VSI 10.4 – Snapshotting

This release of VSI, 10.4, focuses on snapshotting for PowerFlex, PowerMax, and even PowerStore. I’ll just stick with my two platforms here as I really don’t need another one thank you. For PowerFlex this is the introduction of VMFS snapshots, and for PowerMax NFS datastores. Specifically the new features are:

Features

Note that on the PowerFlex side, the capabilities are fairly limited in this first release.

PowerFlex

• Create, view, secure, and delete a snapshot of a PowerFlex VMFS datastore.
• Assign a snapshot policy to a PowerFlex VMFS datastore.
• Unassign a snapshot policy from a PowerFlex VMFS datastore.

PowerMax

• Support of Unisphere 10.1.0.0 (REST).
• Create a snapshot of a PowerMax NFS datastore.
• View snapshots of a PowerMax NFS datastore.
• Delete snapshots of a PowerMax NFS datastore.
• Edit snapshots of a PowerMax NFS datastore.
• Refresh snapshots of PowerMax NFS datastores.
• Restore PowerMax NFS datastores using snapshots.
• Mount a PowerMax NFS datastore snapshot clone to another host

Interface

The interface is accessed in the same manner for all platforms that VSI supports. Highlight the desired datastore then Configure -> Dell VSI -> Configure Storage. Here there is the Snapshots tab which provides the coded functionality for the platform in question.

PowerMax

PowerMax offers Mount, Restore, and Refresh options for an NFS datastore.

PowerFlex

PowerFlex offers Set Snapshot Security and Unassign Policy. The ASSIGN POLICY you can see is a button on the right-hand side. If you do assign a policy, this button will then change to UNASSIGN POLICY and the menu option is no longer grayed out. It’s not clear why the policy assignment was not included in the menu.

Assign policy

While you can assign a snapshot policy in VSI, you can’t actually create one. That must be done in the PowerFlex UI and then it will be available as such:

Walkthroughs

As has been my wont lately in posts, I’d rather not screenshot you to death. I therefore have two narrated walkthroughs below, one for each platform, if you wish to have more detail beyond the listed features.

PowerMax

PowerFlex

A final note

ESXi 8 support in VSI

We’ve recently added support for ESXi 8 with PowerFlex SDC, but as such it was well past the VSI planning for 10.4. Therefore, the ability to install SDC is still limited to pre-ESXi 8. If you try it, here is the error:

You can still do a manual install of SDC on ESXi 8 if you wish.