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...

Multiple SRAs cause SRDF SRA bug in Photon SRM

Not the prettiest title, but hey why beat around the bush with it. One of our European customers hit a bug with our SRDF SRA when they went to add Solutions Enabler array pairs in Photon SRM (Windows SRM is not impacted). It wasn't clear this was a bug as the error is common enough...

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...

vRO Plug-in for PowerMax 1.2.2 – vRO 8.4

The latest release of the vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) Plug-in for PowerMax 1.2.2 is now available for download here. No new features in this one, but we added support for vRO 8.4. I know I've had my share of queries from customers and internal sales about vRO 8.4 support so here it is.

VMware Cloud Foundation with FC, vVols, and SRDF Metro

I've been meaning to talk about this topic for a while, but lack of lab resources and other pressing projects kept pushing it to the back burner. I've bundled a few things together in this post since they all center on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), and as I've used the same environment for everything, creating...

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...

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...