PowerMax Data Reduction & VMware

Before I discuss data reduction on the PowerMax, I will acknowledge that this can be a confusing topic or process in general. A couple of our field guys, Dan McKenney and Ken Gotsch, get frequent questions in the field as they work with data reduction all the time in VMware, so I offered to write...

VMware and iSCSI

The topic for this post is not one I’ve spent much time on, either in testing or documentation. It’s not that we don’t have customers that use iSCSI, but they are few and far between, and the subset of those who use VMware is even smaller. We tend to see iSCSI (and NFS for that...

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...

vRO Plug-in for Dell EMC PowerMax Version 1.2

Version 1.2 of the PowerMax vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) Plug-in is now available for download from our support site or the VMware Marketplace. For those new to vRO or the plug-in, the PowerMax Plug-in allows users to run workflows using the REST API (part of Unisphere for PowerMax) to automate both provisioning and protection, among other...

VAAI statistics

One area of VMware/PowerMax integration that has frustrated customers since inception is the inability to get VAAI command information from the array. The VAAI paper mentions that there is a column available called "Extent Based Clone" which will display source or target depending on how the device is being used; but that has very limited...

Using TF/SnapVX to copy cold virtual machines

For the past month I've been updating the VMAX/PowerMax/VMware TechBook for both our new releases and VMware's. It requires a lot of testing, screenshots, research, etc. so honestly it can get tedious. That's why I like when I come across a section to update that is worth sharing ahead of time (or at least I...

Unisphere for PowerMax – VMware integration

As I mentioned in my initial post on PowerMax, I wanted to use a separate post for Unisphere for PowerMax VMware integration. VMware integration has been part of Unisphere in one way or another since it was called Symmetrix Management Console. In its more recent form it consisted of showing information about ESXi hosts, their...