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.

Read more »

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

Read more »

A list of (social) activities during EMC World in Las Vegas 2016

Posted by on April 28, 2016 3 comments
Las Vegas

It’s a list of activities. No big story or my thoughts on it, it’s just a list and yes, there’s a lot of overlap. I’ll be editing this list when more events come to my attention, so keep an eye on this blog post at all times!

I’ll list as much activities as are known to me, but feel free to add comments to this post and I’ll edit any unlisted events to the list asap!

Read more »

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!

Read more »

Cisco MDS “fabric merge” and “switch add” prerequisites

Posted by on April 20, 2016 No comments
Cisco MDS

Prerequisites when adding a new SAN switch to an existing SAN fabric

When using enhanced device aliases, make sure you enable this on the new switch as well:

device-alias mode enhanced
device-alias commit

You can verify if this is enabled on an existing switch by this command:

sh run | grep “device-alias mode”

Read more »