"Remember kids, the only difference between Science and screwing around is writing it down" -Alex Jason (made popular by Adam Savage)
Registering VASA providers is the first step in setting up VVols for a given vCenter, so automating this process is something that might be of interest to folks. We currently have this process in our vSphere Plugin, as well as in our vRO plugin, and of course you can do it manually. What about PowerShell? Well we have that too!
In our PowerShell Pure/VMware module there are three new cmdlets:
One of the major advantages we have seen with VVols is making a virtual disk a first class citizen on the array. We can restore, copy, replicate them (and their VMs) as storage objects were meant to be restored, copied, replicated etc.
Though one thing about virtual disks is that by default–they are not first class citizens in vSphere, VVols or otherwise. To create one, it has to be associated with a VM.
To retrieve one in PowerCLI (for example) get-harddisk requires a datastore or a VM to return a result:
Same if I want to create a new one:
About 6 months ago, my esteemed colleague Barkz blogged about our path forward with PowerShell. We have an official PowerShell SDK for managing the FlashArray–but it is limited to that: doing stuff to the FlashArray.
So to add value and make managing it within context of the layers you actually manage your infrastructure from (VMware, Microsoft, etc.) we created some value-add PowerShell modules to make it easier. Barkz talks about them here:
We just released an updated plugin for vRO today that is fully certified by VMware and is available on the VMware marketplace:
Download it here.
What are the new features? Well a lot–some various bug fixes, but this is mostly about new features:
In the previous post in this series I explored how to run a VVol-based test failover of a virtual machine. Now I will walk through running an actual failover.
There are two types of failovers; a planned migration (everything is up an running) and a disaster recovery failover (part or all of the original site is down).
For this post, I will start with running a planned migration.
Continue reading “PowerCLI and VVols Part VIII: Running a Failover–Planned Migration”Another post in my series on VVols and PowerCLI, for previous posts see these:
This post will be about managing one-off snapshots with VVols on the FlashArray with PowerCLI.
One of the still semi-valid reasons I have seen DBAs say “I dont want to virtualize because…” Is that they have simple snapshot/recovery scripts for their physical server that allows them to quickly restore DBs from snapshots. Doing this on VMFS requires A LOT of coordination with the VMware layer.
So they tell the VMware team–“okay I will virtualize but I want RDMs”. Well the VMware team says “well we’d rather die”
…and around in circles we go…
VVols provides the ability to provide this benefit (easy snapshot stuff) but still get the benefits of VMware stuff (vMotion, Storage vMotion, cloning, etc) without the downside of RDMs.
So let’s walk though that process.
Continue reading “PowerCLI and VVols Part V: Array Snapshots and VVols”About four years ago, we (Pure Storage) released support for our asynchronous replication and Site Recovery Manager by releasing our storage replication adapter. In late 2017, we released our support for active-active synchronous replication called ActiveCluster.
Until SRM 6.1, SRM only supported active-passive replication, so a test failover or a failover would take a copy of the source VMFS (or RDM) on the target array and present it, rescan the ESXi environment, resignature the datastore(s) then register and power-on the VMs in accordance to the SRM recovery plan.
The downside to this of course is that the failover is disruptive–even if there was not actually a disaster that was the impetus for the failover. But this is the nature of active-passive replication.
In SRM 6.1, SRM introduced support for active-active replication. And because this type of replication is fundamentally different–SRM also changed how it behaved to take advantage of what active-active replication offers. Continue reading “Site Recovery Manager and ActiveCluster Part I: Pre-SRM Configuration”
vSphere 6.7 core storage “what’s new” series:
A while back I wrote a blog post about LUN ID addressing and ESXi, which you can find here:
ESXi and the Missing LUNs: 256 or Higher
In short, VMware only supported one mechanism of LUN ID addressing which is called “peripheral”. A different mechanism is generally encouraged by the SAM called “flat” especially for larger LUN IDs (like 256 and above). If a storage array used flat addressing, then ESXi would not see LUNs from that target. This is often why ESXi could not see LUN IDs greater than 255, as arrays would use flat addressing for LUN IDs that number or higher.
ESXi 6.7 adds support for flat addressing. Continue reading “What’s New in Core Storage in vSphere 6.7 Part VI: Flat LUN ID Addressing Support”
There are a variety of ways to assign and set a SPBM Policy to a VM. I recently put out a workflow package for vRO to everything VVols and Pure:
vRealize Orchestrator VVol Workflow Package
I also specifically blogged about assigning a policy to a VM with vRO:
Assigning a VVol VM Storage Policy with vRO
How do you do this with PowerCLI?
Continue reading “PowerCLI and VVols Part I: Assigning a SPBM Policy”
An increasingly common use case for Active-Active replication in vSphere environments is vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) which I wrote about in this paper recently:
This overviews how a stretched vSphere cluster interacts with the active-active replication we offer on the FlashArray called ActiveCluster. Continue reading “Tech Preview: vCenter Site Recovery Manager with ActiveCluster”