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...

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...

VVol WP updates

I recently updated my Virtual Volume (VVol) whitepaper to include some answers to customer-prompted questions, along with an important discussion around VVol limitations. For those familiar with the paper I'll outline the changes here so you don't need to go searching for them. Let's start with the questions. Some of these are new, some are...

TechBook update for PowerMax

Well PowerMax has been out for a few months now but I only just finished my VMAX/PowerMax/VMware TechBook update here. It's always a bear to be perfectly honest since it encompasses all best practices but the blog can only buy me so much time before we need it in official form. I've managed to get...

Online SRDF device expansion – SRDF/Metro

As I mentioned in my post on SRDF online device expansion, we do not yet support online expansion of SRDF/Metro devices (until 5978.444.444). There are some SRDF enhancements in PowerMaxOS, however, which can get you pretty close so I thought it might be worthwhile to explain how to do that. We now support moving SRDF/Metro...

Online SRDF device expansion with PowerMaxOS

Beginning with PowerMaxOS on both the VMAX All Flash and PowerMax arrays, Dell EMC supports dynamic, online expansion of all SRDF pairs except SRDF/Metro (check this post for a workaround of sorts). Expansion prior to the introduction of PowerMaxOS, requires dissolving the SRDF pair, expanding each device independently and then re-creating the pair. This is...

Using TF/SnapVX to copy cold virtual machines

For the past month I've been updating the VMAX/PowerMax/VMware TechBook for both our new releases and VMware's. It requires a lot of testing, screenshots, research, etc. so honestly it can get tedious. That's why I like when I come across a section to update that is worth sharing ahead of time (or at least I...

VSI 7.4 – PowerMax support

So I believe this is our last VMware integration product to be certified with PowerMax. VSI 7.4 is still based on the vSphere Web Client, though the HTML 5 client is coming along - Q3 I'd guess at this point though don't quote me. As I mentioned before, the continuation of the Web Client version...

Dell EMC VMAX and PowerMax Content Pack

This week I published a new update to the VMAX Content Pack which is used in conjunction with VMware Log Insight, VMware's log collection software. You can locate it under the new name Dell EMC VMAX and PowerMax Content Pack in the VMware Solutions Exchange: or online within your own Log Insight installation: The description...