Month: July 2013

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Scripting ESI PowerShell cmdlets and VMware

EMC offers a variety of tools to manage/enhance your virtual or physical environments–some free, some licensed. In most cases when you think of EMC tools for VMware one conjures up the free Virtual Storage Integrator which is more commonly referred to as VSI.

VSI is a great tool and continues to be improved through each version and allows you to provision storage, manage pathing, configure SRM etc. The one thing it does not have is a way to automate these tasks through an API or CLI. This is where another product comes in–one that many do not associate with VMware. The EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) is a lot of times seen as the Microsoft version of VSI–but that isn’t really true at all. While it might have started out that way and does indeed support Hyper-V and has a ton of Microsoft-specific features it is really the heterogeneous storage integrator. Importantly it  has a very handy and powerful feature–PowerShell cmdlets.

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Point-in-time test recovery with VSI RecoverPoint Management and VMware SRM

Today I’ll be filling in for Cody on his blog since I couldn’t find time for one if I tried and he has been gracious enough to let me post when topics come up.  My name is Drew Tonnesen (@drewtonnesen) and I’m a systems engineer in the ESD organization at EMC (basically the engineering side of the house).  I work on the integration of virtualization technologies (mostly VMware) with the Symmetrix platform but also focus on VPLEX and RecoverPoint.  Cody and I have worked together for many years now and though we get moved around a bit and re-organized, we both continue to work on VMware/Symmetrix integration like our TechBook (yes, shameless plug:  http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/solution-overview/h2529-vmware-esx-svr-w-symmetrix-wp-ldv.pdf).

So since I mentioned I work on Symmetrix, VPLEX, and RecoverPoint I thought what better post than one on all those – and Oracle Extended RAC to boot.  I’ve recently updated my white paper on this topic and it can be found here:

http://www.emc.com/collateral/white-papers/h11767-vmware-vplex-rp-srm-wp.pdf.

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Using VMware vCenter Log Insight with Symmetrix VMAX

A bit of a long one here. At some point this might turn into a white paper (update: it is now). But for now…

Check out my post on the Pure Storage integration with Log Insight here!

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UPDATE: We have released a content pack that automatically configures dashboards and fields for the VMAX, it will save you a lot of work and the pack is free! Read about it here:

https://www.codyhosterman.com/2013/08/09/the-vmax-content-pack-for-vmware-vcenter-log-insight/

And updated here:

http://drewtonnesen.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/auditing-with-the-vmax-content-pack-v1-5-1/

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Earlier this summer VMware announced a new product called vCenter Log Insight which just went GA today. You can download it and try it out from here:

http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-log-insight/

insight

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VMAX and VMware VAAI White Paper Update

One of the documents that my colleague Drew Tonnesen (@drewtonnesen) and I maintain is a white paper that explains the how, what, why, when, etc. of  using VMware’s VAAI block primitives (WRITE SAME, XCOPY, ATS and UNMAP) with Symmetrix VMAX storage systems. We update this document around twice a year or as needed to take into account new Enginuity releases or VMware releases. We just posted the latest update this weekend on EMC’s website:

http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8115-vmware-vstorage-vmax-wp.pdf

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