Author: codyhosterman

I wrote about a new feature in vSphere 7.0 U2 here:

What’s New in vSphere 7.0 U2 Storage: Creating a File Repository on a vVol Datastore

This allows you to create a large config vVol in a vVol datastore to store large files. Use cases like ISO repositories etc.

This was at launch only available in the direct API, but as of PowerCLI 12.3 it is available in PowerCLI as well.

Pretty simple to do.

Login to vCenter:

connect-viserver -Server vcenter-70-siteb

Get the datastore manager object from the service instance of vCenter:

Continue reading “Creating a File Repository on a vVol Datastore with PowerShell”

A few weeks back Pure Storage and Equinix introduced a joint offering creatively entitled Pure Storage on Equinix Metal.

You can view more details on the offering here.

Continue reading “Pure Storage and Equinix Metal-as-a-Service”

A continuation of the series I started here.

What’s New in vSphere 7.0 U2 Storage: Multiple SPBM Configurations

This is a simple but important one. iSCSI path limits. Since the dawn of human, ESXi has had a disparity in path limits between iSCSI and Fibre Channel. 32 paths for FC and 8 (8!) paths for iSCSI.

Continue reading “What’s New in vSphere 7.0 U2 Storage: Increased iSCSI Path Limit”

The vSphere “update” releases are much more significant than they used to be–traditionally most of the new features came in the major releases. 6.5, 6.7, etc. vSphere 7.0U2 just released and there are quite a bit of storage-related features.

One of the features discussed here:

https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2021/03/09/vsphere-7-u2-core-storage/

…is called “SPBM Multiple Snapshot Rule Enhancements“.

What does that mean?

Continue reading “What’s New in vSphere 7.0 U2 Storage: Multiple SPBM Configurations”

In a few weeks, I will hit 7 years at Pure Storage. It has been REALLY fun. Helping to build our VMware integration ecosystem, pushing the vVol adoption/use case/efforts forward. Building what I believe to be a world-class solutions team that I manage.

I’ve hit my seven year itch. What is next? What should I tackle? Where can I make a big(ger) impact? What is something that is uncomfortable for me, that will allow me to grow?

Clearly, public cloud is a thing. Like, duh. Our customers see that, the industry sees that, and of course Pure Storage sees that. I think the potential there is really just starting–and I think tapping that potential is really going to accelerate efforts on-premises too. I think some of the work we are doing with Equinix Metal is proof of that.

I’ve focused on VMware, specifically VMware storage for my entire career. My first job out of university was just that. The VMware ecosystem though is not going away, and in fact is doing some really cool stuff too. Tanzu. VCF. VMware Cloud. vVols. NVMe-oF. A lot of exciting and differentiating work in that realm. One could easily remain there and perform super satisfying and impactful work. So continuing my focus there is definitely a great option.

Continue reading “After 7 Years at Pure Storage, a New Role”

I get this question quite a bit–in fact I got this question just today while discussing ways to grow the Pure Storage/VMware business. To folks who are close to the VMware storage ecosystem it might seem like an odd question, but it’s a good question!

VMware puts a lot of energy and time into vSAN. Lots of technical information, lots of marketing, lots of webinars, lots of great people discussing its ins and outs at VMware. So if vSAN is such a big storage thing at VMware, how does Pure support vSAN? What do we do with it? How can use deploy vSAN to use Pure Storage FlashArray storage?

Well let’s first take a look at what VMware really is offering with storage. VMware, at the highest level of storage is offering Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM). In a strong and steady movement away from caring about specific datastores, it is much more about the features and protections you want to apply to your VMs, or more specifically their disks. I want it replicated, I want it encrypted, I want it fast. Etc.

Continue reading “How does Pure Storage integrate with vSAN?”

One of the initial limitations around NVMe-oF was the (in)ability to boot from SAN–though this is no longer the case. And you need some fairly new drivers across the board to do it. As far as I am aware, (as of the publication of this post) boot from SAN via NVMe is only currently supported via Fibre Channel, not RoCEv2. But I will keep an eye on that. You do need NVMe-oF/FC capable HBAs–a list of them can be found here:

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=io&details=1&pFeatures=361&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

I am using Emulex LightPulse LPe32002-M2 2-Port 32Gb Fibre Channel Adapter in my server, so I will go through the Emulex instructions. The ESXi-side of things will be similar for other vendors, but the HBA driver version/configuration will be different.

First off, want to learn more about NVMe? Check out this from SNIA:

https://www.snia.org/educational-library?search=nvme&field_edu_content_type_tid=All&field_assoc_event_name_tid=All&field_release_date_value_2%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=&field_focus_areas_tid=All&field_author_tid=&field_author_company_value=&field_release_date_value=All&items_per_page=20

In order to boot from SAN via NVMe/FC you need a few other things:

1. ESXi 7.0 Update 1 (or later)
2. 12.8.x release (or later) of the lpfx and brcmnvmefc drivers from Broadcom/Emulex
3. FlashArray//X or C withPurity 6.1 or later (Pure customers of course) and FC ports.
4. Latest release of the HBA firmware

Continue reading “What’s New in Purity 6.1: ESXi NVMe-oF Fibre Channel Boot from SAN”

NVMe. A continued march to rid ourselves of the vestigial SCSI standard. As I have said in the past, SCSI was designed for spinning disk–where performance and density are not friendly to one another. NVMe, however, was built for flash. The FlashArray was built for, well, flash. Shocking, I know.

Putting SCSI in front of flash, at any layer, constricts what performance density can be offered. It isn’t just about latency–but throughput/IOPS per GB. A spinning disk can get larger, but it really doesn’t get faster. Flash performance scales much better with capacity however. So larger flash drives don’t get slower per GB. But this really requires the HW and the SW to take advantage of it. SCSI has bottlenecks–queue limits that are low. NVMe has fantastically larger queues. It opens up the full performance, and specifically performance density of your flash, and in turn, your array. We added NVMe to our NVRAM, then our internal flash to the chassis, then NVMe-oF to our expansion shelves, then NVMe-oF to our front end from the host. The next step is to work with our partners to enable NVMe in their stack. We worked with VMware to release it in ESXi 7.0. More info on all of this in the following posts:

Is NVMe-oF Ready for Prime Time with vSphere 7?

NVMe-oF Support is now Released!

Continue reading “What’s New in Purity 6.1: NVMe-oF/Fibre Channel”

I am working on some new integration efforts around a feature we call “offload” and figured since I am setting it up, I might as well document it.

For the un-initiated we have a feature called Snapshot Offload that creates snapshots of one or more sets of volumes in a write-consistent manner and sends them to a non-FlashArray target (similar to our snapshot replication from one FlashArray to another conceptually). Those snapshots can then be ingested back to that FlashArray, a different one, or a Cloud Block Store instance in AWS or Azure.

Snapshot offload allows you to send to either some object store, so AWS S3, Azure Blob, GCP Object, or a random NFS target:

For this post I am going to walk through creating an AWS S3 bucket, providing credentials, and then configuring a protection group.

Continue reading “Configuring FlashArray Offload to AWS S3”