Storage - Thulin' Around

EMC Elect 2013 – Thank you!

By Sean | January 15, 2013 - 8:00 AM |January 15, 2013 DellEMC

My 2012 in review (and a look towards 2013)

By Sean | December 31, 2012 - 12:10 PM |February 3, 2013 DellEMC, General, Reviews, Social

I find myself on this new years eve (after digging out from 10 inches of snow) reflecting back on all that has happened this year. Checking in with the old Google analytics website, this year I ranked in over 18,000 visits to my website. That might not seem like much, but that’s a 3x growth over last year and I want to thank all of my readers for being a part of it!

I think I’ve really started to find my voice for Thulin’ Around and have started to make it my own. I’ve been leveraging the blog as I can in my role in EMC’s VNX support lab. This would probably explain why my #1 post is still my LDAP post from 2011 (which was revisited in 2012 with a new post for the latest VNX software).

My employer also recognized what I do for the VNX community with my blog and listed me as part of their social media blogging core and I am honored to be in such great company as Chad Sakac and Jeramiah Dooley.

Towards the end of the year, EMC launched a brand advocacy rewards program called EMC Elect and I was very happy to be nominated by my readers. Having a great friend like Matthew Brender, I was able to see all that goes in to building out a project of this magnitude and I have a new found respect for the effort that is required behind the scenes. The founding members that were selected are a great group of individuals and I believe they represent the principles and values that should be recognized as part of EMC Elect.

2012 was also a great year for shows and user groups for me. I was able to travel to EMC World 2012 as part of the Ask the Expert program. At these events, I was able to demonstrate another passion of mine, Photography. I published 170 photos from EMC World 2012 and as more events rolled through, I continued to refine my technique and you can see a real difference in my photos from the EMC Forum Boston 2012.

Looking forward to 2013

So what does 2013 have in store for me? Well I’m starting the year off with a long trip to Seattle, Washington. There I will be assisting the Isilon support team transition over to the EMC Support tools and processes. If you are in the Seattle area, lets meet up! Just check my twitter feed to reach out to me.

I also expect to use social media more and more in my job role. Without going into to much detail, I want to say that there is plenty going on behind the scenes to help develop and flesh out a proactive support model as well as a reactive support model. Stay tuned to the @EMCSupport twitter account for more information and feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns about EMC products or your support experience.

I’m also looking forward to the results of EMC Elect nominations to see who was selected for 2013. Fingers crossed that I am chosen, but if not, I know that those who will be chosen are well deserving of the title.

I also hope to be attending more conferences and user group meetings. I am disappointed that I will miss the NEVMUG Winter Warmer, but there will be plenty more events in 2013 for me to join in on. I’ve already started planning some ideas EMC World 2013.

As always, I like to hear from my readers and followers. What did you like about 2012? Was there anything on my blog that you really liked / disliked? What are you looking forward to in 2013? Let me know in the comments and have a happy new year!

VNX iSCSI and TCP Delayed Acknowledgement

By Sean | December 17, 2012 - 9:21 AM |December 17, 2012 DellEMC, VMware, VNX

5 Comments

I recently sat in on an internal VNX (and CLARiiON) performance crash course that was put together to help our new hires get up to speed. Once of the things that stuck out to me was the subject of iSCSI and how it works with host TCP delayed acknowledgement (Delayed ACK).

Background Information

So what is delayed ACK? As part of TCP, for every packet that is sent to a destination server, that server must send some sort of acknowledgement back to the source server. This way the source server knows the information was successfully transmitted. This adds a good amount of overhead, so in an effort to improve performance, TCP Delayed Acknowledgement (RFC 1122) was created which allows a destination server to respond to every 2nd packet instead. This has become so popular, that support for delayed ACK is enabled by default in many popular client operating systems including Microsoft Windows and VMware ESX/i.

The problem with this is that many storage arrays do not support delayed ACK for one reason or another (usualy has to do with chipset drivers). What happens in this case is that the array will send a packet, it will then wait for an acknowledgement before sending a 2nd packet. Meanwhile, the host is waiting for a 2nd packet before sending an acknowledgement. This standoff between the array and the host will last until the acknowledgement timeout (usually around 200ms) before continuing on. This wreaks havoc on performance if every packet has to wait 200 milliseconds before sending another. So if you’ve setup iSCSI and you are immediately seeing a performance issue, check your hosts to see if Delayed ACK is enabled, and turn it off to see if performance improves.

Disabling Delayed ACK in Microsoft Windows

In Microsoft Windows operating systems, you can simply set the TcpAckFrequency registry value to 1. More information can be found Microsoft kb 328890. On a side note, I found that if the registry value is missing, you can create it in the path specified in the kb and reboot the host.

Disabling Delayed ACK in VMware ESX and ESXi

VMware has created KB 1002598 to address this as well. This adjustment is made per adapter instance and you can change this setting on a discovery address, a target, or (in my case) globally. Once you’ve made your change, reboot the host and enjoy the performance boost.

I hope you’ve found this information useful. It may not solve your iSCSI performance problem, but it is a good place to start.

Introducing EMC Elect: Nominate your peer today!

By Sean | November 19, 2012 - 9:00 AM |November 19, 2012 DellEMC, Social

1 Comment

Last week EMC announced their new community driven brand recognition program called EMC Elect. This nomination based title is bestowed upon members who bring added value to the community and is open to customers, partners, and employees alike. This new brand advocacy program comes on the heels over other successful endeavors such as the Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert programs.

You may be asking yourself, “I’m familiar with this program from other companies. What does EMC offer to those who are voted EMC Elect?”. Well I’m glad you asked. EMC Elect members are receive benefits with 3 core values: Access, Exclusivity, and Status. This translates into all sorts of possibilities such as VIP status at events like EMC World, Access to a private community on ECN, a logo to display on your web page (or resume).

With the kickoff of this program, EMC selected 10 founding members who exemplify EMC Elect and offer so much to the community both online and offline. These founders (in no particular order) are:

This also launched the call for open nominations. By clicking this link, you can nominate yourself or a peer to be a part of the initial 150 EMC Elect members for the year of 2013. All that’s needed is the nominees name, email address and/or twitter handle (EMC needs a way of contacting the candidate ) as well as a short paragraph on why you think this person deserves to be nominated and what interaction was most influential to you. You have the option to share or hide your information from the nominee if you want (my personal opinion would be to share it).

Once nominated, the nominee will receive a confirmation email from EMC indicating that they were nominated and asked to fill out an additional form. This form is where you showcase all you have done so that the team of judges can get a full and accurate representation of all that you have to offer. You’ll want to let them know what product divisions of EMC you offer expertise as well as just how technical you are (you don’t need to be an engineer, they just want to know your level). Also indicate what forms of interaction you do (Social Media, Conferences, user groups, online forums, or other places). If you want to highlight a few experiences that you think showcase you best, you have an open text box below.

I think this program is off to a great start. EMC Elect has already received over 75 unique nominations just 24 hours after launch and I am honored to be nominated by readers such as yourself. You can nominate more than one person, and while a receiving multiple nominations helps, this is not a popularity contest and it is all about what you bring to the community at large. I urge everyone to please take some time to nominate yourself or one of your peers. For more information on this program, please read these blog posts from the Matthew Brender and Mark Browne. They are instrumental for the creation of and successful implementation of this new program.

Lesser known enhancements in the latest VNX code: Simplified Unisphere LDAP Integration

By Sean | November 5, 2012 - 8:45 AM |November 5, 2012 DellEMC, VNX

12 Comments

This is part two of my series on lesser known enhancements in the latest code for your VNX. Today we are going to focus on LDAP. You may remember my very popular post from last year on configuring LDAP for Unisphere. One of the big things I stressed before is that even with a Unified system, you still had to configure both the BLOCK & FILE side. Well, with the latest changes, that is a thing of the past. Now all the settings are done on the block side, and the new Unisphere Network Service will push them into the control station for you, simplifying the entire process.

Lets take a look at the configuration section. Just like it has been for the BLOCK side, you will find all the settings inside the “Domains” menu. You will notice right away that there is a new option to configure DNS. This is crucial for you to configure so that both the SPs and the control station can do host name lookups.

DNS Domain Suffix
- This is where you put in your domain suffix. This will be your primary domain namespace for lookups.
DNS Server IP Address
- This is where you specify the IP addresses of your DNS servers. I recommend using at least 2 here.
Domain Search List
- If you have multiple domains in your environment, this is where you would list them all in this area in order of search preference. Make sure your primary domain is at the top of the list.

Just as important (in my opinion) as DNS, is configuring NTP. You can specify up to 4 NTP servers to keep your SP and Control Station times in sync. This really helps with comparing event logs against other sources. One thing to note, NTP server Keys support is unique to the SPs. It will not be copied over to the control station as it does not support it.

Host Name or IP Address
- This is where you put in the FQDN or IP of the domain controller. It is recommended to use the FQDN here, especially if you are using Secure LDAP.
Port
- 389 for LDAP, 636 for LDAPS
Server Type
- There are two options: LDAP Server and Active Directory. Make sure to choose “Active Directory” if you’re using an AD environment (most of you will be doing this)
Protocol
- LDAP or LDAPS
Domain Name
- Here you will specify the domain name being used
BindDN
- This is where you put the distinguished name of the service account. For this example I just used the administrator account
Bind Password
- Password for the service account
Confirm Bind Password
- Make sure it matches
User Search Path
- Just like with File, this is where you would set the search scope to find your users
Group Search Path
- Just like with File, This is where you set the search scope to find your groups
Add certificate

This is where you would upload a root CA certificate for LDAPS. Make sure it’s in base64 encoding. You will need the entire certificate chain, so if you have multiple CAs in your chain, cut and paste them into the “cut and paste” section. The system will attempt to validate the certificate and let you know if there were problems during validation. Make sure you have DNS configured if you are going to do this.

After you have put in all this information, click on the “Role Mapping” tab so we can map an AD group. In this updated version, individual LDAP user mapping has been removed, so make sure your AD groups contain only the users you want to give access. Put in the name of the AD group (in this example I used “Domain Admins”), then select the Role from the second pull down (in this case I selected Administrator), and finally click “Add” to add the mapping. Once you have all your mappings, click ok and wait for the confirmation message. The final addition is the ability to configure the level of nested group support in the advanced tab. By default, it is set to zero.

Once you have finished all this configuration, you will want to do this all over again for the second domain controller. Once you have this all set, click “Synchronize”. And that is it!

Now it is time to test your LDAP login. Logout of Unisphere by clicking the door icon in the upper right. Open Unisphere again and this time put in your AD username and password. Be sure to select “Use LDAP” and click on “Login”. If all your configuration is correct, you will be brought back in to Unisphere. If you get an access denied message, check you username, password, as well as your user and group search paths.

I hope you find this post useful. Let me know your own experiences with Unisphere LDAP Integration in the comments below.

Lesser known enhancements in the latest VNX code: Pool luns for FILE

By Sean | October 15, 2012 - 9:02 AM |October 15, 2012 DellEMC, VNX

16 Comments

You may remember my posts on the latest VNX OE code that brought with it some highly publicized enhancements, but I wanted to take this time to speak about some of the lesser known enhancements. In this post, I’m going to talk about provisioning BLOCK luns for the FILE side.

Historically, from DART 5.x, 6.x, and even VNX OE for FILE 7.0, if you wanted to provision luns to the FILE side, they had to be part of a raid group. This meant that you couldn’t take advantage of any of the major block enhancements like Tiering and FAST VP. Well starting with VNX OE for FILE 7.1, you create luns from your pool and provision them to the FILE front end.

For those of you who are not familiar with this process, let me walk you through it. We’ll start with a pool. In this example, I created 1 large pool made up of FLASH, SAS, & NL-SAS drives.

Now I will create some luns. When creating luns for FILE, it is best to create them in sets of 10 and provision them as thick luns. You can always do thin filesystems on the FILE side later. In this example, I want to make sure to set the default owner to auto so that I get an even number of luns on SPA & SPB. And of course, to take advantage of the new tiering policy, I have that set to “High then auto-tier”.

When this finishes, you’ll get 10 luns split between SPA & SPB and we are ready to assign them to a host. The storage group for VNX FILE is called “~filestorage”. Make sure when adding your luns to this storage group, that you start with Host LUN ID of 16 or greater. If you set it to anything less, it will not be detected on the rescan. Speaking of rescan, once you have assigned the luns, select the “Rescan Storage Systems” on the right hand side of the Storage section of Unisphere. Alternatively, you can also run “server_devconfig server_2 –create –scsi –all” to rescan for disks. You will then need to rerun the command for your other datamovers as well.

Now that we have our new luns scanned into VNX FILE side of things, lets go see what we have. You will notice that the new FILE pool shares the same name as the BLOCK pool, the drive types are “mixed”, and the tiering policy is specified under advanced services. That’s pretty much all there is to it. At this point you would go ahead and provision file systems as normal.

I hope you have enjoyed this look at a new enhancement cooked into the latest VNX code. Expect more posts on this as I continue the series. As always, I love to receive feedback, so feel free to leave a comment below.

A few initial thoughts about VMware vSphere 5.1

By Sean | September 16, 2012 - 2:54 PM |September 17, 2012 DellEMC, Reviews, VMware

The upgrade process

Previous vCenter server upgrades simply consisted of just upgrading the server component (and the upgrade and away you go. Now VMware has introduced two new components to the mix: vCenter Inventory Service & vCenter Single sign-on. To take a lot of the guess work out of this, VMware provided the “simple installer” to the mix. This runs through each of the setup applications in the proper order and makes the process very simple and I applaud VMware for this. A couple things to note:

As with all vSphere upgrades, make sure you upgrade vCenter server BEFORE you upgrade any hosts.
If you plan on using LDAP authentication, make sure that you are logged in with an LDAP account when you install the single sign-on service.
If an upgrade fails during the “simple install”, you will need to continue installation by hand.
You won’t need to reboot the vCenter Server machine after the upgrade, the upgrade process will restart all the required services for you.
After upgrading the hosts, they did not automatically reconnect to vCenter, and you have to click reconnect on them.

Since I run my vCenter server with an internal database and on a virtual machine, I was able to simply snapshot the VM in the event that something went wrong. Luckily nothing did and both my upgrades went smooth.

vCenter Server 5.1

One of the things I noticed right away was the startup time of vCenter server from boot up. It is at least 4x longer than vCenter server 5.0 and earlier. A simple look at task manager during the start up process shows that the java process is eating up most of my CPU, so my guess is this delayed startup is due to the revamped web interface being used. Needless to say, it threw me for a loop the first time and I thought my upgrade had been borked. So just keep that in mind that it may take 20 minutes or so for vCenter to come up and be stable.

Now when using the standard vSphere client to connect, you will notice things are very similar to older versions. This is be expected as I believe VMware is trying to make a shift to everyone using the Web Interface (more on this later). Do keep in mind that the regular vCenter client does not give you access to all of the new features. One of the big ones to note, is that the new enhanced vMotion can only be found in the web client (again more on this later).

vCenter Web Client

It’s clear that VMware has spent a lot of time improving upon the web interface and it shows. That’s good news for Mac users as they now have a fully functioning method for administering the environment.

Right away, you’ll notice a new icon that is not present in the standard vCenter client. VMware has included vCenter Orchestrator right into the mix and I hope this is a sign of more plugins to be installed. With that being said, I was disappointed to see that the update manager was not present in the web client, so you must still use the classic vCenter client to perform those updates.

One of the things I noticed (and was pointed out by Frank Denneman) was that the new Enhanced vMotion (the one that lets you change both hosts and datastores while the guest is powered on) can ONLY be found in the web client. I’m not sure this was the best play by VMware, but my guess is that VMware’s long term plan is to make the web client the primary interface for management.

Final Thoughts

As with every upgrade, I’m always amazed by the refinement that is introduced. More and more drawn out processes are being simplified and it seems like VMware really cares about the advanced users as well as those just getting started. As with any major upgrade, first adopters have some challenges and I wanted to list out a few things that you should be aware of before you upgrade:

As with all my blog posts, I like to hear from the readers. If you had a good or a bad upgrade experience, let me know in the comments.

Introducing EMC’s VNX Storage Analytics Suite (and Early Access Program)

By Sean | August 28, 2012 - 9:00 AM |August 28, 2012 DellEMC, VMware, VMworld, VNX

1 Comment

With VMworld in full swing, today EMC finalized the announcement of the new VNX Storage Analytics Suite (and you can try it out on the show floor). You may remember that this was demoed first at EMC World. As development was nearing completion, you may remember my call for beta testers (I hope you got in and got a chance to try out the technology). Now we can start getting as excited as the software will be available for general consumption in Q4 of 2012.

The VNX Storage Analytics Suite will offer you a an extensive platform to proactively identify bottlenecks, balance workloads and pinpoint the root cause of potential problems around health and performance. The software is available as a stand alone product as well as integration for VMware’s vCOps Enterprise platform. Pairing the two together allows you to have a full end-to-end visibility of your entire infrastructure from virtual machine to lun and every point in between.

For those of you who are already familiar with vCOps, you will be presented with same interface just with extra options for looking at metrics. The charts and display is the same. Green is still good and Red is still bad. This allows you to quickly visualize the health of your arrays (both block and file) using a simple “Performance-at-a-glance” tab. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to attach the problem directly instead of waiting for someone to tell you there is a slowdown in the environment.

Besides general health information, you can dig down into the specifics of utilization on the array. In the picture to the right, you’ll be able to see the results (both historically and in real time) of enabling fast cache on your array and what it did to the overall health of your environment. By focusing on the performance of the array and the pool disks, Fast Cache was able to increase the throughput of the SP while decreasing the strain on the spinning disk storage.

By this point you might be saying “Sean, this is so cool, I can’t wait until Q4! How can I get my hands on this now?”. Well for those of you who did not participate in the beta (and those of you who did and want to see the results of your feedback) there is good news. EMC is going to be doing an Early Access program, it won’t cost you a penny, and I’ve got all the details right here! The bad news is that it’s limited to 100 customers and it’s filling up fast.

If you may remember during the beta program I was asking people to email me if they wanted in. This time I have no control over the process and you must go through your TC. Before I tell you just how to get in, I need to make sure you have what is required in your environment. You will need to meet the following prerequisites:

vCenter Operations Manager 5.0.1 Enterprise or higher (vApp distribution)
EMC VNX series system (Block: R31 OE version 05.31.000.5.720 and higher and VNX OE R32 version 05.32.000.5.006 and higher; File: VNX OE 7.0.35 and higher).

Seems simple enough, right? Now on how to get in, as I said before you will need to contact your TC or Account Representative. Have him or her place a Sales Evaluation order in Direct Express using Model # SASCONN-T90 and complete an RPQ. Again, this is a no cost evaluation period and if you are selected, you will receive further instructions. At the end of the preview period (which I believe is somewhere in Q4), you will be given the opportunity to purchase a license or uninstall the software.

If you are attending the show, please let me know your thoughts about the software in the comments section below.

I think my VNX might have gotten sick, how do I give it a health check?

By Sean | August 26, 2012 - 4:38 PM |August 27, 2012 DellEMC, VNX

2 Comments

With cold & flu season fast approaching, it seems that people are worried just as much about their array health as they are about their personal health. Working in the EMC Unified Storage Remote Support Lab, I see at least 10 new requests each day for a health check on an array and most of the time, there is nothing wrong. Today I’m going to show you some easy ways to see if there really is a problem or not. While the VNX array is sold as Block, File, or Unified (a combination of both) the health checks are different for the Block side and the File side. We’ll start with the File side.

Health Check of VNX FILE

There are two ways of doing a health check on the VNX FILE. The first method I will demonstrate is the traditional way and is executed via the command line. This method has been in place since the older celerra models and works the same way on them as well. To kick off your health check, simply login to the control station using an SSH client and run the command “nas_checkup”. This process will take several minutes, so go get yourself a coffee and wait until you see something like the output below:

[nasadmin@VNX nasadmin]$ nas_checkup
Check Version: 7.1.47.5
Check Command: /nas/bin/nas_checkup
Check Log    : /nas/log/checkup-run.120826-220724.log

————————————-Checks————————————-
Control Station: Checking statistics groups database………………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking if file system usage is under limit………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking if NAS Storage API is installed correctly…….. Pass
Control Station: Checking if NAS Storage APIs match…………………… N/A
Control Station: Checking if NBS clients are started………………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking if NBS configuration exists…………………. Pass
Control Station: Checking if NBS devices are accessible……………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking if NBS service is started…………………… Pass
Control Station: Checking if PXE service is stopped…………………… Pass
Control Station: Checking if standby is up…………………………… N/A
Control Station: Checking integrity of NASDB…………………………. Pass
Control Station: Checking if primary is active……………………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking all callhome files delivered………………… Pass
Control Station: Checking resolv conf……………………………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking if NAS partitions are mounted……………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking ipmi connection……………………………. Pass
Control Station: Checking nas site eventlog configuration……………… Pass
Control Station: Checking nas sys mcd configuration…………………… Pass
Control Station: Checking nas sys eventlog configuration………………. Pass
Control Station: Checking logical volume status………………………. Pass
Control Station: Checking valid nasdb backup files……………………. Pass
Control Station: Checking root disk reserved region…………………… Pass
Control Station: Checking if RDF configuration is valid……………….. N/A
Control Station: Checking if fstab contains duplicate entries………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking if sufficient swap memory available………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking for IP and subnet configuration……………… Pass
Control Station: Checking auto transfer status……………………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking for invalid entries in etc hosts…………….. Pass
Control Station: Checking for correct filesystem mount options…………. Pass
Control Station: Checking the hard drive in the control station………… Pass
Control Station: Checking if Symapi data is present…………………… Pass
Control Station: Checking if Symapi is synced with Storage System………. Pass
Blades         : Checking boot files………………………………… Pass
Blades         : Checking if primary is active……………………….. Pass
Blades         : Checking if root filesystem is too large……………… Pass
Blades         : Checking if root filesystem has enough free space……… Pass
Blades         : Checking network connectivity……………………….. Pass
Blades         : Checking status……………………………………. Pass
Blades         : Checking dart release compatibility………………….. Pass
Blades         : Checking dart version compatibility………………….. Pass
Blades         : Checking server name……………………………….. Pass
Blades         : Checking unique id…………………………………. Pass
Blades         : Checking CIFS file server configuration………………. Pass
Blades         : Checking domain controller connectivity and configuration. Warn
Blades         : Checking DNS connectivity and configuration…………… Pass
Blades         : Checking connectivity to WINS servers………………… Pass
Blades         : Checking I18N mode and unicode translation tables……… Pass
Blades         : Checking connectivity to NTP servers…………………. Warn
Blades         : Checking connectivity to NIS servers…………………. Pass
Blades         : Checking virus checker server configuration…………… Pass
Blades         : Checking if workpart is OK………………………….. Pass
Blades         : Checking if free full dump is available………………. Pass
Blades         : Checking if each primary Blade has standby……………. Pass
Blades         : Checking if Blade parameters use EMC default values……. Info
Blades         : Checking VDM root filesystem space usage……………… N/A
Blades         : Checking if file system usage is under limit………….. Pass
Blades         : Checking slic signature…………………………….. Pass
Storage System : Checking disk emulation type………………………… Pass
Storage System : Checking disk high availability access……………….. Pass
Storage System : Checking disks read cache enabled……………………. Pass
Storage System : Checking disks and storage processors write cache enabled. Pass
Storage System : Checking if FLARE is committed………………………. Pass
Storage System : Checking if FLARE is supported………………………. Pass
Storage System : Checking array model……………………………….. Pass
Storage System : Checking if microcode is supported…………………… N/A
Storage System : Checking no disks or storage processors are failed over… Pass
Storage System : Checking that no disks or storage processors are faulted.. Pass
Storage System : Checking that no hot spares are in use……………….. Pass
Storage System : Checking that no hot spares are rebuilding……………. Pass
Storage System : Checking minimum control lun size……………………. Pass
Storage System : Checking maximum control lun size……………………. N/A
Storage System : Checking maximum lun address limit…………………… Pass
Storage System : Checking system lun configuration……………………. Pass
Storage System : Checking if storage processors are read cache enabled….. Pass
Storage System : Checking if auto assign are disabled for all luns……… N/A
Storage System : Checking if auto trespass are disabled for all luns……. N/A
Storage System : Checking storage processor connectivity………………. Pass
Storage System : Checking control lun ownership………………………. N/A
Storage System : Checking if Fibre Channel zone checker is set up………. N/A
Storage System : Checking if Fibre Channel zoning is OK……………….. N/A
Storage System : Checking if proxy arp is setup………………………. Pass
Storage System : Checking if Product Serial Number is Correct………….. Pass
Storage System : Checking SPA SPB communication………………………. Pass
Storage System : Checking if secure communications is enabled………….. Pass
Storage System : Checking if backend has mixed disk types……………… Pass
Storage System : Checking for file and block enabler………………….. Pass
Storage System : Checking if nas storage command generates discrepancies… Pass
Storage System : Checking if Repset and CG configuration are consistent…. Pass
Storage System : Checking block operating environment…………………. Pass
Storage System : Checking thin pool usage……………………………. N/A
Storage System : Checking for domain and federations health on VNX……… Pass
——————————————————————————–

As you can see, just about everything came out as pass or not available (which is fine) except for one or two things. If you have warnings or errors, you will see a more detailed output below. I have included an example here:

One or more warnings have occurred. It is recommended that you follow the
instructions provided to correct the problem then try again.

———————————–Information———————————-
Blades : Check if Blade parameters use EMC default values
Information HC_DM_27390050398: The following parameters do not use the
EMC default values:
* Mover_name Facility_name Parameter_name Current_value Default_value
* server_2 cifs acl.extacl 0x00000003 0x00000000
* server_2 cifs acl.useUnixGid 0x00000001 0x00000000
* server_2 cifs djEnforceDhn 0x00000000 0x00000001
* server_2 cifs useUnixGid 0x00000001 0x00000000
* server_2 quota policy ‘filesize’ ‘blocks’
* server_2 shadow followabsolutpath 0x00000001 0x00000000
* server_2 shadow followdotdot 0x00000001 0x00000000
* server_2 tcp fastRTO 0x00000001 0x00000000
* This check is for your information only. It is OK to use parameter
values other than the EMC default values.
* EMC provides guidelines for setting parameter values in the “Celerra
Network Server Parameters Guide” (P/N 300-002-691) that can be found
on http://powerlink.emc.com/
* If you need to change the parameter back to the default, run the
following command: “/nas/bin/server_param <mover_name> -facility
<facility_name> -modify <parameter_name> -value <default_value>”
* To display the current value and default value of a parameter, run
the following command: “/nas/bin/server_param <mover_name> -facility
<facility_name> -info <parameter_name>”

——————————————————————————–

————————————Warnings————————————
Blades : Check domain controller connectivity and configuration
Warning HC_DM_18800115743:
* server_2: PingDC failure: The compname ‘cifs01’ could not
successfully contact the DC ‘DC2K8X32’. Failed to access the pipe
NETLOGON at step Open NETLOGON Secure Channel: DC
connected:Access denied
Action : Check domain or Domain Controller access policies. For
NetBIOS servers, ensure that ‘allow pre-Windows 2000 computers to use
this account’ checkbox is selected when joining the server to the
Windows 2000 domain.

Blades : Check connectivity to NTP servers
Warning HC_DM_18800115743:
* server_2: The NTP server ‘1.2.3.4’ is online but does not
respond to any NTP query. As a consequence, the clock of the Data
Mover may be incorrect. This may cause potential failures when CIFS
clients log in. (Kerberos authentication relies on time
synchronization between the servers and the KDCs).
Action : Check the IP address of the NTP server, using the server_date
command. Make sure the NTP service is running on the remote server.

——————————————————————————–

Health checks may trigger the following responses besides Pass or N/A: Info, Warning, & Error. Info is just informational. In the example above, it was telling me about all the parameters that have been changed from the default (most likely on purpose too). Warnings again are not much to worry about either. They are mostly there to let you know of potential issues or that you might not be following best practice. These kind of messages indicate that you may have a problem down the road if things get worse, but do not indicate a direct impact at this time. Finally the most severe is Error. This means there is a problem and you should address it right away. All of these come with some basic instructions on how to resolve the problem (or at least where to look) and I would only recommend opening a support ticket if you are getting Errors and cannot solve them on your own.

Another way to run a health check on VNX FILE is through the pre-upgrade wizard. Start by launching USM and then following the prompts to launch the “Prepare for Installation” task.

Once this has started, it will kick off a health check making sure everything is ok.

Health Check of VNX Block

This health check is also done is USM and can be found under the “Diagnostic” section. Simply click on “Verify Storage System” to start doing a back end health report. Once the wizard starts, it will gather information about the array, and then generate an XML file for you to review.

The check will go over events from dating back to the begining of the logs and will display any faults found. Keep that in mind because if you had a problem several days ago, but don’t right now, it will still tell you that there is a fault. If issues are found, click “Display Issue Report” to see the XML file and then click on the “Issues” tab in the webpage.

As you can see from the results, I have some warnings and some critical errors. Just like I said before, warnings are just make sure you know you that something might be up, but not making an impact yet. As you can see most of them are because this is a lab box and not all my hosts are logged in, or I’m missing some write cache. The critical alerts is what you should be concerned about and if you have trouble resolving the issue, open a support ticket to have it inspected.

These are some great ways to see if there really is a problem going on with your system and feel free to let me know if you have any questions about them.

Configuring VASA for use with a VNX

By Sean | August 5, 2012 - 4:19 PM |August 7, 2012 DellEMC, VMware, VNX

11 Comments

When VMware introduced vSphere 5 to the world, one of the enhancements was a new API for storage arrays that provides vSphere with information as to the configuration and performance of your storage array. For more information on VASA, please see this article from The Virtualization Practice. VASA on a VNX (and other EMC arrays) historically used to be configured using an SMI-S provider. This older configuration method has been covered very well by EMC vSpecialist Craig Stewart and can be found here.

Starting with VNX OE for FILE 7.1 and VNX OE for BLOCK 05.32, the VNX now has native VASA support. This eliminates the need for the SMI-S provider and allows you to point vSphere directly to the control station and SP. It really is a 1-step implementation and I will show you below. And there is only 1 caviot to this, and it is VASA for the BLOCK and FILE are done separately. if you are using, FC, FCoE, or iSCSI connections, you will want to use the BLOCK example, and if you are using NFS, you will want to use the FILE example.

You will want to start in vSphere by going to Home > Administration > Storage Providers. From there you would click on “add…” to configure your connection.

VNX OE for FILE 7.1 VASA configuration example

You will start by naming this connection. I chose VNX FILE to make it easy to distinguish between block and file connections. You will then use the URL as follows: https://<ip.or.dns.of.control.station>:5989/vasa/services/vasaService. The username/password would be one local to the control station (such as nasadmin or root). The global accounts from the storage domain will not work here. When it’s all said and done you should have something like the photo below:

You will probably be prompted to verify the SHA fingerprint, so just click yes and soon you’ll see your new provider listed with the following information:

VNX OE for BLOCK 05.32 configuration example

Just like the VNX OE for FILE example, you will start off by using a name. This time the URL will be pointing to the SP. The url will be as follows: https://<ip.or.dns.of.SP>/vasa/services/vasaService. Please note the lack of a port specification as by default https uses port 443. For the password you will want to use a storage domain account (such as sysadmin). If you configured it correctly, it should look something like this:

Since I have a very basic configured array in the lab, I see provider information like this:

After you have successfully configured your providers, you can go and setup your storage profiles. Go to Home > Management > VM Storage Profiles and add a new profile. From there you can select from a multitude of options to pick the one that best matches the lun you are using for storage.

It really is that simple! For more information on VASA on the VNX, read the Virtualization for EMC® VNX Release Notes (EMC Support credentials required).

Category Archives: Storage