For those customers running on PowerMax, I've published the new The Dell EMC PowerMax and VMware vSphere Configuration Guide which is the replacement for Using Dell EMC VMAX and PowerMax Storage in VMware vSphere Environments. The new TechBook only covers PowerMax integration/best practices with VMware. While the previous doc was over 400 pages, the new... Continue Reading →
VMware recently released the vRealize Suite 8.6 which includes Log Insight version 8.6. You may have noticed they skipped Log Insight 8.5, though it is not the only vRealize product that did not have a version 8.5. My guess is VMware wanted to re-align all vRealize versions so they simply skipped 8.5 for some products.... Continue Reading →
SRM 8.5 was released a couple days ago now (10.5.21) and offers some interesting additions. At the top I'll note that our SRDF SRA 9.2.x is compatible with SRM 8.5. For many point releases, VMware does not significantly alter how SRM works and thus simply brings certification forward from the previous release. Since we support... Continue Reading →
The latest release of the vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) Plug-in for PowerMax 1.2.2 is now available for download here. No new features in this one, but we added support for vRO 8.4. I know I've had my share of queries from customers and internal sales about vRO 8.4 support so here it is.
I wanted to revisit this post on using point-in-time (PiTs) with SRM and the SRDF SRA having just demonstrated SRM with virtual and physical infrastructure. A dual purpose environment was the original impetus for adding the parameter IgnoreActivatedSnapshots so many years ago now, and as it has been four years since the post I thought... Continue Reading →
Today the Dell EMC PowerMax Veeam Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication went GA and is available for download from their website here under the Storage Plug-ins tab. The plug-in has been a high priority ask from our customers for a while because taking advantage of our local replication technology provides the same type of... Continue Reading →
I've had some questions from customers running Oracle RAC on VMFS who would like to use TimeFinder/SnapVX to test, rather than Oracle tools like RMAN. This is a sensible course given that for large databases RMAN takes a long time to restore, and SnapVX is basically instantaneous. But why use either solution when I can... Continue Reading →
Today we officially launched the latest PowerMaxOS (5978.669.669) which, along with accompanying software releases, offers some new VMware capabilities that have been in high demand from our customers. Most notably, these include support for replication with VMware Virtual Volumes (vVol) - vVols 2.0/VASA 3.0 support - and support for the SRM Appliance with our SRDF... Continue Reading →
We have finally released our long awaited VASA 3 implementation for vVols 2.0 which includes support for SRDF Asynchronous (SRDF/A) replication. Lack of replication support has been a blocker for many customers to even look at vVols since a DR solution is such an essential component of a business (as it should be). And having... Continue Reading →
I've been meaning to talk about this topic for a while, but lack of lab resources and other pressing projects kept pushing it to the back burner. I've bundled a few things together in this post since they all center on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), and as I've used the same environment for everything, creating... Continue Reading →
Dell PowerFlex and PowerMax with VMware 