VSI 8.2

VSI 8.2 is now GA and brings a few features for the PowerMax/VMAX platform. The binary and documentation are available on the support site here. The product guide contains information on upgrading from earlier releases which is made all the more easy with DockerHub. If required (e.g. isolated environments) you can upgrade via a package....

DTA 537000 – VMFS corruption with XCOPY

*** Update 2-27-2020 *** We have now updated the DTA for this issue where you can find the relevant patch number for the array. Please see article 000537000 below for details. ****** ******* 11/6/19 update I've been asked to provide any update I can on this DTA since it has been over a month, so...

PowerMax 5978.444.444

Today is general availability for the new PowerMaxOS release. As I've done for previous releases, I want to cover the features/improvements that have some relationship to VMware environments. I will be adding this information into my whitepapers and TechBooks over the course of perhaps the next month, but for now it will be available here...

SRA 9.1 and SRM 8.2 Windows support

The SRDF Storage Replication Adapter (SRDF SRA) version 9.1 is now available for download. This release, as you might guess from the version, is associated with our new PowerMax 5978.444.444 release. In addition to the requisite support for the new PowerMax release, the SRA has a couple of new features as well as new support....

SRDF/Metro online device expansion

With the new PowerMaxOS 5978.444.444 release, you can now expand SRDF/Metro devices, and thus the VMware datastores built on top of them, online. You may recall in our current release you can expand SRDF/Metro devices but it does require suspending access to the R2 by changing the RDF mode to synchronous. I wrote this up...

SRDF SRA and SRM Test Failover review

Occasionally I'll get a question from a customer or even employee about doing failover testing in SRM with our SRDF SRA. While I have this documented extensively in the TechBook (TB), and most who contact me have been trying to use it, perhaps it is the very detailed nature of it that makes it challenging...

VAAI statistics

One area of VMware/PowerMax integration that has frustrated customers since inception is the inability to get VAAI command information from the array. The VAAI paper mentions that there is a column available called "Extent Based Clone" which will display source or target depending on how the device is being used; but that has very limited...