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...

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...

Update – datastore corruption issue 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 for details. Note that the Dell EMC patch is what prevents the corruption. The VMware patch is recommended, but it is not required to enable the fix....

VASA Provider 9.1 ESXi validation errors

In our recent PowerMaxOS release I mentioned that we have a new VASA Provider, version 9.1. I noted our recommendation to upgrade to this release, particularly for the performance benefit related to snapshots; however, I failed to mention a VMware bug in ESXi 6.7 that can cause issues when deploying the new version. I was...

vVols, VVols, VVOLs or again vVols?

So which is the correct spelling of VMware's storage paradigm? If you said, "all of them?" it would be hard to fault you. VMware has gone through many iterations of the capitalization before landing on "VVols" for the past couple years anyway. Well it was too good to last and VMware is asking for another...

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...

VMware vRO Plug-in for Dell EMC PowerMax

Today we released the VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for Dell EMC PowerMax which is available here for download. For those readers of my blog, you may recall we already have a PowerMax/VMAX plugin for vRO which I wrote about here. This original plugin is only available on GitHub and is open-source, meaning there is no...

vSphere LUN and path maximums

This week I had question from our field concerning a customer and LUN/device maximums which I think is useful to share. The customer was running vSphere 6.5 which supports 512 LUNs per ESXi host (per target/array) but they were unable to see any beyond 255. Now before 6.5, I frequently heard from customers who hit...

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...

VMAX Plugin for vRO – workflows in vRA

I had promised this information in one of my previous posts on the plugin for vRO, but time got away from me and there were some more pressing things to cover. In truth, configuring vRA to execute vRO workflows is not a heavy lift. My guess is if you are familiar with vRA then you...