PowerMax 2021 Q1 Service Release

This is our Service Release for the GA PowerMaxOS that came out in September 2020. This is our standard practice after a major release so that we can both fix any issues that may have come up (though I should note we do have a recent service pack, too) and to include some new features...

vVols – FC and iSCSI together

Let’s continue our previous discussion around iSCSI by looking at accessing vVols with FC and iSCSI in the same datacenter. Beginning with the Embedded Dell EMC VASA Provider version 3.0 (aka eVASA), we support the use of iSCSI with the Protocol Endpoint. (Note it is only the eVASA version that supports iSCSI. You can’t use...

PowerMaxOS 5978 Q3 2020 release

Today we officially launched the latest PowerMaxOS (5978.669.669) which, along with accompanying software releases, offers some new VMware capabilities that have been in high demand from our customers. Most notably, these include support for replication with VMware Virtual Volumes (vVol) - vVols 2.0/VASA 3.0 support - and support for the SRM Appliance with our SRDF...

vVols, SRDF, and VMware SRM on PowerMax

We have finally released our long awaited VASA 3 implementation for vVols 2.0 which includes support for SRDF Asynchronous (SRDF/A) replication. Lack of replication support has been a blocker for many customers to even look at vVols since a DR solution is such an essential component of a business (as it should be). And having...

Snapshot metrics in VMware Virtual Volumes (vVols)

I was working on an update to the vVol whitepaper for our next release (VASA 3), and I realized that I failed to include a more detailed explanation of snapshot reporting in the VASA 2 paper. I'll try to get that done in the next couple weeks (done), but in the meantime let me run...

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...

PowerMax, vVols, VMware CNS, and K8s

I'm going to veer from my usual topics today to talk about Kubernetes (K8s) and vSphere given the new features in vSphere 7 (e.g. Project Pacific, Tanzu). K8s and Docker are everywhere these days - from many of VMware's newer appliances like SRM to our own VSI plugin. Initially, containers generally were associated with being...

vRealize Operations 8.1 and vVols

I normally don't cover VMware's new releases for non-vSphere products unless we have integration available, however in this case I wanted to point out some new functionality in vROps 8.1. Our Dell EMC Enterprise Storage Analytics plugin just released version 5.1 which supports vROps 8.0 only. Given the close proximity of the releases I know...

VMware SRM 8.3 GA

In addition to vSphere 7, VMware released SRM 8.3 today. The big ticket item in SRM 8.3 is support for Virtual Volume (vVol) array replication. Prior to 8.3, VMware only supported vSphere Replication with vVols but now array vendors can enable support via their VASA Providers. With SRM and vVols there is no requirement for...

PowerMax Content Pack for Log Insight v1.1

I've posted an update to the The Dell EMC VMAX And PowerMax Content Pack For VMware vRealize Log Insight which you can find on the VMware Marketplace. You can also install it directly from your implementation as below: The new version only has a couple changes. The first is a renaming of "VVol" references to...