax 2021 Q1 Service Release

This is our Service Release for the GA PowerMaxOS that came out in September 2020. This is our standard practice after a major release so that we can both fix any issues that may have come up (though I should note we do have a recent service pack, too) and to include some new features...

Dell EMC VMAX and PowerMax Content Pack 1.2

I've updated the Dell EMC VMAX and PowerMax Content Pack for VMware Log Insight on the VMware Marketplace. The new version is 1.2. It does take a day or two for the new version to show up within your own Log Insight Marketplace instance, so if you would like the latest version now you'll have...

VSI 8.6 – PowerMax snapshot policies and hosts

VSI 8.6 is available for download today. This version does away with the previous process for registering the vCenter as part of the OVA deployment. Instead it provides a new interface which I'll cover below. Along with registration updates, there are a number of new features for PowerMax. At a high-level these are the new...

SRDF SRA 9.2.0.1 Hot Fix

This post will cover a new hot fix (HF) build for the Dockers version of the SRDF SRA. The new release is tagged as version 9.2.0.1. Development has worked overtime to come up with solutions to the couple of issues I've outlined in this previous post: Requirement to re-run the enableAutoSSLCertGen.sh shell script after reboot...

iSCSI Direct Connect to VM

This post is a continuation of what I'll call my iSCSI series (if 3 is a series). A question I occasionally hear from customers is if our management software can run on a VM using iSCSI - e.g. Solutions Enabler, Unisphere - without having to assign physical RDMs (be that with a Guest OS or...

vCenter 7.0 U1c – Cross vCenter migration

VMware has released quite a number of vCenter 7.0 patches over the past few months for various bug fixes and sometimes new feature content. VMware makes the patches relatively easy to install by warning you of their availability each time you login to your vCenter via the message banner at the top. If you wish...

Automating the execution of enableAutoSSLCertGen.sh with SRA 9.2

As I explained in the post SRDF SRA 9.2 and the SRM appliance, we use the script enableAutoSSLCertGen.sh to generate the proper hostname that Solutions Enabler uses when communicating in client/server mode. The script is initially run before the SRA install but also must be run each time the SRM appliance is rebooted. As SRM...

Modifying VMware parameters with PowerMax – queues, et al

I'll provide the warning up front that there is nothing new or exciting in this post. It falls into the category of repetitive posts (here's another good example) I do sometimes in the hope of summarizing information for customers so they don't have to wade through my tome of best practices. Of course with that...

vVols – FC and iSCSI together

Let’s continue our previous discussion around iSCSI by looking at accessing vVols with FC and iSCSI in the same datacenter. Beginning with the Embedded Dell EMC VASA Provider version 3.0 (aka eVASA), we support the use of iSCSI with the Protocol Endpoint. (Note it is only the eVASA version that supports iSCSI. You can’t use...

VMware and iSCSI

The topic for this post is not one I’ve spent much time on, either in testing or documentation. It’s not that we don’t have customers that use iSCSI, but they are few and far between, and the subset of those who use VMware is even smaller. We tend to see iSCSI (and NFS for that...