The latest OCI maintenance release is now available for customers to download and upgrade to. What is in it?
Plumbing:
#1. Support for running the OCI client on Java 7 update 45. This Java update is incompatible with all earlier versions of OCI. OCI engineering, in addition to make 7u45 supportable, also undertook efforts to get ahead of additional security changes forthcoming with Java 7 update 51.
#2. MySQL update - the MySQL version internally is now 5.5.34 (note - it appears we have a bug in the 6.4.2 release notes, which states 5.5.32).
#3. Various performance enhancements for ingesting inventory data.
#4. Acquisition memory utilization enhancements. The OCI data collection service "SANscreen Acq" should use much less memory internally in 6.4.2. You are not likely to perceive this with lower memory utilization from a system perspective, as the service's memory allocation is set by some registry settings. The benefit of this is that the already slim risk of acquisition running out of memory will be greatly reduced.
Features:
#1. We are continuing to enhance data sources to take advantage of OCI 6.4.1's extended model of a storage array. In OCI 6.4.1, we introduced the "node" to our model, giving us the infrastructure to store some array controller/CPU metrics. OCI 6.4.2 adds NetApp 7 mode support, to the existing 6.4.1 support of NetApp clustered Data Ontap and EMC Symmetrix.
#2. EMC Symmetrix Snapshot pool support - these will now be visible as a storage pool within OCI.
#3. IBM XIV array performance support. IBM XIV arrays running firmware 10.1 and higher have SMI-S running by default on the array - simply edit your XIV datasources to enable performance, and configure the performance page with a valid XIV IP or hostname.
#4. NetApp E-series (and Engenio derived arrays). OCI engineering has enhanced our Engenio / NetApp E-Series datasources to take advantage of the latest APIs offered by the arrays. If your array is running 7.83 firmware or higher, OCI's Perform module will automagically pull volume response times and disk statistics in addition to the volume statistics we have previously supported.
OCI will now understand what disk group E-series disks belong to, so you can group disks in performance views by disk groups, and understand which RAID groups you have are relatively hot/cold.
OCI will also understand the SSD read caching feature - if you have a SSD dedicated as a cache, it will belong to a new storage pool that is 100% overhead, as not to create the impression that this storage pool has free space.
#5. Minor FCoE fixes - our HDS datasource will now report FCoE ports properly. Cisco FCoE ISLs are now properly reported.
#6. Isilon inventory support is shipping out of the box.
#7. Microsoft Hyper-V inventory support is shipping out of the box. OCI needs a user account that has admin level permisisons on your Hyper-V hosts and guests. Create a Microsoft Hyper-V datasource, and point it as any Hyper-V host - OCI will use WMI to discover it, and all the other Hyper-V hosts and guests in the Active Directory domain.
#8. Multithreading - OCI engineering is continuing down the path of multithreading individual datasources. The Cisco SNMP datasource is multithreaded is 6.4.2, when the datasource is configured to discover all the switches in the fabric 4 discovery threads will poll different switches concurrently, once the datasource has queries the first switch as to what switches are in the fabric.
#9 IBM SVC and v7000 discovery behavior - OCI will now intentionally fail discovery of these storage arrays when it retrieves a stale backup configuration, to avoid reporting stale data as valid data. This change may result in SVC OS 6.4.x sites incurring datasource failure after upgrading to 6.4.2. This is because your SVC datasources are using a non-superuser user in the datasource. SVC OS 6.4.x has a bug ( IC90824 ) where only the superuser can perform a SVC configuration backup. To date, IBM has only fixed IC90824 on the 7.1 train of SVC OS releases, so changing your SVC datasources to use superuser, and properly associating a SSH keypair for that user is the only workaround for SVC 6.4.x environments.
#10 NetApp Snapmirror enhancements for both 7 mode and clustered Data Ontap (cDOT)
7mode - bug fixes, such that OCI should report more relationships, with the warning below
cDOT - there was no previous Snapmirror support. In cDOT, Load Sharing mirrors, Snapvault, and Snapmirror are all types of Snapmirror relationships - all will now be reported, with the warning below
Warning - Snapmirror - If you have multiple OCI instances, OCI will probably not be able to report snapmirror relationships of the following configuration:
OCI instance A discovers Ontap array Y with flexvol 1, which replicates to flexvol2
OCI instance B discovers Ontap array Z with flexvol 2
The reason we cannot as Ontap doesn't have report the source/destination array name in a format directly usable by OCI. OCI must do some lookups of the data it sees, and convert that to the array name that OCI knows. OCI acquisition can only do this for arrays on the OCI instance in question. In our scenario, OCI A will not be able to decode Ontap array Z, and as such, neither Ontap datasource for Y or Z will report the relationship of 1->2
The workaround is to install an additional OCI instance that has long inventory poll intervals, and to discover all your Ontap arrays on this instance - this instance should have all Snapmirror relationships
#11. Symmetrix Storage Alias support - for Vmax shops using symaccess , OCI will now parse this data to report "Storage Alias" information for use in host identification
