SRDF SRA Upgrade

Our SRDF SRA version 10 has been out for some time now which means more customers are beginning to think about upgrading their 9.2 environment. Version 10 supports all the configurations that 9.2 does (you can compare release notes), along with more recent releases of both PowerMax and SRM. This is enabled by the backward...

Veeam PowerMax Plug-in Update

Let me start by getting the obvious question out of the way. No, the update is not about REST 10 support. This is a patch for the current plug-in to enhance functionality with REST 9. I highly recommend it, however, so please read on if you use the plug-in. PowerMax Plug-in Version 1.0.90 Veeam posted...

Authorizations (symauth) with SRDF SRA and SRM Appliance

Our PowerMax arrays have a number of security features that prevent users from performing certain storage activities when they have access through Unisphere, Solutions Enabler, or any other application for that matter. In the early days of the Symmetrix array family, the two features most commonly used were Symmetrix Access Control (Lists), aka symacls, and...

vCLS and Virtual Volumes

vCLS vCLS or vSphere Cluster Services was introduced in vSphere 7.0 U1 as a way to manage vSphere DRS and vSphere HA with the intended goal, as far as I understand it, to allow these services to eventually run without the vCenter (not yet). vCLS is represented by eponymous VMs, with 1-3 per vSphere cluster....

PPME PowerMax to PowerFlex – virtual

This is the second example from the post which introduced you to PowerPath Migration Enabler, or PPME. While the first example was a migration on a physical host, by far the more common scenario, for the second example, I'm going to move data within a VMware VM from PowerMax to PowerFlex. Yes, these are the...

VSI 10.1 – HPP for PowerMax NVMeoF devices

A quick update for the latest VSI release 10.1. Most of the new features are for PowerStore but one of my requests for PowerMax made it into the release. I asked development to add the ability to set host best practices for NVMeoF devices. This is similar to the best practices for NMP, except that...

PowerFlex Replication

I thought I'd take a couple posts to cover PowerFlex replication as it is such a critical component of most customers' VMware environment. Having worked so long with PowerMax replication, the PowerFlex implementation in comparison is quite nascent, only supporting an asynchronous mode. In my experience this is the normal progression of replication development, however....

PowerFlex, CSIs and VMware CNS with vVols

In this post I'll cover both the vSphere CSI and the PowerFlex CSI. Since both are utilized in a VMware environment, let's start there. vSphere and Kubernetes VMware has made Kubernetes or K8s, an integral part of their vSphere solution. Whether as part of vSphere in the form of Tanzu (with or without VCF), or...

VDI – vVol Linked Clones

Many enterprise customers use at least part of their infrastructure to host VDI environments or virtual desktops. Even at Dell I can order up one of these desktops through a self-service catalog if the need arises. I've seen a variety of different types of VDI implementations from NFS to FC, sometimes on a small dedicated...

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...