Demo – EMC VxRail software upgrade from v4.0.310 to v4.5.0 (Quanta)

This demo describes the steps required to perform a data-in-place upgrade on a VxRail Appliance G410 from v4.0.310 to v4.5.0.

NOTE: This demo is using the internal vCenter server.

As a requirement of this upgrade, vCenter must be running at 6.5 U1. If using internal vCenter, the upgrade script will automatically upgrade internal vCenter to 6.5 U1. If using an external vCenter, the Customer must be running vCenter to v6.5 U1 prior to the VxRail upgrade or the upgrade script will fail.

Preparation

1. A temporary IP Address on the same subnet needed to upgrade vCenter Server.
2. VxRail Software upgrade package “VXRAIL_COMPOSITE-4.5.0-6607744.zip“, you can download it at http://support.emc.com.
3. Make sure the running software of VxRail Appliance is v4.0.31.
4. Make sure the v4.0.310 VxRail appliance is in a healthy state.

Software Upgrade Process

1. Select Internet or Local Upgrade.
2. After copy upgrade package to VxRail, upgrade wizard will unpack the Composite Upgrade Bundle.
3. Upgrade VxRail Manager first
4. Upgrade vCenter and Platform Services Controller (only for the internal VC/PSC)
   • For internal vCenter (prepare one temp IP address for VC upgrade).
   • Deploys new 6.5 PSC and imports the running settings.
   • Deploys new 6.5 VC and imports the running settings.
5. Upgrade ESXi (installs necessary VIBs and FW as required)
6. Upgrade vDS and VSAN on-disk format from v3 to v5.

VxRail Software Upgrade

Login into VxRail Manager, go to CONFIG page > System tab. Click Local Upgrade button.

Choose VXRAIL_COMPOSITE-4.5.0-6607744.zip, and then click Open to select.

The download progress can be monitored on the screen.

Click the Continue button to start the upgrade.

Input the usernames and passwords, and input fields will differ depending on whether you are using an external vCenter or internal vCenter. Click Submit to continue.

NOTE: If DRS is not enabled, the upgrade script will prompt you to manually migrate VMs from each affected host.

Following the pop up window, input user names and passwords, click Submit button.

The upgrade progress can be monitored on the screen.

You need to input a Temporary network configuration, DNS configuration and ESXi Server credentials. Input the required information and click Continue to proceed with the upgrade.

NOTE: The temporary IP is used for the new VCSA or PSC when deploying a new VCSA or PSC virtual machine during the upgrade of VCSA. The IP must not be in use and must be in the same network segment with VxRail Manager. It does not need to be added in DNS lookup table. The two ESXi host server credentials are used for new and legacy VCSA and PSC.

Wait for the upgrade to complete, and then click the Refresh button to refresh the VxRail Manager GUI. It may take several minutes for the GUI to update. Once the Refresh has completed, click Installed Versions to verify the VxRail component versions.

Make sure the VxRail appliance is in a healthy state. On the CONFIG page under the General tab, select the Diagnostic button under System Diagnostics to verify the VxRail cluster health status.

Finally the software upgrade is successfully completed. Log out of VxRail Manager.

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New Features in EMC VxRail 4.5

Multi Node Addition

• To simplify and speed-up the process of adding nodes to existing Cluster
• Automation supports adding up to 6 nodes at a time
• Each Node Expansion is managed as a separated process

Proxy Server Support

• Helps mitigate customers concerns regarding appliance security when connecting to internet
  • VxRail manager will accept internet traffic through proxy server
  • Will facilitate the adoption of the SW Market feature
• Individual proxy settings allowed for VxRail Manager & ESRS (EMC Secure Remote Services)

VxRail 4.5 new features from vSAN 6.6

VxRail Appliance 4.x Deployment and Implementation

I am so happy to pass VxRail Appliance 4.x Deployment and Implementation exam today. ^^

Dynamic Pools on EMC Unity All-Flash storage

For Unity All Flash storage, its architecture of Storage Pool is different with Unity Hybrid storage (eg, Unity 350F). This new Pool technology is called “Dynamic Pools”. The following is the difference between Traditional Pools and Dynamic Pools.

• Dynamic Pools do not require Hot Spares
• If a drive within a Dynamic Pool fails, Spare Space within the Pool is utilized
• Spare space will be handled automatically when a Pool is created or expanded
• Spread I/O load over all drives more frequently than traditional pools
• More drives are engaged in the rebuild process

NOTE: Supported on All Flash physical hardware only

The Dynamic Pools can only be enabled on Unity All-Flash storage which is running in OE 4.2 or above. The following is the EMC Unisphere server 4.1.2.

After you upgrade Unity’s OE into version 4.2.0, you can see the new management interface of EMC Unisphere Server 4.2. Then you can create the Dynamic Pools on Unity All Flash storage.

When you create the Pools in Storage, you can see the storage type of pool is “Dynamic”.

Demo – Create Dynamic Pools

Dell EMC VxRail 4.0 – Erasure Coding

Erasure Coding enables significant space reduction. An erasure coding 3+1, also known as Network RAID-5 3+1, can give us 50% more usable capacity than a RAID-1 Mirroring policy. Erasure Coding 3+1 requires a minimum of 4 Fault Domains/Hosts.

In this environment, there are four nodes in this VxRail Cluster.

In this post, we will learn how to create the storage policy in Dell EMC VxRail 4.0 and assign the storage policy into the virutal machines. First login into vCenter server in vSphere Web Client. You will now execute a set of steps to create a new storage policy.

Click Policies and Profiles.

Create the new storage policy.

Input the Name of storage policy, then Next.

Click <Add rule> Select Failure Tolerance method based on the below settings. Then Next.

Once the storage policy is created, you can assign this storage policy “Erasure Coding” into the virtual machines.

Rigth click of the virutal machine, select VM Policies and Edit VM Storage Policies.

In the VM storage policy list box, select the policy you created, Erasure Coding.
Click Apply to all. Click OK.

NOTE: After applying a new policy to a VM, it is important to verify that the VM complies to the new rules. Incertain policy changes, such as changes in QoS limits, the VMs will become compliant almost immediately but when changing rules like fault tolerance mode, it will take some time for the VM to become compliant because the adaptation to the new rules require data movement. In the following steps you will check the VM compliance and monitor the component reconfiguration process.

Finally you should go to monitor component reconfiguration,

Click on the Monitor tab. Click on the Policies tab
Select Hard disk1
Click Physical Disk Placement.
Check the Component State column. It may display “reconfiguring” or “active”.
Observe that there are 4 components associated to the “Hard Disk 1 – RAID-5 object”.
Each component is in a different Fault Domain.

NOTE: Erasure Coding requires to enable Fault Domains in VSAN Cluster.

Cisco UCS Management Pack for VMware vRealize Operations 6.6 (VMware + Cisco UCS)

Cisco UCS Management Pack for the vRealize Operations Manager contains UCS Manager Adapter which enables monitoring of the UCS domains on the Operations Manager web UI. The pack uses the XML API exposed by the Cisco UCS Manager to get the data from the UCS domains. This data is used for monitoring the health and faults of the various resources in the UCS domain. This pack also establishes the relation between physical and virtual infrastructure.

You can download UCS Management Pack for VMware vRealize Operations Manager in the below link.

Download link:
https://software.cisco.com/download/release.html?i=!y&mdfid=286305108&softwareid=286305820&release=2.0(3)

Release Notes:
UCSM for vROps

In this post, we will learn how to deploy UCS Management Pack in VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.6. You should go to Solutions of Administration, then install UCS Adapter.

Browse the Cisco UCS Adapter.

Then Upload.

Then Next.

Accept the agreement, then Next.

It starts the installation.

Once the installatin is completed, then Finish.

Now we start to setup the connection of UCS Manager and VMware vRealize Operations Manager.

Input the required information.

Input the Credentail of UCS Manager and vRealize Operations Manager.

Once the configuration is successfully completed, it starts to collect the performance data from UCS Manager.

Finally we can go to five Dashbords of UCS, ie UCSM Overview/UCS Health Tree/UCS Fabric Interconnect Traffic Statistics/UCS Power Summary/UCS Server Motherboard Statistics.

Installation and configuration of EMC Storage Analytics 4.3 and VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.6 (VMware + EMC Unity)

EMC Storage Analytics solution provides a single, end-to-end view of virtualized infrastructures (servers to storage) powered by the VMware vRealize Operations Manager analytics engine. EMC Storage Analytics (ESA) delivers actionable performance analysis and proactively facilitates increased insight into storage resource pools to help detect capacity and performance issues so they can be corrected before they cause a major impact. ESA provides increased visibility, metrics and a rich collection of storage analytics for Avamar, Isilon, EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, ScaleIO, Unity, Unity/VSA, VNX, VNXe, VMAX, VMAX All Flash, VPLEX and XtremIO infrastructures in virtual or physical environments.

NOTE: The license is required to enable the feature of EMC Storage Analytics on the target EMC Array.

First you need to download the EMC Adapter at support.emc.com. Then go to Solutions section of VMware vRealize Operations Manager and start to install EMC Adapter.

Select the EMC Adpater and then NEXT.

Then click UPLOAD.

Then click NEXT.

Accept the agreement, then click NEXT.

Starts the installation.

You can see EMC adapter when the installation completed.

Select EMC Adapter and starts to configure which EMC storage needs to monitor. In this case, I select EMC UnityVSA storage to monitor its performance data.

Once the configuration is completed, it starts to collect the performance data from UnityVSA.

You can view dashboards of Unity Metrics/Overview/Topology.