Tag Archives: Unity

How to list the naa-numbers of LUNs and VMware VMFSs on a Dell EMC Unity system

Posted by on May 10, 2019 No comments
EMC Unity

In the Unity the naa numbers (wwn) are listed in the “block” section, but not in the VMware section. If you view the LUNs from the host perspective, the naa numbers are visible, but in the list of LUNs  would have been easier. You can list all details from LUNs and datastores on the CLI by using the uemcli commands:

uemcli -d 10.11.12.13 -u Local\admin -p [password] /stor/prov/luns/lun show -detail > unity.txt
uemcli -d 10.11.12.13 -u Local\admin -p [password] /stor/prov/vmware/vmfs show -detail >> unity.txt

Now simply open the unity.txt file and voila: there they are!

New Dell EMC Unity lineup: Unity XT 380F, 480F, 680F and 880F?

Posted by on April 25, 2019 2 comments

While looking for something totally different I stumbled on a few new Unity XT (?) model numbers.

On this dellemc.com website I spotted some Chinese publication on this new model.

[edit] The new and working website is now working: www.dellemc.com.

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How to enable a replica-LUN on Unity

Posted by on February 21, 2019 No comments
EMC Unity

LUN-replication on Unity works slightly different than it previously did on VNX or even Clariion. In these older generations, when you deleted the mirrorview Mirror Group, both the primary and secondary LUNs became usable as separate entities.

In Unity the secondary LUN is a different beast. First of all: in Unity you can only set up replication from the primary Unity/LUN. The process on the source-Unity will create a LUN-replica and a replication session on both Unitys.

But what happens when you need hosts to access the secondary LUN? A failover works as designed and the previous secondary LUN becomes writable, but when you break the replication session, the replica-LUN has a flag that needs to be reset, but you’ll need the CLI to do that. This is how I did it:

  • In Unisphere I listed all LUNs and I made sure to include the “CLI ID” column
  • I noticed the ID of the LUN I need to grant access to is “res_56”
  • I started PUTTY and made sure logging to a file was configured so I could easily browse / search the possibly large amount of data some commands can produce, especially “-detail” commands tend to be very explicit
  • Log in as the “service” user to the Unity command line

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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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