Features I Use Regularly in Pure’s vSphere Plugin

Today I want to tell to you about what I use the vSphere plugin for regularly in my lab to hopefully help you get more value out of your existing Pure array and tools. The assumption of this guide is that you already have the vSphere plugin installed (follow this guide if you don’t currently have it installed or would like to upgrade to a more feature-rich remote plugin version). Our vSphere plugin release notes KB covers the differences between versions. If you aren’t sure what version you want, use the latest version.

Why should you care about the vSphere plugin and why would I highlight these workflows for you? Pure’s vSphere plugin can save you a significant amount of time in the configuration/management of your vSphere+FlashArray environment. It can also greatly reduce the barriers to success in your projects by reducing the steps required of the administrator for successful completion of a workflow. Additionally, you might currently be using the vSphere plugin for a couple of workflows but didn’t realize all of the great work our engineers have put into making your life easier.

I am planning to write more blogs on the vSphere plugin and the next one I plan to write is on the highest value features that exist in current vSphere plugin versions.

Create and Manage FlashArray Hosts and Host Group Objects

If you’re currently a Pure customer, you have likely managed your host and host group objects directly from the array. Did you know you can also do this from the vSphere plugin without having to copy over WWNs/IPs manually? (1) Right-click on the ESXi cluster you want to create/manage a host or host group object on, (2) hover over Pure Storage, then (3) left-click on Add/Update Host Group.

In this menu, there are currently Fibre Channel and iSCSI protocol configuration options. We are currently exploring options here for NVMe-oF configuration; stay tuned by following this KB. You can also check a box to configure your ESXi hosts for Pure’s best practices with iSCSI, making it so you don’t have to manually configure new iSCSI ESXi hosts.

FlashArray VMFS Datastore and Volume Management (Creation and Deletion)

There are a lot of options for VMFS volume management in the plugin. I’ll only cover the basics: creation and deletion.

When you use the plugin for datastore creation, the plugin will create the appropriate datastore in vSphere, the volume on the FlashArray, and it will connect the volume to the appropriate host(s) and host group objects on the FlashArray. (1) Right-click on the pertinent cluster or host object in vSphere, (2) hover over Pure Storage and finally (3) left-click on Create Datastore. This will bring up a wizard with a lot of options that I won’t cover here, but the end result will be a datastore that has a FlashArray volume backing it.

The great thing about deleting a datastore from the plugin is that there are no additional steps required on the array to clean up the objects. This is the most satisfying workflow for me personally because cleanup in a lab can feel like it’s not a good use of time until I’ve got hundreds of objects worth cleaning up. This workflow enables me to quickly clean up every time after I’ve completed testing instead of letting this work pile up.

(1) Right-click the datastore you want to delete, (2) hover over Pure Storage and (3) left-click on Destroy Datastore. After the confirmation prompt, the FlashArray volume backing that datastore will be destroyed and is pending eradication for whatever that value is configured on the FlashArray (default 24 hours, configurable up to 30 days with SafeMode). That’s it!

FlashArray Snapshot Creation

One of the benefits of FlashArray is its portable and lightweight snapshots. The good news is that you can create these directly from vSphere without having to log into the FlashArray. It’s worth mentioning that although the snapshot recovery workflows built into the vSphere plugin (vVols and VMFS) are far more powerful and useful when you really need them, I’m covering what I use regularly and I rarely have to recover from snapshots in my lab. I try to take snapshots every time I make a major change to my environment in case I need to quickly roll-back.

There are two separate workflows for snapshot creation: one for VMFS and one for vVols. The granularity advantage with vVols over VMFS is very clear here- with VMFS, you are taking snapshots of the entire VMFS datastore, no matter how many VMs or disks are attached to those VMs. With vVols, you only have to snapshot the volumes you need to, as granular as a single disk attached to a single VM.

With VMFS, (1) right click on the datastore, (2) hover over Pure Storage and (3) left click on Create Snapshot.

For a vVols backed disk, from the Virtual Machine Configure tab, navigate to the Pure Storage – Virtual Volumes pane, (1) select the disk you would like to snapshot and (2) click Create Snapshot.

A prompt will pop up to add a suffix to the snapshot if you’d like; click on create and you’ve got your FlashArray snapshot of a vVols backed disk created!

Stay tuned for a blog on the vSphere plugin features you might not know about that, like the above, can save you a significant amount of time and effort.

Setting up iSCSI Port Binding with Standard vSwitches in the vSphere Web Client

Another how-to post on iSCSI. Essentially another “for the good of the order post” here. iSCSI is becoming increasingly common, so figured I would put a post together that covers the ins and outs of port binding with standard vSwitches.

For information on distributed switches (which I highly recommend using over standard vSwitches) check out this post here:

Setting up Software iSCSI Multipathing with Distributed vSwitches with the vSphere Web Client

So on to Standard vSwitches. Continue reading “Setting up iSCSI Port Binding with Standard vSwitches in the vSphere Web Client”

Setting up Software iSCSI Multipathing with Distributed vSwitches with the vSphere Web Client

Sorry the title is a bit of a mouthful.

I have written some posts on iSCSI in the past, around setup:

Setting up iSCSI with VMware ESXi and the FlashArray

Configuring iSCSI CHAP in VMware with the FlashArray

Another look at ESXi iSCSI Multipathing (or a Lack Thereof)

These have been on various parts, but primarily the setup around standard vSwitches, which generally, in at least in larger environments, is not the norm. Distributed vSwitches are. I have seen a few posts on doing this with the old C# client, but not the vSphere Web Client. Reference those posts here:

http://everything-virtual.com/installing-the-home-lab/installing-the-home-lab-creating-and-configuring-an-iscsi-distributed-switch-for-vmware-multipathing/

https://www.yelof.com/2011/07/13/dr-iscsi-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-virtual-distributed-switches-on-vsphere-v5/

So with the amount of questions I have received on it, it is probably worth putting pen to paper on it. Nothing profound here, basically a walkthrough.

This is of course assuming you are doing port binding. If you are not, then just the standard software iSCSI setup (as described in the above 1st post) is needed.

Continue reading “Setting up Software iSCSI Multipathing with Distributed vSwitches with the vSphere Web Client”

SRM Cannot Identify Replicated Datastores on iSCSI Devices

So we ran into a customer issue recently with VMware Site Recovery Manager that I have not seen before and have not found any on-point articles on, so I thought I’d share this one. Was an insidious one too, when troubleshooting this one I could not find the issue, eventually one of our rockstar escalation engineers at Pure (Jacob Hopkinson) figured it out after going through SRM debug logs line by line. Comes down to case sensitivity in iSCSI IQNs. I’ll explain…

Continue reading “SRM Cannot Identify Replicated Datastores on iSCSI Devices”

Another look at ESXi iSCSI Multipathing (or a Lack Thereof)

I jumped on a call the other day to talk about iSCSI setup for a new FlashArray and the main reason for the discussion had to do with co-existence of a pre-existing array from another vendor. They were following my blog post on iSCSI setup and things didn’t quite match up.

To setup multi-pathing (the recommended way) for Software iSCSI is to configure more than one vmkernel port that each have exactly one active host adapter (physical NIC). You then add those vmkernel ports to the iSCSI software adapter and the iSCSI adapter will then use those specific NICs for I/O transmission and load-balance across those ports.

Continue reading “Another look at ESXi iSCSI Multipathing (or a Lack Thereof)”

PowerCLI Script to Create VMware Clusters on the FlashArray

The first step prior to provisioning storage on the FlashArray is to actually create the host records on the array itself. These records, in their most basic form, are just names of hosts with associated WWNs or IQNs. Pretty simple process in general, but as these VMware clusters get larger and larger (vSphere 6.0 now allows 64 hosts per cluster) scripting this configuration becomes a bit more appealing. Granted, this is a one-off operation, but still saves you from a tedious task. So I wrote one. This script also integrates setting the best practices on the ESXi hosts in the cluster and in the case of iSCSI adds the FlashArray iSCSI ports as a target on the host software iSCSI adapters.

intro

Continue reading “PowerCLI Script to Create VMware Clusters on the FlashArray”

Setting up iSCSI with VMware ESXi and the FlashArray

I’ve been with Pure Storage for about ten months (time flies!) and a noticeable trend I’ve seen in the past six or so months is in the number of customers who are deciding to use iSCSI as their storage protocol of choice. This is increasingly common in greenfield environments where they don’t want to invest in a Fibre Channel infrastructure. I’ve helped quite a few set this up in VMware environments so I thought I would put a post together on configuring ESXi software iSCSI with the Pure Storage FlashArray (I have yet to see a hardware iSCSI setup).

Before I begin, I highly recommend reading the following two documents from VMware:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/iSCSI_design_deploy.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmware-multipathing-configuration-software-iSCSI-port-binding.pdf

They are not long and provide very good insight into the how/what/why of iSCSI on VMware. Some of the images are a bit old, but the underlying concepts have not changed. Continue reading “Setting up iSCSI with VMware ESXi and the FlashArray”