Itzikr's Blog

Hi,

Rolling on with the Q3 updates to XtremIO, I’m very happy to share with you an updated version of our VSI (Virtual Storage Integrator) vCenter plugin.

If you are new to VSI, I highly encourage you to read about it here first, https://volumes.blog/2015/07/17/virtual-storage-integrator-6-6-is-almost-here/ , seriously, it’s pretty much the glue between XtremIO to VMware vSphere & vSphere and many other things and its FREE!

Ok, you’re back? Cool! this 6.6 SP3 release contains the following improvements:

Take Snapshot

This feature help user to take snapshot for qualified XtremIO datastore.

There is dedicated menu item named “Take Snapshot” which will be shown only for XtremIO based datastore.

User can take snapshots by right clicking on an XtremIO datastore. On the right-click menu, choose All EMC VSI Plugin Actions

Take Snapshot.

The popup dialog shows loading during the back end process.

XtremIO 4.0, read-only snapshot is supported

Take Snapshot by Scheduler (4.0 ONLY)

This feature help user to take snapshot for qualified XtremIO datastore by scheduler.

There is dedicated menu item named “Take Snapshot by Scheduler” which will be shown only for XtremIO 4.0 based datastore.

User can take snapshots by right clicking on an XtremIO 4.0 datastore. On the right-click menu, choose All EMC VSI Plugin Actions
Create Snapshot Scheduler.

The popup dialog shows loading during the back end process.

After loading is finished, user can configure scheduler as wanted:

After pressing ‘Submit’ button, the task will be submitted automatically to SIS server. User can press ‘OK’ button to close this dialog.

Managing Snapshot Scheduler

This feature enables end user managing XtremIO snapshot scheduler directly in vSphere client. The management includes view, modify, remove and disable/enable. The snapshot schedulers were created on one XtremIO volume which is the backend of one qualified vSphere datastore.

NOTE: It’s for XtremIO 4.0 based datastore only. There will no snapshot scheduler shown for XtremIO 3.0 based datastore.

View Snapshot Scheduler

User can click one qualified datastore, and then view defined snapshot scheduler which is on the backend XtremIO volume at storage side under tab “Scheduler Management”.

Modify/Remove/Disable/Enable Snapshot Scheduler

After viewing snapshot scheduler, end user can select one to modify, remove, suspend or resume it.

By navigating path as: Datastores -> Manage -> XtremIO Management -> Scheduler Management, use can manage defined scheduler on one XtremIO volume.

Choose one from listed schedulers:

User can choose “Suspend” to suspend or disable one scheduler, choose “Modify” to update one scheduler and choose “remove” to remove one scheduler. For the “Suspend” button, its value will vary based on the status of selected scheduler. If it’s an on-going scheduler, the value will be “Suspend”. Otherwise, the value will be “Resume”.

If you click on “Suspend” or “Resume” button, there will be a dialog shown to confirm user’s action. After pressing “OK” button on this dialog. The process of suspending or resuming one scheduler will be triggered. After its completion, selected scheduler will be suspended or resumed.

If you click on “Modify” button, there will be a pop up dialog to enable user edit this scheduler:

Pressing “Submit” button will trigger scheduler updating process. After this process completed, the scheduler will be updated:

View Snapshot for VM

This feature lists the XtremIO’s snapshots (aka, Restorable Point in Time for VM) details in the table under the tab of “XtremIO Management” after user selecting one qualified VM. Those snapshots are on the XtremIO volume which is the backend LUN of datastore hosting the selected VM.

Restore VM from one PiT

This feature enables user select one of Point in Time (PiT) to restore VM to corresponding status.

User can firstly select one PiT, and then press ‘Restore’ button. After pressing ‘OK’ button on confirm dialog, there will be a task triggered underlying to do VM restore automatically.

The whole process in backend consist of several sub tasks as followed:

1. Take a writable snapshot (snap-B) based on the selected snapshot snap-A.
2. Mount the snap-B to the host which is the same as the one hosting the target virtual machine vm-A, a new temp datastore (datastore-B) is ready.
3. Search vmx file on datastore-B based on the one of vm-A.
4. Register new vm (vm-B) with the searched vmx file.
5. Check whether the available datastore capacity is enough or not:
   1. Calculate the vm size (size-1) on datastore-B.
   2. Calculate the available capacity (size-2) of datastore (datastore-A) in which the vm-A is residing.
   3. Check whether size-2 > size-1, if true, continue, if false, go to step 12.
6. Shutdown vm-A
7. Take a snapshot (snap-C) based on the volume which is mounted as the datastore-A, snap-C can be considered as a backup.
8. Unregister vm-A
9. Clone vm-B to datastore-A, get a new vm (vm-C)
10. Power on vm-C
11. Destroy vm-A
12. Unmount datastore-B
13. Clean snap-B

    View Snapshot for Datastore
    

This feature lists the XtremIO’s snapshots details in the table under the tab of “XtremIO Management” after user selected one qualified datastore. Those snapshots are on the XtremIO volume which is the backend LUN of selected datastore.

NOTE:
The ‘qualified’ here means this datastore is based on one LUN, and this LUN is related to single XtremIO volume. If one unqualified datastore was selected, XtremIO Management tab would be invisible.

Restore Datastore from Snapshot (XIOS 4.0 ONLY)

This feature enable user to restore one datastore from one selected XtremIO snapshot.

NOTE: It’s for XtremIO 4.0 based datastore only. If one snapshot is from XtremIO 3.0, the ‘Restore’ button will be disabled.

User can firstly select one snapshot, and then press ‘Restore’ button. After pressing ‘OK’ button on the confirm dialog, there will be a task triggered underlying to do datastore restore automatically.

Assuming in the front-end specifying the target snapshot (snap-A) used to restore the datastore (datastore-A). Then the underlying in back-end is like:

1.     Shutdown/Poweroff all vms based on datastore-A

2.     Take a snapshot (snap-B) based on the volume (vol-A) which is mounted as the datastore-A, snap-B can be considered as a backup.

3.     Restore vol-A with snap-A, remove the auto backup snapshot.

4.     Handle virtual machines on restored datastore

5.     Unregister not-existing virtual machines

6.    Power on existing vms

Mount Datastore from Snapshot

It’s totally migrated from existing features of VSI 6.6 using HTML based technology. Previous one is removed from VSI.

When a snapshot is selected in the table, mount button would be enabled to allow user to mount the snapshot as a datastore.

When Mount button is clicked, a window will pop up for configuration. At the beginning, the window tries to load all available hosts in the vCenter.

After loading is finished, all connected hosts display in the dropdown list. User needs to choose one host to mount the selected snapshot on.

During the whole process of mount configuration, user can cancel the mount operation by clicking Cancel button or clicking “x” on the top left of the window. But once the OK button is clicked, the task will submit to the SIS server and the operation cannot be canceled anymore.

When the OK button is clicked, the whole web page would be locked for processing. After the in progress bar disappears, user can monitor the task status by My Tasks in the Recent Tasks panel.

After all tasks finished, user can find the newly mounted XtremIO datastore by going to Home > vCenter > Hosts and selected the host which you choose to do mount in the previous steps. And on the panel right to it, you will find the datastore by clicking on Related Object > Datastores.

You can see all the “old” and the “new features” of the VSI plugin here: