Category Archives: Storage array - Page 4

Cisco Smart zoning – part II: examples

Posted by on November 5, 2015 4 comments

Smart zoning examples

In my smart zoning post from last February I already presented the way to get started with Cisco smart zoning. I initially planned to give a more detailed calculation on how much time you can save if you were using smart zoning compared to SIST zoning.

SAN fabric

I was talking to an EMC SAN instructor (Richard Butler) this week and after I did a little white-boarding and used my hands to picture how massive a traditional SIST zone environment would be, we agreed smart zoning is the way to go.

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Is the SCM promise really worth the wait?

Posted by on October 14, 2015 No comments
HP SCM

HP and SanDisk are making revolutionary memory market ready

The IT companies HP and SanDisk are promising that their Storage Class Memory (SCM) will be 1000 times as fast as the current generation of flash memory. That’s quite an assumption or is it really proven that it will be this fast.

HP SCM

Storage Class Memory (SCM) is a combination of the memristor technology HP is working on for years already and SanDisk’s ReRAM technology. The new type of memory has some pretty impressive characteristics:

  • It’s 1000x faster
  • It lasts a 1000x longer

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Troubleshooting connectivity issues on a Brocade SAN

Posted by on May 19, 2015 No comments
Fog

I recently had the “pleasure” to figure out what was wrong with a Brocade based SAN environment. Servers were loosing connectivity on one of the HBAs, but all links were online and further investigation was necessary.

Going through all the error counters on each of the long wave SFPs finally revealed one of the SFPs’ health as marginal (hence it was still online, but very buggy indeed). The webtools GUI showed this particular SFP als orange instead of green. Disabling and re-enabling this SFP didn’t help and I decided to shut this SFP for good. And guess what: all my troubles went away. The trunk this SFP was in went back to a non-redundant, but healthy state and all servers got back to normal operations and got their redundant paths back.

So to summarize the story: look for marginal or even faulted SFPs when vague connectivity issues arise. If links are redundant, shutting the faulty one might help.

Want to play around with VMware VVOLs? Here’s your chance! The Software Defined VNX is here!

Posted by on May 4, 2015 8 comments
Hard Drive

VMware now has this great new feature to be more in control of where its data blocks actually land on the storage system: VVOLs. But up until now EMC didn’t have a system capable of actually providing the back end for that. Until now I said. Starting with the VNXe 3200 all storage arrays are made vVOL capable and you can play around with that yourself. FOR FREE!

The Software Defined VNX is now a reality!

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How to get started setting up ESRS on the latest OE for Block and MCx codes

Posted by on April 2, 2015 No comments

It’s just another short post on a single command again. This time I was looking for an easy way to get started on ESRS on the latest OE for Block code or the newer MCx code (33.071 or newer).

First of all you need to set up DNS in your VNX machine. In Unisphere, go to settings and click on “configure DNS”.

Also, if there’s a firewall blocking internet traffic, you need to make sure the storage processors can reach *.emc.com over tcp ports 443 and 8443.

After this you can use the following command on the CLI:

naviseccli -h [SPx ip#] esrsconfig -agentProvision -user [Online Support logon name] –password [Online Support super secret password]

Repeat this for the other SP as well.

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