FlashArray and VMware documentation update for vSphere 6

I have completed updates for two of my main VMware vSphere documents for the Pure Storage FlashArray. These include the standard best practices document and the white paper explaining VAAI in detail and how it works on the FlashArray.

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Best Practices Document Link

VAAI White Paper Link

The best practices document has mainly been updated with information that this blog has shown in the past couple of months. Notably:

  • vSphere 6 updates, support for Web Client Plugin versions, changes in virtual disk recommendations, in-guest UNMAP support, etc
  • VMFS UNMAP changes when it comes to best practice recommendations
  • vRealize Operations Management Pack
  • EFI-enabled VMs and Disk.DiskMaxIOSize

In the VAAI document, it is a similar update:

  • vSphere 6 changes, mainly focused on the thin virtual disk XCOPY enhancements
  • UNMAP changes, block counts, performance and in-guest support (EnableBlockDelete)

Both documents are also updated for FlashArray//m, but it is mainly a cosmetic change as nothing really changes for the VMware environment, no recommendations are changed. Of course the documents are also cleaned up and re-arranged to be more reader friendly with a semi-new format as well.

Important! If you have old versions of these documents, delete them! These get updated frequently (a few times a year at least) and these changes can be important. When needing to refer to the guides, please check back to the Pure Storage community for the latest version.

Enjoy! As always feedback on these documents is ALWAYS welcome.

 

Pure Storage and VMware VAAI

Today I posted a new document to our repository on purestorage.com: Pure Storage and VMware Storage APIs for Array Integration—VAAI. This is a new white paper that describes in detail the VAAI block primitives that VMware offers and that we support. Furthermore, performance expectations are described, comparing before/after and how the operations do at scale. There are some best practices listed as well, the why and how of those recommendations are also described within.

I have to say, especially when it comes to XCOPY, I have never seen a storage array do so well with it. It is really quite impressive how fast XCOPY sessions complete and how scaling it up (in terms of numbers of VMs or size of the VMDKs) doesn’t weaken the process at all. The main purpose of this post is to alert you to the new document but I will go over some high level performance pieces of information as well. Read the document for the details and more.


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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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