Itzikr's Blog

Shown is a typical deployment of VSI with VMware vSphere. The vSphere client connects to the vCenter server via IP, and subsequently connects to the elements in the environment in a variety of different ways using either FC, or IP.
In environments where VSI will be used to discover and view VPLEX systems, IP connectivity to the VPLEX Management Station is required as are the username/password credentials for that system. VSI will discover the VPLEX system and meta-data on the system to be imported for discovery and viewing via vSphere.
VSI with VPLEX integration provides an administrator with a powerful one-stop-place to view storage objects within ESX, virtual disks, VPLEX volumes, and backend array volumes and properties.

VSI supports any VPLEX system running GeoSynchrony version 4.0 or later- Local, Metro and Geo configurations are supported. With VSI integrated with VPLEX, you can view lists of VPLEX arrays and devices that are accessible to the ESX hosts in the virtual datacenter. Storage viewer with VPLEX provides storage mapping and connectivity details. Solutions Enabler does not manage VPLEX
•VSI utilizes a client-side library to communicate with VPLEX over TCP/IP
•A list of VPLEX systems is maintained locally in a private, encrypted file

*Username/password, VPLEX system details are stored in this encrypted file and retrieved at run-time.

VSI in a VPLEX Local environment will discover and display the storage attributes of the arrays and VPLEX systems located at this single site. VSI can determine what the back-end properties of the arrays are within the environment. In a local configuration, VPLEX maintains volumes within a single site, or with a single FC environment in a single cluster configuration.
As we’ve already discussed, VSI discovers VPLEX systems in this local setting without Solutions Enabler. The viewer (SV) allows you to input the hostname or IP address of the VPLEX Management system as well as the username and password. After entering these details, and clicking discover new VPLEX Systems, each VPLEX system will be discovered and appear in a list. Each system must be discovered separately.

In this example, we have VPLEX Metro. VPLEX Metro is for mobility and access across two locations separated by inter-site RTT (round-trip-time) of up to 5 ms. VPLEX Metro uses two VPLEX clusters and includes the unique capability where a remote VPLEX Metro cluster can present LUNs without the need for physical storage for those LUNs at the remote cluster. It also supports synchronous distributed volumes that mirror data between the two clusters using write-through caching.
VSI in a VPLEX Metro environment will discover and display the storage attributes of the arrays and VPLEX systems located at both sites. However, it is best practice to only discover a single VPLEX system– there is no need to discover both sites

DISCOVERY

If no VPLEX system is discovered, VPLEX devices appear as unknown. Details will be loaded once the VPLEX system is discovered
When a new virtual volume is added to the storage view, it is seen as ‘unknown’ until VSI is synchronized with the VPLEX System
Changes, such as renaming storage volumes, or local migration of devices within VPLEX, do not automatically appear in VSI. To display the most current data, sync the system and then refresh the display

For VPLEX Storage Volumes – SV window shows a lot of information. Specifically, per storage volume, it is possible to discover:
• Name of the volume
• Capacity (total) of the volume
• Vendor of the storage as reported by SCSI inquiry
• Array Name as reported by VPLEX, e.g. Symmetrix or CLARiiON
• LUN WWN – the unique identifier (UID) of the storage volume
• Locality of the LUN – identification of the LUN as to where it resides, local or remote VPLEX cluster – possible values will be Distributed, Local or Remote
• Cluster name – shows the name of the cluster to where the storage volume belongs
• Health – reports the health status for the storage volume by the VPLEX system. Possible values will be ok, degraded, minor failure, major failure, and unknown. When reporting “unknown”, VSI has not been able to communicate with the volume and/or system
• Operational Status – ok, stressed, online

• I/O status – Alive, dead, and unreachable
• Additional details will include RAID level, revision of the device per the SCSI inquiry command, model of VPLEX, Rule Sets, active/available paths, and storage view – which is the view connecting the virtual volume to the VMware ESX host

attached below is a DEMO of VSI 5.2 and VPLEX