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...

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...

Dell EMC SRDF SRA 9.0, PowerMax and SRM 8.1

Today we posted the latest SRDF SRA 9.0 which is released in conjunction with our new PowerMax OS and Solutions Enabler 9.0. You can download both the Release Notes and software here. The most frequent question I have had as of late is what SRA supports the new SRM 8.1. It's this one. With that...

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...

VMAX Plugin for vRO Workflow Modification

Some of you may be very familiar with vRealize Orchestrator and how to go about customizing these workflows that are part of the VMAX Plugin. For those who are not, I thought I would show you how to make a change to an existing attribute of a workflow to enable another option. I'm going to...

VMAX Plugin for vRO Walkthroughs

I put together a few videos for the VMAX Plugin. The first one here steps through installing the plugin in the vRealize Orchestrator Control Center. Be sure the service for this is started before attempting since by default it is disabled. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mPcLJrsIXM The second video demonstrates how to add a new vCenter to vRO and...