"Remember kids, the only difference between Science and screwing around is writing it down" -Alex Jason (made popular by Adam Savage)
A few weeks ago the latest version of ScaleIO was released (version 1.21) and one of the major new features of it was official Windows Server support. ScaleIO 1.21 supports the following flavors of Windows:
Continue reading “Installing ScaleIO 1.21 in a Windows Environment”
As I wrote about in a recent post the 5.1 version of the SRDF Storage Replication Adapter was updated in a service release. Similar fixes and a few other changes have been also added to the SRDF SRA version 5.5. If you are running VMware Site Recovery Manager version 5.1 or 5.5 this is the SRA you should be using. SRM 5.0 users can only use the 5.1 SRA (while the 5.1 SRA supports SRM 5.0 and 5.1 I recommend SRM 5.1 users use the 5.5 SRA).
So what’s new in the latest SR for SRDF SRA (5.5.1.0)?
Continue reading “Service release SRDF SRA 5.5.1.0 for VMware Site Recovery Manager”
A new version of the EMC Virtual Storage Integrator 5.6.3 has been released for the following VSI features:
Now obviously this is a minor release and doesn’t include revolutionary changes but for users of these VSI features is worth the upgrade.
Continue reading “Virtual Storage Integrator 5.6.2 Released AppSync and USM”
Let’s talk about snapshots and ScaleIO.
First how does snapshot-ing work with ScaleIO? ScaleIO offers the ability to snapshot a single volume at a time or cloning multiple volumes at once. Importantly, ScaleIO, when snapshot-ing multiple volumes at once, those copies will be consistent with each other at the time of creation. A consistency group is created when a snapshot command includes multiple volumes–this is helpful for situations where multiple VMs on multiple volumes need consistent copies but the source applications may not be able to be quiesced at the time. ScaleIO does not though prevent you from deleting one snapshot in a consistency group–you may manage those volumes after the fact however you wish.
Continue reading “Creating ScaleIO Snapshots in a VMware environment”
The second generation of EMC Elect has been announced! A great mix of customers, partners and EMC employees were accepted into the program this year–congratulations to all that were! I’m thrilled to count myself as one of them.
The service release for the Symmetrix SRDF Storage Replication Adapter version 5.1 has been posted and is available for download. This isn’t a must-update release for most users but there are some important changes in them that will be very relevant for a few environments. This release will be numbered 5.1.0.2 but in some places may be referred to as 5.1.1.
Continue reading “Service release for VMAX SRDF SRA 5.1 posted”
It’s been a bit but I’m (Drew Tonnesen, [email protected]) back for another guest spot on Cody’s blog. In August 2013 I wrote about the VMAX Content Pack for VMware’s newly released Log Insight product (v1.0). At the time of release VMware was pushing hard for content packs and rode me pretty ragged for 2 weeks to produce one. As a result much of the detail around items like widgets was minimal. This was perfectly acceptable as VMware was also in the nascent stages of the product and content packs. Now with VMware’s release of Log Insight 1.5, they have made some important changes, particularly to the content pack component, which has allowed me to expand our VMAX Content Pack. As I’m only going to cover the new features of the content pack and how it relates to Log Insight v1.5, if you want the full Monty on Log Insight v1.5, VMware’s lead developer goes into detail here. Another great resource for everything Log Insight is Steve Flander’s blog: http://sflanders.net/ . Steve does a great job explaining the new features and how to use them as well as answering any questions.
Continue reading “The VMAX Content Pack v1.5 for VMware vCenter Log Insight v1.5”
In my previous post I wrote about expanding a ScaleIO volume in a VMware environment. During that procedure there is a requirement to correlate the EUI of the device hosting the VMFS to the ScaleIO identifier so that you can ensure that you actually expand the correct volume. Especially important in large environments. So I thought is there a way to script this correlation in a simple fashion to save you some work? Can the whole process be automated?
The answer to both is yes!
Continue reading “Using PowerCLI to correlate VMware VMFS and ScaleIO volume info”
In my last blog post I wrote about how to provision a new volume from ScaleIO to your VMware environment so the next logical step is what do you do when that volume is completely consumed. Well you have to options; provision a new volume or expand an existing one. Since the former option was covered in my last post, let’s look at the second option.
VMware vSphere has offered the ability to dynamically expand VMFS volumes since, well, vSphere was introduced (version 4.0). VMFS Volume Grow allows ESXi to recognize when a physical device has expanded in capacity and enables an administrator to non-disruptively expand the VMFS volume to take advantage of the extra space without resorting to using messy extents.
Continue reading “Expanding a ScaleIO Volume in a VMware environment”
I recently posted about adding capacity to a ScaleIO storage pool, so the next logical step is provisioning a new volume. In this post, I am going to cover the straight-forward act of creating a new volume from a storage pool, mapping it to a ScaleIO Data Client (SDC) and then presenting it to the VMware cluster.
The first step is to assure we have enough space to configure a new volume of the size we desire. GUI or CLI will suffice:
Continue reading “Provisioning a new ScaleIO volume in a VMware environment”