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Configuring VMware VASA for EMC VNX

March 11, 2013 By 2 Comments
VMware vSphere VASA on VNX

vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) are one of several VMware vSphere Storage APIs.  VASA, new in vSphere 5.0, provides vCenter with a way of interrogating storage array LUNs and associated datastores to gain visibility into the underlying hardware and configuration of the storage layer.  Storage capabilities, such as RAID level, thin or thick LUN provisioning, replication state, caching mechanisms, and auto-tiering are presented through VASA to vCenter (a unidirectional read operation by vCenter against the array).  With VASA, vCenter can identify which datastores possess … [Read more...]

Filed Under: EMC, Storage, vCloud, VMware, VMware How To, VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), VMware vSphere Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

EMC Releases VNXe Update with SRM, Writeable Snapshots, Encryption and More!

January 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment
VNXe Update

Over on the Clearpath blog I posted an article on the newly released EMC VNXe Operating Environment (OE) code update.  The update includes support for data-at-rest and data-in-flight (via SMB 3.0) encryption, SRM support, promotion of snapshots to read-write for VMware NFS datastores, and some new options for RAID group configurations.  Here's a peek at the post: EMC released VNXe Operating Environment MR4 (version 2.4.20932) on January 7th.  The upgrade brings a few significant enhancements to the VNXe platform.  Before I cover the new features, let’s have a quick look at the VNXe … [Read more...]

Filed Under: EMC, VMware Tagged With: , , , ,

Storage Basics – Part IX: Alternate IOPS Formula

January 2, 2013 By 12 Comments
StorageBasics9

It's been a long time since I published an article in my Storage Basics series - the series has been some of the top content on my site to date.  I sat for a beta version of the VMware Certified Advanced Professional - Desktop Design (VCAP-DTD) test today and was reminded by the test of a post I had in waiting about an alternate way to calculate IOPS (hint hint - memorize these formulas).  I have several more articles sitting in draft form, but a new job, crazy kids, home improvement projects, and a wife with chronic cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) leaks (it sounds bad - and it is - but look on … [Read more...]

Filed Under: EMC, Issues & Troubleshooting, Microsoft, Storage, Storage Basics, VMware, VMware Horizon View, VMware How To, VMware vSphere Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What You Didn’t Know You Needed To Know Before Implementing VMware View

September 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
clearpath_VMUG

I had the privilege of presenting at the Potomac Regional VMware User Group (VMUG) conference yesterday and at the inaugural Boston VMUG last week.  The Potomac Regional event was a combination of Washington DC, Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Federal VMUG’s.  Clearpath participated in both the Potomac and Boston events as a gold sponsor.  My session was entitled, “What You Didn’t Know You Needed To Know Before Implementing VMware View”. My session provided attendees with an overview of how VMware View integrates with existing infrastructures, Windows images, applications, and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Clearpath, Community, Issues & Troubleshooting, VMUG, VMware, VMware Horizon View Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

ESXi 5 Won’t Boot From USB

September 16, 2012 By 7 Comments
formatwithmbr_icon

I've been upgrading my home VMware lab to vSphere 5.1 today and ran into an issue that I thought I would share.  I had previously written about my home lab environment - I run HP xw8600 workstations, and because I'm using SATA disks behind a SAS controller they are being seen as 'remote' disks to the ESXi installer.  This means that I need another type of disk that will be seen as a 'local' disk so ESXi can create a scratch partition.  A USB thumb drive was the answer, but not without issues. When I installed ESXi 5.0 on the thumb drive, the install completed without problem, but after … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Issues & Troubleshooting, Storage, VMware, VMware How To Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Clearpath Solutions Group VMworld Sessions – Vote Today

June 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
VMworld Vote

VMware's VMworld 2012 conference is quickly approaching.  Early-bird registration ends on the 8th, so be sure to register now.  And remember, VMware User Group (VMUG) Advantage subscribers get an $100 discount on admission to VMworld (plus other great benefits)! One of the cool things about the show is that attendees have input into the content to be presented by voting for the sessions they most want to have in the schedule.  Voting is open through June 8th - click here to vote.  The very talented VMware engineers at Clearpath Solutions Group (of which I am privileged to be a part) … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Clearpath, VMware, VMworld Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

vSphere 5 Networking Bug Affects Software iSCSI

February 8, 2012 By 88 Comments
changing an iscsi initiator port group warning

Update 1: This issue was fixed as of 3/15/2012 in ESXi 5.0 Update 1 per the original knowledge base article: VMware KB 2008144. To download ESXi 5.0/vCenter Server 5.0 Update 1, see the VMware Download Center.  Update 2 (Nov 7 2012): While VMware says the issue was fixed in vSphere 5.0 Update 1, I have not found this to be the case.  I've had several environments where the bug was still present, and in some cases this nasty bug still appeared when implementing the Failback = NO setting on the vSwitch.  Additionally, setting Failback = No may cause some other problems - see my update here … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Issues & Troubleshooting, VMware, VMware How To Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Storage Basics – Part VIII – The Difference in Consumer vs. Enterprise Class Disks and Storage Arrays; or ‘Why is the SAN you are proposing so darn expensive?’

April 19, 2011 By 2 Comments
StorageBasics8

As both an IT Manager and storage & virtualization consultant, I have shepherded SMB's through SAN purchases in support of VMware environments.  This may not hold true for the bigger IT shops, but as I take these smaller companies through the SAN purchase process, a common set of questions is often asked - Do we really need a SAN, and why is it so darn expensive!?!? I quickly learned that my (cheeky) answer "because it's enterprise class, baby" just didn't cut it.  So how do you move beyond "I can get a 2TB hard drive for $100 at Best Buy, why are you selling me on 300GB hard drives for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Storage, Storage Basics, VMware Tagged With: , ,
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