Itzikr's Blog

Hi,

We have just released the 7^th version! Of the VSI (Virtual Storage Integrator) vCenter plugin, this release includes

1. VPLEX VIAS Provisioning (and viewing support), yes, its been a feature that was long due and I’m proud to say it’s here now, so first we need to register VPLEX which is a pretty much straightforward thing to do

   

   VPLEX VIAS Provisioning Support – Use
   Cases
   

   
   VPLEX Integrated Array Service (VIAS)
   ŸCreate virtual volumes from pre-defined storage pools on supported arrays. These storage pools are visible to VPLEX through array management providers (AMPs)
   ŸSimplify the provisioning, by comparing with the traditional provisioning from storage volumes
   

   VPLEX VIAS Provisioning Support –
   Prerequisites
   

   Software Prerequisites
   – VMware vSphere 6.0 or 5.5
   ▪ VMware vSphere Web Client
   ▪ VMware ESX/ESXi hosts
   ▪ VMware vCenter Servers (single or linked-mode)
   ŸStorage Prerequisites
   – VPLEX 5.5/6.0
   ▪ Only support XtremIO/VMAX3/VNX Block
   ▪ Storage pool is created on the array
   ▪ AMP is registered with VPLEX, connectivity status is OK.
   

   VPLEX VIAS Provisioning Support –
   Provision VMFS Datastore on Host Level
   

   
   

   VPLEX VIAS Provisioning Support –
   Provision VMFS Datastore on Cluster Level
   

   
   

   VPLEX VIAS Provisioning Support –
   Provision VMFS Datastore
   

   
   

   VPLEX VIAS Provisioning Support –
   Provision VMFS Datastore
   

   
   

   VPLEX VIAS Provisioning Support –
   Provision VMFS Datastore
   

   
   

   Let’s see a demo about how it all works, thanks for Todd Toles who recorded it!

   Multiple vCenters Support – Background
   VSI 6.7 or Older
   – Designed to work with single vCenter
   – Multiple vCenters are not supported totally
   – More and more customers requested this
   capability
   ŸVSI 6.8
   – XtremIO use cases
   ŸVSI 6.9.1 & 6.9.2
   – RecoverPoint & SRM use cases
   – Unity/UnityVSA use cases
   

   Quality Improvement – Batch
   Provisioning Use Case
   Customer provisions 30 datastores on a
   cluster which has 32 ESXi hosts, the vCenter
   will fall into no response
   ŸRoot Cause: there are huge tasks (e.g.
   ~900+ “Rescan all HBA” and “Rescan VMFS”
   tasks) created in a short time, which
   generates a rescan storm and impacts the
   vCenter much
   

   What have we done to fix it?
   

   Code changes to optimize the host rescan
   operations invoked by VSI
   ŸManually configure the vCenter advanced settings to add “config.vpxd.filter.hostRescanFilter=false”
   , which disables the automatic VMFS rescanning on each host (under the same
   cluster) when create a new datastore for the cluster. Enable this filter when batch provisioning is done.