Category Archives: VNX

Of VNX, Mountain Lions, and Lessons Learned

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Mac-OS-X-Mountain-Lion-2It has been a busy week in the tech industry. There were several major conferences including Dell Storage Forum, Cisco Live, and Microsoft TechEd to name a few. Apple also had their annual World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). While the iOS 6 announcement may have stole the show, Apple also announced MAC OS 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

 

Now you may remember my post around this time last year when MAC OS 10.7 came out and I was asking everyone to please upgrade. Well I have some good news on this regarding 10.8. I received an email the other day from Drew Schlussel that said that the latest beta had completed it’s testing and things were looking good. This is great news to me and should be encouraging to everyone. Apple can still change things between now and when MAC OS 10.8 goes GA later this summer, and engineering will continue to test against the latest build when it becomes available.

 

Looking back at last year, the MAC OS changes present a unique challenge to vendors. The low price of adoption for customers make widespread implementation a lot more common. Combine that with the ever increasing movement of Bring-Your-Own-Device in the workplace, and IT departments are losing control over what versions of software and operating systems are in their environment.

 

With the amount of time it takes for an engineering department to discover a bug, create a fix, perform testing, and publish the new code, we ended up being one of the few that had fixes before the final version of MAC OS 10.7 was available. Once new code is available, it takes time to do an upgrade. Last year, the majority of our upgrades were still being performed by EMC’s Customer Engineers. This additional scheduling time was also compounded by the change control in place at many organizations which are often on a 6 month upgrade cycle at best. This perfect storm can spell disaster when a major issue is discovered.

 

So what is being done in the future to prevent a repeat problem? Well this year, upgrades on the VNX are pretty much a self-service option at this point. When new code is available, customers can use the Unisphere Service Manager to upgrade their boxes that day. You no longer need to open a ticket and schedule an on-site visit as it can all be done from the comfort of your computer in the office (LAN connection is preferred).

 

All that is left is your own internal change control process. VNX is currently on a roughly 6 – 8 week service pack release cycle. Armed with this knowledge, you can start filing for your next upgrade just as soon as you apply your current one and you’ll stay right in line with all the enhancements and fixes that come with every upgrade. I am a big proponent of shorter upgrade cycles and I encourage everyone to upgrade their VNX as close as you can to when new code is released.

New code to make your VNX better!

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bugfixTo state it right off the bat, this code does not include the features I talked about here and here but this is still a very important update.  Yesterday marked the release of the latest update to the VNX with the general availability of VNX OE File 7.0.53.1 and OE Block 05.31.000.5.720 (both of which are available on the VNX product support page or by using the Unisphere Service Manager (USM) tool.

 

So you may be asking yourself, if this doesn’t come with all those cool features Sean talked about last week, why should I bother upgrading?  Well I’m glad you asked that question.  In addition to the many bug fixes incorporated in this service pack, this release contains 3 very important updates.

 

The first is support for the latest VMAX Enginuity code version 5876.82.57 that was released recently as well.  The 2nd enhancement covers those using iSCSI.  Anyone actively using iSCSI on their VNX should read ETA emc291837.  The 3rd and final fix eliminate the erroneous over temperature alerts that were reporting on some power supplies that was previously covered in Primus emc278973.

 

As with all new code releases, I encourage everyone to upgrade as soon as possible and to not fall too far behind the latest code levels.  I have started a discussion here on ECN incase you have questions about this release and the fixes contained within.

Even MORE goodies coming to VNX

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So hopefully most of you read my earlier post about new features coming to VNX.  Well I wanted to write some more about new things coming to VNX.

Flash First!

You may have been reading else where about a change coming to tiering on the the VNX, and I’m here to confirm this rumor.  EMC VNX engineers have reversed the way we do tiering on the VNX.

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With traditional storage pool with FAST enabled, data would be loaded in and then promoted to the flash storage when it was deemed hot.  Now we are completely reversing that policy.  Since most of your data is only read within the first few days, all new data coming into the VNX will be considered hot.  After a few days of little to no access, the data is demoted down to cheaper & more abundant storage.  This change means that you no longer have to wait to see advantages of FAST as everything will be on your fastest storage right away.  Combining this with the new changes to pools that I talked about before, and you’ve got a 2 pronged approach to getting your data the fastest without breaking the bank.

 

A new approach to Data Protection

This next goodie isn’t as much a direct enhancement to the VNX as it is an overall solution.  EMC is introducing a new solution called AppSync.  AppSync offers a 1 click protection package for certain virtualized applications you already have stored on the VNX.

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What you have here is the ability to sync with VMware, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Exchange with SLA driven protection.image

As you can see from the graphic above, you can have 3 protection packages:

  • GOLD: You get synchronous replication with no data loss
  • SILVER: You get asynchronous replication with minimal data loss.  You may only lose the last few minutes
  • BRONZE: Hourly Snapshots.  You may loose up to an hour of data

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The 2nd half of this application is the ability to share this out to other admins in your infrastructure.  Currently, if you want to restore something, you need to talk to the storage admin to tell them to roll back the lun.  With AppSync, you can give access to the to the application admins and let them handle the restore.  An exchange admin can now go in and restore a single mailbox without effecting the other users or bothering the storage admin.

 

This is just Win-Win in my book and I can’t wait to see this in action.  My sources tell me that this will be available as a separate package in the 2nd half of 2012, but that is still subject to change and you should talk to your EMC Sales rep to get a final date of availability.

Get a sneak peek at new VNX features

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imageToday marks the first full day of EMC World 2012.  While everyone is busy watching key notes and checking out the hands on labs, I thought I’d offer you a sneak peak at some new VNX features you can look forward to in the 2nd half of 2012.

 

New Raid Levels for Storage Pools

The first thing I want to talk about is storage pools.  As you are well aware, when you add disks in to storage pool, you need to use the same type of raid level in all storage tiers in the pool.

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As you can see from the picture above, when creating a typical pool from a RAID 6 configuration, you must use it for your FLASH, your SAS, and your NL-SAS drives.  This means that you must use extra flash drives to fill out your pool.  What is changing in the future is a shift towards towards tier specific raid levels.

 

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As you can see in the picture above, now you will be able to have different raid levels at different tiers in your pool.  By mixing a smaller amount of flash with a larger amount of spinning disks, you can put the majority of your unread / archived data on your cheaper storage while being able to afford flash drives as well for your performance data.  This translates into a cheaper initial cost for your storage and offers a more affordable option for customers looking to start out.

 

What the SNAP!

imageThe next big thing coming to VNX is enhanced block snapshots.  I think everyone is well aware of the limitations of SNAPS of luns on the VNX.  Well I’m proud to announce that those are a thing of the past!  With the new functionality, the VNX has increased the maximum amount of writable SNAPS to 256 per lun.  That also raises the limit to 32,768 per system.  Picture me in my best Boston Accent when I say that is a “wicked” high number of snaps.

 

Also introduced in this new enhancement is the ability to take SNAPS of a SNAP.  This opens up the possibility for all sorts of new use cases such as Testing and Development options as well as Point-In-Time backups.  This is functionality that has existed on the FILE side for quite some time now and I’m glad to see it’s making it’s way to the lun level as well.

 

Windows Branch Cache Support for CIFS

imageWith the release of Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2, Microsoft added new functionality called Branch Cache.  This functionality allows remote computers to cache files and server them out locally to their pears, thus reducing bandwidth over the WAN.  This cached data can either be distributed from clients PCs or be held on a local server in the branch office.  Application performance will be increased by reducing the number of hops the data has to travel.

 

In the next big release for VNX, we will see added support for this functionality to CIFS shares on the VNX.  For more information on this, please read this Microsoft TechNet Article.

 

Well that about does it for now.  3 big new features to look forward to in the second half of 2012.  Please feel free to ask a question in the comments section and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.

One Year Later…

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A little over a year ago I launched www.thulinaround.com.  I had never had a blog before.  The closest I had come were some very lengthy forum posts and a cardomain page (the original facebook for carguys!).  It was a new experience and I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do with it.  I started off with my first post, a basic “Hello World” piece that introduced myself.  Trying to figure out what direction I wanted to go with, I wrote about what was going on right then and there.  I explained what a #nerdherd was, I did a video game review, and several posts on my involvement with EMC World 2011.

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Over the course of the first 3 months I had a little less than 500 visits.  That is not bad for a site that relied mostly on word of mouth and twitter traffic and no clear follower base.  It was around this time I decided I wanted to write about technology and my interactions with EMC.  As fate would have it, I was in the right place at the right time for one of my most historic posts.  With the new MAC OS LION beta going out to testers, an incompatibility was discovered between that and the VNX.  With the amount of calls I was getting at work, I was trying everything I could to get the word out asking for people to upgrade.  I worked with Drew Schlussel on a post and I’m told I’ve set a speed record for getting something like this approved by marketing.  This post gave my blog the shot in the arm I needed.  My traffic increased 500% and I was finally on the map as a tech blogger.

 

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Fast forward to today and I’m very proud with the number of visitors.  I’ve gathered a little over 10,000 visitors and I’m averaging about 50 a day.  My blog does seem to be a real Monday – Friday reader as I get single digit visits on the weekends.  While I still blog on a variety of subjects, my biggest ones seem to be related to the VNX.  Of the 36 blog posts I’ve made, here are my top 4 blog posts so far:

 

  1. configuring-ldap-authentication-for-unisphere-on-the-vnx (2,500 hits – 25% of my total traffic)
  2. are-you-running-mac-os-x-10-7-and-have-a-celerra-it-may-be-time-for-an-upgrade (15% of my total traffic)
  3. understanding-the-emc-vnxcelerra-antivirus-agent-cava-part-1-server_viruschk
  4. understanding-the-emc-vnxcelerra-antivirus-agent-cava-part-2-common-errors

 

Again I want to thank everyone who comes to visit my blog and look forward to my great posts!

Making CAVA work with SMB2 on your VNX

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vnx-promo-bannerAs more and more people start to deploy a new VNX and switch to an advanced windows server operating system, I am seeing a higher utilization of the SMB2 protocol for cifs.  With this increase, comes new problems.  Recently I had noticed a rather peculiar notification in the server logs in regards to CAVA.  CAVA was reporting the error “FILE_NOT_FOUND” on scans when the file existed.  It would present itself as something like this:

 

2012-04-29 08:49:47: 81878122528: VC: 3: 32: Server ‘192.168.1.156’ returned error ‘FILE_NOT_FOUND’ when checking file ‘\root_vdm_2\CIFS\Test\1234.exe’

 

The standard troubleshooting confirmed that the file did exist.  I even back traced it from the CAVA server through the “check$” share and did not have any problems with the file.  So why was CAVA reporting errors like this so often?  It turns out the problem was not with CAVA itself, but with an “enhancement” introduced as part of SMB2.

 

As part of the SMB2 protocol, the Microsoft Redirector uses a local cache for directory metadata.  This cache is usually cleared after 10 seconds.  What this does, in instances of file systems with a high rate of change, is cause an inconsistency with what the CAVA server sees when it goes to scan a file.  The CAVA server will actually read from the cache and error out when the file is not found in it.  This then causes the error that I pasted above.

 

Of course with a problem, comes a work around.  This was identified and placed into the latest VNX Event Enabler release notes, but I will provide it for you here:

 

  1. Open the Windows Registry Editor and navigate to HKLM\SystemCurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters.
  2. Right-click Parameters and select New > DWORD Value.
  3. For the new REG_DWORD entry, type a name of DirectoryCacheLifetime.
  4. Set the value to 0 to disable DirectoryCacheLifetime.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Restart the machine.

 

A simple registry change on each CAVA server and a reboot will allow you to set the cache lifetime value to 0 and thus there will be no more caching.  After this change you should not see any more problems caused by SMB2.

Introducing EMC Ask The Expert

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AskTheExpertLogoA few months ago Mark Browne approached Matt Brender and I with a new idea for the EMC Community Network.  Mark is very big on ECN and if you’ve visited the site, you’ve probably interacted with things Mark has had a hand in.  So Mark pitched us the idea of starting an “Ask the Expert” section on the support forums.  In this space, we would gather a couple of subject matter experts to answer questions on a related topic for about two weeks at a time and maybe follow up with a video recap.

 

Matt and I both thought this was a great idea and over the next few months we helped Mark flesh out the idea in preparation to present to the approving management structure.  With the help of our friend Michael Chelotti, we recorded a teaser video.  This video will be very similar to a video recap idea where we will talk about some of the topics during the discussion.  You can watch our video below:

 

I’m proud to report that this idea was well received and Ask the Expert is a go.  Starting today, we launch our first event!   Matt will be joined by Henri Hamalianen and they will talk about configuring and troubleshooting the VNXe front end connections with VMware.  These two weeks are open for anyone to ask Matt and Henri about using their VNXe in a VMware environment this post on ECN.  I urge everyone to checkout the discussion and get involved.  Keep an eye on the schedule for a discussion on the VNX that may be hosted by yours truly.

I Tech Therefore I Tool Around – Episode 02 – The Home Lab

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DSC_0022So our first episode of the “I Tech Therefore I Tool Around” was a smashing success!  Matthew Brender and I had a great time recording and we learned a lot about the process that goes into making a podcast.  The feedback from our listeners was great as well.

 

With that experience and knowledge in hand, we recorded our second podcast.  In this episode, we talk about the why and the how of building a home lab.  I touched upon my home lab during my blog post about the VCP4  Our special guest, Luigi Danakos, talks about his need for a home lab and how he acquired one without spending a dime.  We also touch on several blog posts that inspired our builds.  These are all great resources for building a home lab, so check them out:

 

A slight apology for Luigi as he was still getting over an illness and can be heard coughing every now and then during the recording (I cut out as much as I could).  Be sure to check out Matt’s post on this experience.

 

Click HERE to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

Or click HERE (or on the icon) to download the MP3 directly!

Reflections on the Utah Call Center

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So my two week stay in Utah has come to a close and it has been a great experience.  Our new recruits are well on their way and they are understanding the inner workings of the VNX a lot faster than I did when I started at EMC.   In the short time I was there I watched them grow from handling simple dial home cases to complex issues and high severity situations.  They work well with each other as well as with customers and I sensed a great deal of comradery amongst the group.  While most of them did work together at a previous employer, they worked well with the other people who were new to them.  There are some clear leaders in the group and you could tell that the other coworkers would gravitate towards them when they needed assistance.

 

The interaction with the culture of Utah allowed me a greater understanding of how the Mormon religion effects the daily lives of the citizens.  It’s not all that we see on TV shows like “Big Love” and “Sister Wives”.  In fact, polygamy goes against the church’s teachings.  Most of the my new coworkers are in fact Mormon.  Some are more religious than others but they aren’t there to preach to me about their faith.  Some have done their missionary work already and have settled down and started a family, while other aren’t as active with the church.

 

My stay here allowed me a great deal of freedom to travel and see the sights.  I was able to see what was left of the 2002 Olympic games as well as many geological landmarks and formations.  Coming from the east coast, we don’t get mountains like they do out here and I took every chance I got to enjoy the majestic beauty of them.  If you haven’t already, please check out my photos from my trip on my google+ page.

 

All in all this was a great trip.  I understand that several of my colleagues will be traveling up to visit Hopkinton, MA soon and I hope to be able to offer them the same experience they offered me here.  I think that great things will come from this new group in Utah and I hope to get out here again soon.

EMC Support: The Next Generation

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RemoteHelpIts hard to hide the fact that EMC’s sales are up.  There have been announcements about record profits, growth, and installations all around.  With this increased boom of installed systems, EMC is also increasing it’s support presence as well.  A few months back EMC announced it had broken ground on a new 7 million dollar support facility in Utah.  This center will add at least 500 new US based support engineers to help.

 

You may be asking what this means to you?  Well in my department (Unified Support) we have added over 60+ new members to our staff.  With the later time zone we can offer extended US based support to our west coast customers instead of doing a hand over at 3 PM Pacific.  This also means there will be more North American based personnel handling cases.

 

Why am I telling you about this? Well I am happy to announce that I will be traveling to this new center to help mentor the new hires.  I will be able to instill upon them my knowledge of Celerra and VNX.  I will be out there for the first two weeks of November, so if any of my readers are in the area and would like to get together for food or drink, leave me a comment or a shout out on twitter.