Category Archives: Storage array - Page 3

How to list Host LUN ids in VMAX Masking Views

Posted by on June 1, 2016 No comments
VMAX

Creating tdevs and masking them to hosts (storage groups in a masking view) is relatively easy in the Unisphere for VMAX interface, but what if you add a few tdevs of exactly the same size and you want to make sure that the VMware administrator uses the right LUN for each VMFS he’s going to create? One way to make sure he knows which LUN corresponds with what tdev is the Host LUN id. To list the host LUN ids

symaccess -sid 1234 show view mv_some-maskingview-name

or (a bit more verbose)

symaccess -sid 1234 list view -name mv_some-maskingview-name -detail

The second command shows each initiator group nested within other initiator groups as well.

Both generate a table with the following headers:

Sym                                                            Host
Dev     Dir:Port    Physical    Device    Name    Lun    Attr    Cap(MB)

The column under “Host Lun” shows the Host LUN ids.

Free EMC trial software / virtual appliances

Posted by on May 24, 2016 No comments
virtual machine

A quick heads-up this time about building your own lab environment

Sometimes you just want to run a VNX, Avamar, PowerPath, Data Domain or Isilon as a virtual machine to see how things work, or to write work instructions. And EMC offers a lot of these virtual appliances for free!

Take a look at these:

 

EMC Unity: simplicity redefined

Posted by on May 2, 2016 1 comment
EMC Unity

It’s been a while since the VNX2 was born: September 2013, I remember it very well. Being a part of the EMC Elect, I was invited to be at the actual launch in Milan (Italy) and what a ride it was! The whole launch was wrapped around Formula 1 technology and it sure was “speed 2 lead“. That “old” VNX2, which I’m still perfectly happy with by the way, was a revolution in my humble opinion: multi-core everything, in short MCx. And yes, it was like everything just went faster, smoother and better.

New technologies

But with new technologies popping up every so many months now, it was time for a new mid-range storage array. Flash storage isn’t a novelty anymore, it’s a must! And the “old” hybrid arrays were fine, but needed some fine-tuning. With flash devices growing bigger every quarter or half a year and faster as well, the whole back-end needed an upgrade. The old 6 Gb back-end (x4) needed an upgrade.

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How to gather performance statistics from an EMC XtremIO

Posted by on April 28, 2016 No comments
XtremIO

The XtremIO GUI looks very slick and it has this chronometer with IOps and MBps and everything, but when you need to have MiTrend analyze the statistics, the questions comes to mind: what statistics, what files?

How do I get my hands on these files?

First log on to the XtremIO GUI. Then click on the administration button

Administration

Now click on the “CLI Terminal TAB” and type:

create-debug-info

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Create and retrieve spcollect files from the command line (VNX)

Posted by on April 21, 2016 4 comments
Hard Drive

Java, it’s a curse. And now you suddenly need to upload the spcollect files to EMC and Java isn’t installed or incompatible and Unisphere won’t start.

Now what?

Make sure you have NAVISECCLI installed and just do it from the CLI!

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