ESA 4.1 & VVols

Dell EMC Storage Analytics 4.1 was made available today and brings with it some new updates for VMAX3 and VMAX All Flash arrays as follows:

• Support for EMC VMAX Virtual Volumes (VVols) resources and metrics
• Support for EMC VMAX SRDF Metro metrics
• Support for EMC VMAX compression metrics
• Update to the VMAX Overview dashboard

Let’s start with a couple reminders about the 4.x releases of ESA. First, our support for the VMAX (VMAX2) platform ended with ESA 3.5. That is the terminal release to use if you are on that platform. Second, we no longer use the SMI-S Provider to gather metrics but the Unisphere for VMAX REST API. As most customers use Unisphere, this removes the requirement to deploy an SMI-S environment. With each release we endeavor to support the most recent HYPERMAX OS code so if you need to upgrade you can.  This is the case with 4.1 – we support the Q3 SR which was made available yesterday. In conjunction with this release is the new update to Unisphere for VMAX, 8.3.  ESA 4.1 requires the use of this version even if you are not at the latest HYPERMAX OS. Don’t worry, there is no issue using the latest Unisphere for VMAX with older HYPERMAX OS code.  We fully support that.

I’m going to run through the new features in a few different ways.  Let’s start with the VMAX Overview dashboard. I added 2 new widgets and reconfigured a couple other ones. The new widgets are for VVols which display capacities for storage containers and resources.  The updates are to the SRP widgets – changing the widget name and some of the metrics. Here is a gif of the changes:

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The new HYPERMAX OS release introduced compression for the VMAX All Flash so we added two metrics for the storage group (compression is enabled at this level):

• EMC VP Space Saved (%)
• EMC Compression Ratio

Here is a screenshot of the EMC Compression Ratio.

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Note that these metrics may show a value even on VMAX3 arrays (which do not support compression), but they should be ignored.

For SRDF/Metro we added some metrics around status, mainly to inform the user if bias or a witness is being used and if a witness is being used (physical or virtual – introduced in Q3 SR) whether the status is degraded. I recorded a quick view of this which includes an introduction with Unisphere.

The final two videos cover the addition of VVols to ESA 4.1. We offer both the topology – Storage Containers, Storage Resources, and Protocol Endpoints – and metrics for each of those resources. There is an important caveat about VVols in ESA.  While there is some topology relationships available – e.g. protocol endpoint to storage group, storage container to SLO – there is no capability to see the mapping of a VM to any VVol object. This is due to lack of integration by VMware in vROps.  Hopefully this will be remedied soon.  The videos are below.

 

Just a reminder that no trial license is required with ESA. Once an adapter is added you’ll have 90 days to give it a run.

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