EMC VNX / VNXe

If you're using iSCSI you should be able to do multi-pathing to get better performance. Otherwise, yeah, you're limited to a single gigabit connection of performance. What kind of switch are you using?
 
Even with multi-pathing you are still going over gig links. So you still would be limited in terms of throughput.
 
Has anyone played with the VNX, NFS and fast tiering?

I have been trying to find information on it and all I can find so far is Coc.. err spec sheet waving going on between EMC and Netapp and I cant find anything about if fast tiering works with NFS and how well NFS works with the VNX 5300
 
Yes. You just carve up space for NAS out of a tiered pool..then share that out via NFS.
 
Thats what I thought, but I dont want to say it can do one thing, recommend we buy it to managment, and discover nope, cant do that.
 
Yes. You just carve up space for NAS out of a tiered pool..then share that out via NFS.
Do you know if Hyper-V supports clustering on these NFS volumes? Or do they need block level protocols like iSCSI?
 
Since this is a VNX/VNXe topic figured I would cross post a little

Got to unpack one of our new VNX 5300's today.

4 fast cache, 10 flash, 25 600gb, 15 1tb.

Projected IOPS - 30,700

 
And here is the VNX5300 in our rack for the UCS lab at our event tomorrow, Varrow Madness.

Varrow_Block.jpg
 
Cool stuff guys. I'd throw up a picture of the vBlock in our lab but I can't stand the vBlock! :)

RiDDLeRThc, did you go with a Block only VNX5300 or Unified?
 
block only for right now. we may add the datamovers in our office location later on but our production vnx will always be block.
 
Did you get any flack from EMC for wanting block only? They've gotten really aggressive lately pushing the Data Movers, sometimes even throwing them in for free depending on the size of the order.
 
Did you get any flack from EMC for wanting block only? They've gotten really aggressive lately pushing the Data Movers, sometimes even throwing them in for free depending on the size of the order.

Nope, I mentioned it to my VAR about midway through the process of purchasing that I interested in them but we had already submitted numbers to finance for purchasing. I would of taken the datamovers if they offered them for free. :)

In their defense, our VAR and EMC were very competitive to keep our storage business and the pricing was pretty good.
 
Nope, I mentioned it to my VAR about midway through the process of purchasing that I interested in them but we had already submitted numbers to finance for purchasing. I would of taken the datamovers if they offered them for free. :)

In their defense, our VAR and EMC were very competitive to keep our storage business and the pricing was pretty good.

Fierce competition in the storage arena = good. :D
 
Since this is a VNX/VNXe topic figured I would cross post a little

Got to unpack one of our new VNX 5300's today.

4 fast cache, 10 flash, 25 600gb, 15 1tb.

Projected IOPS - 30,700

Did it come as it sits, as in drive placement or did you move the drives around to the different DAE's and buses?

It's funny, we installed ours, I started moving my drives around to accomodate best practices ie separating flash on different buses etc, and EMC support called the install guy when I was doing it and he called me and asked me what and why I was doing what i was doing....I found that extremely entertaining....

We love our 5500 and i'm just migrating fileshares on servers to our Datamovers on CIFS as I type this..waiting for the restore to finish and test.
 
Did it come as it sits, as in drive placement or did you move the drives around to the different DAE's and buses?

It's funny, we installed ours, I started moving my drives around to accomodate best practices ie separating flash on different buses etc, and EMC support called the install guy when I was doing it and he called me and asked me what and why I was doing what i was doing....I found that extremely entertaining....

We love our 5500 and i'm just migrating fileshares on servers to our Datamovers on CIFS as I type this..waiting for the restore to finish and test.

The install guy should have moved those drives for you before the VNX ever got powered up. That's the first thing I do at any install since the factory simply throws the drives in wherever they want.
 
Fierce competition in the storage arena = good. :D

No kidding, loving it right now! Compellent came back a week after we submitted our EMC order with even more aggressive pricing, 10G upgrades and a bunch of Force10 gear. Would of made us look twice if we didn't already place the order but I'm still happy with the decision to go with EMC.

Did it come as it sits, as in drive placement or did you move the drives around to the different DAE's and buses?

It's funny, we installed ours, I started moving my drives around to accomodate best practices ie separating flash on different buses etc, and EMC support called the install guy when I was doing it and he called me and asked me what and why I was doing what i was doing....I found that extremely entertaining....

We love our 5500 and i'm just migrating fileshares on servers to our Datamovers on CIFS as I type this..waiting for the restore to finish and test.

The install guy should have moved those drives for you before the VNX ever got powered up. That's the first thing I do at any install since the factory simply throws the drives in wherever they want.


Yeah I remember reading the stories on here. To my surprise the drives came like that from the factory. Not too sure if the installer will move them around once he gets here.
 
Yeah I remember reading the stories on here. To my surprise the drives came like that from the factory. Not too sure if the installer will move them around once he gets here.

Make sure he does. Moving the drives once the array is already powered up will cause warnings and alerts. Best to do it before it even powers up. I always have a storage design drawn out that shows exactly how I'll carve up the RAID Groups and Storage Pools, where the Hot Spares will be, how much usable space they'll have, expected IOPs per RG and Pool. etc. that I go over with the customer before the VNX is installed.
 
Make sure he does. Moving the drives once the array is already powered up will cause warnings and alerts. Best to do it before it even powers up. I always have a storage design drawn out that shows exactly how I'll carve up the RAID Groups and Storage Pools, where the Hot Spares will be, how much usable space they'll have, expected IOPs per RG and Pool. etc. that I go over with the customer before the VNX is installed.

That's the example of how it "should" go down, but in my case, didn't..lol.
 
Make sure he does. Moving the drives once the array is already powered up will cause warnings and alerts. Best to do it before it even powers up. I always have a storage design drawn out that shows exactly how I'll carve up the RAID Groups and Storage Pools, where the Hot Spares will be, how much usable space they'll have, expected IOPs per RG and Pool. etc. that I go over with the customer before the VNX is installed.

I'm giving them a call later today to ask about that. i'm expecting it.
 
2 post racks. Couldn't safely secure the rack shelve holding the DAEs.

Our office server room is all 2 post racks. We have no plan to change that till we move.

It's sad but is what it is.
 
Doing my first vnxe install. Looks like i can only do a RAID 6 with two six pack NL drives. Is this true?
 
EMC Best Practice is to setup NL-SAS in 4+2 drive RAID6 configurations due to longer rebuild times, more likely to have more than 1 disk fail.
 
1tb. looks like i have another issue both sps are blinking blue. cant reach the management ip for some reason
 
Mmmm. VNX. I love my NS-960, but I'd really love a 7500 to replace it. Prolly 'nother 2 years or so.
 
Speaking of EMC Netjunkie, when can we expect Sakac's keynote from Varrow madness?..;)
 
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Speaking of EMC anyone hear if rebalancing of storage pools for the VNX line is still on the roadmap to be announced at EMC World?
 
Speaking of EMC Netjunkie, when can we expect Sakac's keynote from Varrow madness?..;)

I have it...just not sure I can give it out. :) Honestly, I didn't see a single second of it. I talked to Chad right before he went on and he said he wanted us to sit down and talk after. I ran out to check the status on our labs and kept getting stopped and never made it back..never got to talk with him either as he had to run for a call and then a dinner with his team.
 
Speaking of EMC anyone hear if rebalancing of storage pools for the VNX line is still on the roadmap to be announced at EMC World?

It's coming...and probably will be announced. Most likely Q3 this year for it. Got pushed back a bit.
 
So I decided to upgrade to latest firmware for VNXe that was released a few days ago. One of my datastores that i created became listed as inactive in Vsphere. THink the issue is with host access for the datastore. If I go to the storage on the the VNXe, it shows that my ESXi host iQN has "no access". This wasn't the case when I initially set it up. When I try to give it datastore and snapshot access I get an error saying that "Datastore name is already in use." ANy ideas?
 
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