VMAX/VMware TechBook terminal release

I've posted what is the terminal release of the TechBook Using Dell EMC VMAX and PowerMax in VMware vSphere Environments. For those not familiar with it, this book contains the general best practices of using VMware with the VMAX/PowerMax family of arrays. This latest update has, for the most part, minor changes, and will cover...

Modifying VMware parameters with PowerMax – queues, et al

I'll provide the warning up front that there is nothing new or exciting in this post. It falls into the category of repetitive posts (here's another good example) I do sometimes in the hope of summarizing information for customers so they don't have to wade through my tome of best practices. Of course with that...

VMAX (and PowerMax!) plugin for vRO update

*** Update 3/14/19 *** There is a new plugin available for vRO here which is a supported version.   **************************************** I've posted our latest update to the vRO plugin to the GitHub. The developers have used this release to fix a number of issues I found in my testing, but most importantly we now support...

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...

ESA 4.6 – PowerMax

So it's been less than 2 months since our last ESA release but we have another! Truth be told we had to wait to release ESA 4.5 because VMware delayed vROps 6.7 and we had already built it on that software. The new release, Dell EMC ESA 4.6, which also runs on vROps 6.7 of...

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...

VSI 7.3.3 with vSphere 6.7 support

Only 3 days ago I wrote about VMware's new vSphere 6.7 release and cautioned that the current VSI release did not support it but a release was on the way...and today it has arrived. VSI 7.3.3. is now available for download. Just a couple things to know about this release. First, the release will supplant...

vSphere 6.7 & SRM 8.1

Today VMware has posted the newest release of their flagship vSphere product, 6.7. In addition they have also dropped Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 8.1. A new vSphere release always means lots of new features, and I'd be a fool to try to enumerate them seeing as there is a document for that. I'll mention a...

vSphere 6.7 automated UNMAP enhancements

Continuing from vSphere 6.7 post... So in vSphere 6.5 VMware introduced automated UNMAP for datastores. In so doing they offered users two option: on (default) or off. Rather than a checkbox, however, VMware has what appears to be a scale which would allow the user to decide how aggressive UNMAP should be. It didn't work...

Dell EMC ESA 4.5

Dell EMC ESA 4.5 is now available for download here. The first thing you'll notice is there has been a name change. Although Dell bought EMC years ago at this point, name changes can take time as there are all sorts of legal hoops to jump through as well as individual country requirements. The good...