VPLEX 6.2, What’s New

The VPLEX family removes physical barriers within, across, and between data centers. VPLEX Local provides simplified management and non-disruptive data mobility across heterogeneous arrays. VPLEX Metro provides data access and mobility between two VPLEX clusters within
synchronous distances. With a unique scale-up scale-out architecture, the advanced data caching and distributed cache coherency of VPLEX provides workload resiliency, automatic sharing,
balancing and failover of storage domains, and enables both local and remote data access with predictable service levels.

Early in 2020, we released the 6.2 version which contains the following enhancements:

Large volume support
Starting with VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2, the support capacity limit of storage volume size and virtual volume size has increased from 32 TB to 64 TB.

Digital licensing (e-License)
Starting with VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2, Dell EMC introducing new license activation models:
VPLEX_AF_LOCAL: It supports Local Volumes for Dell EMC All Flash Arrays.
VPLEX_AF_METRO: It supports Distributed Volumes for Dell EMC All Flash Arrays.
VPLEX_LOCAL_SC_FRAME: It supports Local Volumes for DELL SC Arrays.
VPLEX_METRO_SC_FRAME: It supports Distributed Volumes for DELL SC Arrays.
VPLEX_1TO1_SC_FRAME: It supports Local and Distributed Volumes for a given DELL SC Array.
VPLEX_ELA_LOCAL_CAPACITY: It is known as Enterprise License Activation and it supports
Local Volumes for All Arrays under Dell EMC.
VPLEX_ELA_METRO_CAPACITY: It is Known as Enterprise License Activation and it supports Distributed Volumes for All Arrays under Dell EMC.
Evaluation License Support for all supported License Models

SRSv3
Starting with VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2, Dell EMC introducing the SRSv3 capability. SRSv3 includes Licensing Usage Data Transfer feature where Secure Remote Service version 3 (SRSv3)
REST APIs support transfer of licensing usage data to Dell EMC, from Dell EMC Products.

Backend path management
Starting with VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2, VPLEX modifies back-end path management from an I/O timeout algorithm to a latency based one. VPLEX monitors the latency of back-end paths and penalizes those paths which show latency exceeding a 1 second threshold. A penalized path is used
less than other healthy paths. If a path accumulates enough penalties, it is marked degraded and VPLEX stops using it for host based I/O automatically. Once an I-T path is removed from use, VPLEX thoroughly checks the health of the path before automatically returning it to service. These changes improve the VPLEX handling of back-end fabric network congestion and back-end storage array failures.

Call Home Enhancements
Starting with VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2, additional firmware events are added to alert customers to give more warning notifications about events occurring in their VPLEX system and environment, and some new call-home events will be sent back to Dell EMC to alert about critical issues.

Port Stats Monitor
Starting with VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2, VPLEX will monitor and log FC port statistics for potential fabric issues. This monitoring can be configured to send an email upon detection of an issue. For more details, see KB article 531987.

Hyper-V Support for VPLEX Witness
Starting with VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2, VPLEX Witness can be deployed on Windows Hyper-V.
The Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file is part of the GA package as VPlex-6.2.0.00.00.xxcluster-witness-server.vhd.

HTML5 based new GUI
Starting with VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2, HTML5 based new GUI is introduced which has Dell Clarity standards, and it is compatible with the latest browsers. The new HTML5 based GUI is
based on a new REST API v2 which is available. For more information, see the GUI Help Pages.
Note: Starting with VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2, the Flash GUI is depreciated.
Note: VPLEX GeoSynchrony 6.2 is the last release to support REST API v1 and Flash GUI .

Below you can see a demo of the new HTML5 based UI