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....

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...

Non-Disruptive Migration (NDM) with VMware

Non-Disruptive Migration, or NDM, is a capability offered on our arrays that allows you to move from an older array to a newer array with no downtime (hence non-disruptive). NDM has been around for years at this point, but I see it infrequently in VMware environments because of the use of VMware's own NDM, Storage...

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...

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 8.2

Yesterday VMware released the latest SRM product, version 8.2. This release introduces an SRM virtual appliance that runs the Photon OS and within the OS containers for SRM itself and any supported SRAs. This release still offers a Windows-based solution, but VMware will eventually fully transition to the appliance. You can check out the release...

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...

Online SRDF device expansion – SRDF/Metro

As I mentioned in my post on SRDF online device expansion, we do not yet support online expansion of SRDF/Metro devices (until 5978.444.444). There are some SRDF enhancements in PowerMaxOS, however, which can get you pretty close so I thought it might be worthwhile to explain how to do that. We now support moving SRDF/Metro...

Online SRDF device expansion with PowerMaxOS

Beginning with PowerMaxOS on both the VMAX All Flash and PowerMax arrays, Dell EMC supports dynamic, online expansion of all SRDF pairs except SRDF/Metro (check this post for a workaround of sorts). Expansion prior to the introduction of PowerMaxOS, requires dissolving the SRDF pair, expanding each device independently and then re-creating the pair. This is...

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...