Unisphere for PowerMax – VMware integration

As I mentioned in my initial post on PowerMax, I wanted to use a separate post for Unisphere for PowerMax VMware integration. VMware integration has been part of Unisphere in one way or another since it was called Symmetrix Management Console. In its more recent form it consisted of showing information about ESXi hosts, their...

ALUA and Mobility ID on VMAX

A recent interaction with a customer led to this blog post concerning the Mobility ID that we support for VMAX devices and the multipathing policy of ALUA (Asymmetrical Logical Unit Access). Mobility devices are the only ones that support ALUA on the VMAX. ALUA multipathing is typically associated with non-VMAX arrays like the former Clariion...

vSphere 6.5 GA and EMC Dell VMAX

VMware vSphere 6.5 is now GA and available for download here. vSphere 6.5 offers lots of new features and capabilities that you can take advantage of in a VMAX environment and is fully supported running on all models in these array types: VMAX1 or VMAX2 (Symmetrix) VMAX3 VMAX All Flash If you have any concern -...

What’s in a name? The SRDF Utilities for SRM

I've spent countless hours documenting our SRDF SRA for SRM and the accompanying Utilities.  Unfortunately there are subtleties in the product pair which continue to confuse both our customers and our own employees who work with those customers.  After writing yet another email response about this topic the other day I thought I'd take a stab at...

VSI 6.5 – vSphere 6, VPLEX, PP/VE and more

VSI 6.5 is now generally available for download on support.EMC.com: VSI for VMware vSphere Web Client 6.5 VSI for VMware vSphere Web Client 6.5 Release Notes VSI for VMware vSphere Web Client 6.5 Product Guide Here are the new features: Support for VMware vSphere 6.0 - note this is the ONLY VSI release supporting it...

vSphere 6.x and VAAI performance boost on VMAX

***Update - as more customers move to vSphere 6.x on VMAX, I expect this topic to be more poignant.  So I want to point out something about the changes detailed below.  The new changes for vSphere 6.x and XCOPY are ONLY for VMAX and no other arrays - not VNX, not XtremIO, not VPLEX, etc....

VMAX3 Q4 GA – RDF/SNAPVX/XCOPY

The Q4 release of VMAX3/HYPERMAX OS is here.  As Less Grossman would say "Welcome to the goody room!"  This release has the features we have been waiting for since the VMAX3 went GA (yes I know barely 2 months ago) - Local/Remote replication and the return of the VAAI primitive Full Copy (or XCOPY) among...

VMAX3 is GA!

The VMAX3 (100K, 200K, 400K), the latest evolution in our high-end storage arrays (Symmetrix), officially went GA today.  This platform has been some time in the making and it took the combined effort and long hours of many individuals in engineering to bring it to fruition.  As there will be many other blogs/announcements concerning VMAX3...

VASA Registration Problems Revisited

Back in June I published an entry on resolving VASA registration issues (https://drewtonnesen.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/vmax-vasa-and-registration-failure-in-vcenter/).  In it I covered some of the more common problems you are likely to hit when attempting to register the VASA Provider in VMware vCenter.  Through many customer issues I have come to find that one of the simpler solutions, when the...

Log Insight with Symmetrix VMAX – revisited for Unisphere

Cody recently posted an entry that discussed how Solutions Enabler can be configured to send logs to VMware vCenter Log Insight (http://codyhosterman.com/2013/07/10/using-vmwares-vcenter-log-insight-with-symmetrix-vmax/). He mentioned that in order for Unisphere for VMAX to send its information, additional configuration was required. So here is that additional information. I'll start by noting that everything described in Cody's previous...