Change in automatic UNMAP in vSphere 7

For the past few weeks I've been testing some upcoming features in vSphere.beta. In so doing, I was seeing some odd UNMAP behavior. VMware did not appear to be honoring the different UNMAP values I set. So I opened a bug and I asked VMware development about it. After a couple weeks I was told...

PowerMax 2500/8500

Today we announced a new set of platforms, the PowerMax 2500 & 8500. For ease of reference and to avoid confusion, I'll refer to this as the V4 platform to distinguish it from the previous PowerMax which I'll call the V3. The boxes run a new operating system, PowerMax OS 10. This OS is unique...

vSphere 7, PowerMax and FC-NVMe

vSphere 7 is GA today and introduces support for NVMeoF or NVMe over Fabrics. The PowerMax has supported NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe) since our last major release, 5978.444.444, at that time making the PowerMax a complete NVMe solution from host to back-end. Until now, however, FC-NVMe could not be used in VMware environments.  **************************Update****************************...

Documentation update

I was trying to find a way to note that I updated a doc on this site without doing a post but I gave up, hence the post. I actually updated 2 docs, the VAAI doc and the best practices TechBook. I thought I did the VAAI doc a while ago but I guess I...

Load balancing VAAI commands in PP/VE

I had a recent query concerning whether PowerPath/VE supported the load balancing of VAAI commands. Though I was fairly certain this feature was added, my memory not being what it used to be, I did some digging to confirm. Most of the VAAI commands - ATS, WRITE SAME, and UNMAP were added in PP/VE 6.1...

SRDF SRA TechBook 9.1

I published the latest SRDF SRA TechBook version 9.1 today. You can get it here. A reminder that this TechBook only covers SRA 9.x. Prior SRA versions are in the original TB which is located in the documentation library. Besides the changes for 9.1, I added some sections which I have covered in this blog...

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...

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...

vSphere Automatic UNMAP/XCOPY issue

Patch fix is available here: The relevant fix you can find in the release notes is: PR 2411494: VMFS6 automatic asynchronous reclamation of free space might work at a higher space reclamation priority than configured ******** Update 10-14 ******** VMware has formalized the fix I tested and it is set to be included in the...

VAAI and SRDF performance considerations

I wrote a Dell EMC KB (000533648) article last week about VAAI and SRDF performance considerations to assist customers in certain corner cases, but my support colleagues tell me they've had more than a few requests for the information, so I'm going to put most of it here as reference. The intent of the article...