VMAX and VMware: Better Together, Optimize Your Dell EMC makes no representation and undertakes no...

VMAX and VMware: Better Together, Optimize Your Virtual Environment with All Flash

Drew Tonnesen VMAX Engineering

© Copyright 2017 Dell Inc.2

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Agenda

• High Availability/Disaster Recovery– VMware Metro Storage Cluster– SRDF & RecoverPoint SRAs and

VMware SRM› SRDF Adapter Utilities› SRDF SRA Future Vision

• Monitoring/Auditing– EMC Storage Analytics (ESA) with

vRealize Operations– VMAX Content Pack with VMware

Log Insight

• VMware-VMAX Integration

• vSphere 6.5 New Features

• Storage APIs– VAAI

› Space Reclamation – UNMAP– VMware Virtual Volumes, aka VVols

• Management– Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)

VMware-VMAX Integration


VMware-VMAX Integration Points

Array APIs/Mgmt

vCenter

ESXi Storage Stack

Datamover

Vendor Specific plug-Ine.g. EMC VSI, SRDF-AU

VI Client VM

VMAX All Flash

VMFS NFS

NFSclient

Network Stack

VMware LVM

HBA Drivers

Vendor-specific VAAI SCSI command support

Storage API for multi-pathing (SATP)

NMP

Network – e.g. FC, iSCSI

NIC Drivers

Storage API for Data Protection (VDDK)

Vendor Specific Storage API for

SRM (SRA)

SRM

VM-Aware Unisphere

Vendor Specific Storage API for Array Awareness (VASA)

e.g. VVols

IO Filter

VAIO Framework

vROps

Vendor Specific plug-in e.g. EMC ESA

Log Insight

Vendor Specific

Content Pack

Protocol Endpoint (VVols)

vSphere 6.5 New Features


vSphere 6.5 – New Features• VMFS 6 – New filesystem

– Only available on ESXi 6.5– Cannot upgrade from VMFS 5– Automated UNMAP for datastores

• Linux Guest OS UNMAP (VMFS 5 and 6)

• ATS Heartbeat Fix (KB 2113956, /VMFS3/UseATSForHBOnVMFS5)

• Scalability of devices – raises limit to 512/2000 paths

• Update Manager now integrated into VCSA

• VVols 2.0/VASA 3.0

• HTML 5 client (partial functionality, e.g. no SRM)


vSphere 6.5 – New Features

VMware Storage APIs


Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)

• A set of APIs using standard SCSI commands that allows vSphere to offload specific operations to storage arrays

– Full Copy (XCOPY)– Space Reclamation (UNMAP)– Block Zero (WRITE SAME)– Hardware-assisted locking (ATS)

• Why are they important?– Offloads host-based operations to the array– Frees up host CPU, memory, and network cycles – Transparent to the user

• VAAI paper: http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8115-vmware-vstorage-vmax-wp.pdf

http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8115-vmware-vstorage-vmax-wp.pdf


Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)


Dead Space Reclamation - Detail• Two types available with VMAX/VMware

– Datastore– Guest OS

• Datastore– Manual – vSphere 5.0 U1 + (vmkfstools, esxcli)– Automatic – vSphere 6.5, on by default

• Guest OS– Prerequisites, HW version 11, thin vmdks, EnableBlockDelete=1– Windows – vSphere 6.0+– Linux – vSphere 6.5 (recent patch recommended)

› e.g. mount /dev/sdb1 /u02 –o discard


VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols)• New abstract storage container replacing traditional datastores (and RDMs) in vSphere 6

– VVols are encapsulations of VM files, virtual disks, etc.– Created automatically during VM tasks – creation, cloning, snapshots – all parts of the VM are

VVols

• Protocol Endpoint (PE)– PE provides logical IO communication and data path– Overcomes device limitation

• VASA 2.0 provides the communication for vCenter/VMAX All Flash – control path

• VMAX All Flash supports VVols 1.0/VASA 2.0 on vSphere 6.0 and 6.5– VVols 2.0/VASA 3.0 is not supported, i.e. no SRDF or RecoverPoint replication – Replication available via RecoverPoint for VMs – Supports Guest OS UNMAP in 6.5

Management


Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)• VSI is a plug-in to the vSphere Web Client

– Two components› vApp – handles management, user security› Plug-in – exposed through vSphere Web Client

– Provides:› In-context storage translation› VMFS provisioning (device & datastore creation)› eNAS provisioning, compression & deduplication› Datastore UNMAP scheduling› Path management including IOPS setting for NMP

o RoundRobin PSP best practice switch paths every 1 IOo Adds claim rule to ensure future devices assigned policy

• Future– VSI will transition to HTML 5 as VMware moves their client to HTML 5– VSI vSphere Web Client releases will continue until transition is complete

VSI Demo

High Availability/Disaster Recovery


VMware Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC)• vMSC is a shared storage cluster solution

– Single vCenter spans two datacenters– Shared datastores on active-active devices on 2 arrays

• Supported configurations with NMP and PP/VE– Non-Uniform – each host sees a single array (preferred)– Uniform (i.e. cross-connect) – each host sees both arrays

› With NMP must use default RR IOPS setting of 1000

• vMSC is an HA solution, for true DR add asynchronous leg

• SRDF/Metro certified solution for vMSC


SRDF & RecoverPoint SRAs with VMware SRM

• Storage Replication Adapters are third-party software products that integrate storage replication with Site Recovery Manager

• SRDF and RecoverPoint have SRAs that can be utilized with VMAX All Flash

• RP SRA supports asynchronous two-site environments

• SRDF SRA supports asynchronous, synchronous and active two-site, Metro and three-site including SRDF/Star environments

• RP and SRDF cannot co-exist

• For any SRDF/SRA configuration question/concern/problem READ the TechBook!

– http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/technical-documentation/h10553-sra-vmware-5-0-tb.pdf

http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/technical-documentation/h10553-sra-vmware-5-0-tb.pdf


SRDF Adapter Utilities (SRDF-AU)

• SRDF-AU (formerly known as VSI SRA Adapter Utilities or SRA Utilities, or SRA-U)– An optional Windows vCenter plug-in which can be used to generate XML

files for the SRDF SRA– Not required by the SRDF SRA– Not compatible with the vCenter Appliance (VCSA)– Current version is 6.2 and aligns with SRDF SRA 6.2


SRDF-AU with VCSA• VMware is moving away from Windows-based vCenters

• Many customers already use VCSA– Must configure test XML files by hand – prone to errors– SRDF-AU cannot be ported, software is hard-coded to Windows

• New Python script now available to generate XML– Produces most common XML for test failover – other functionality not available– Script based on two-site configurations, works on any platform with Python– Customers encouraged to take code and expand for their environment– Details on: https://drewtonnesen.wordpress.com/2017/03/17/srdf-sra-srdf-au-and-

vcsa/

https://drewtonnesen.wordpress.com/2017/03/17/srdf-sra-srdf-au-and-vcsa/

SRA Python Script Demo


SRDF SRA Future Vision• New feature enables automatic SnapVX target device creation

• 2-site configurations only

• Basic workflow– Create SnapVX target devices– Place target devices in storage group where R2 devices reside– Create snapshot– On clean-up, reverse process, including removal of devices

• Two new global options– <AutoTargetDevice>Yes</AutoTargetDevice>– <AutoTargetDeviceReuse>No</AutoTargetDeviceReuse>

SRDF SRA Future Vision Demo

Monitoring/Auditing


EMC Storage Analytics for VMAX• Built as a plug-in to VMware vRealize Operations Manager (vROps)

• Provides real-time intelligent, predictive analytics to the VMware Admin– Utilizes the Unisphere for VMAX REST API

• Includes dashboards, heat maps, alerts and scoreboards

• Shows relationships and dependencies between VMAX storage objects

• Current version 4.2 includes Virtual Volume (VVol) integration and supports vROps 6.5

• vLab for ESA is available – new update forthcoming for 4.2 on All Flash with VVols

• Free for VMAX All Flash


VMAX Content Pack for VMware Log Insight

• Log Insight is VMware’s Log Analytics Solution– Integration with vRealize Operations

• VMAX Content Pack consist of Dashboards, Queries, Alerts and Extracted Fields– Proactive monitoring of the array– Historical viewing of events– Detailed information to troubleshoot– Auditing logs

• CP re-branded to Dell EMC VMAX Content Pack– Previous CP can be removed from Log Insight and new version installed


VMAX Content Pack for VMware Log Insight


Where to get more information?• All topics covered here (and more)

– https://drewtonnesen.wordpress.com/

Questions

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