New VMAX Enginuity Release 5876.251 and Solutions Enabler 7.6.1

On September 9th EMC released a new SR for Enginuity 5876.251. For the most part this is a variety of fixes and minor enhancements but there is one new hardware feature of note. VMAX has introduced support for 16 Gb FC I/O Modules. So if you have some hosts that are using 16 GB HBAs and want to make full use of them you are gonna want this Enginuity upgrade. Of course you will still have to purchase new front end ports for the VMAX as the current FC ports will not be the correct hardware to support 16 GB.

Continue reading “New VMAX Enginuity Release 5876.251 and Solutions Enabler 7.6.1”

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

Continue reading “VMAX and VMware VAAI White Paper Update”