PowerMax and OCI...

[ostiguy]

If you are deploying EMC PowerMax into your environment, and are an OCI customer, you:

#1. Are very likely going to need a datasource patch

#2. You really want to take this opportunity to reassess what EMC Solutions Enabler versions are deployed in your environment.

If you have OCI Solutions Enabler datasources, you want to map out:

Which datasources live on which Acquisition Unit?

Are those datasources utilizing Solutions Enabler "client / server" mode, or do they have "local" access to Symmetrix arrays?

When you have more than one Solutions Enabler datasource on an AU, that implies that at least one of them is using client / server mode. It is at this point, you need to start contemplating what the SolEnabler version is on those servers.

Hypothetical scenario:

Datasources X,Y and Z live on one OCI AU. That OCI AU can only have one Solutions Enabler version installed. That SE version needs to be the same as, or older, than the servers that those 3 datasources talk to.

If you have 8.3, 8.4 and 9.0 installed on those 3 servers, you can only conceivably install SE 8.3 on the OCI AU because that is the newest version that is not newer than any of those 3 servers.

But the problem is - if you are using 8.3 as a client against 9.0, is that going to return reliable information about a PowerMax, given that 8.3.x pre-dates the PowerMax by a few years? There are likely going to be aspects of PowerMax that 8.3 cannot express.

So, in situations like this, you may need to:

Deploy new RAUs, on which different SE versions live, to live in harmony with version matching rules

Maintain SE version standards / avoid SE version sprawl - don't only deploy SE 9.0 where you need to for PowerMax - instead, deploy it consistently to avoid version compatibility headaches.

[Don_Childers]

Good info. This is about to come up for us as we are adding our first PowerMax.

[INGO_REPINZ]

Hello Matt,

are there any changes to these guidelines/recommendations for OCI 7.3.10 or users of SP8?

I would now ask for a new RAU because we have got a few PowerMaxs in our environment and we would like to see them in OCI too.

Best regards

Ingo 

[ostiguy]

Hey Ingo,

I don't think there is really anything specific about PowerMax in SP8 - I believe most of the fixes/enhancements required for PowerMax landed in SP7 or earlier, but I do generally recommend running the latest SP to stay current.

Any time you are doing anything new with Symmetrix, it is always a good time to assess your layout:

What Solutions Enabler datasources exist?

On which AUs do they exist?

What Solutions Enabler version is installed on those AUs?

If datasources are using SE in client/server mode, what is the server side running?

You may find something like: AU X has datasources 1 and 2 installed, which are talking to remote SE versions 8.4.x and 9.0.x. If that AU X has SE 8.3 installed, you might have problems. You should look at upgrading that SE 8.3 install to 8.4.x to match the oldest server side version in use. It would probably be ideal to actually see if you could get the 8.4.x server to the same 9.0.x version, and get the AU to 9.0.x as well to match - the fewer SE versions you have deployed, the lower the chances of interoperability issues

[INGO_REPINZ]

Hello Matt,

I'm busy getting the SE working.

Meanwhile, I'm also talking with Dell EMC folks and they said, that they do have REST-Interfaces also and that we should look more in this direction, as it looks like SMI-S will be faced out over time. Whatever this means with Dell EMC being Dell EMC. 

Are there any plans for the near future to bring a REST-based DataSource for OCI?

I have also a question, does the data source set the SYMAPI_CONNECT variable under windows? I actually would like to have only one RAU that collects all data from all Powermax-systems instead of multiple once. Or do you have any suggestion on how I could get the data from only one RAU? 

[INGO_REPINZ]

Hello Matt,

finally, I got the OCI Symetrix-Datasource working, and I'm quite happy that I did not have to present Getakeeper-Luns to the RAU collecting the data. So I have only one place to maintain the software.

We have now a couple of systems in the system and I have noticed a few things, that may be worth a thought or two.

1) Even Dell EMC is now supporting a system name, SYMCLI is putting the nice SYM-<serial> in the Name-field of the storage-array

2) How can we provide a URL for the management interface and the correct IP. These fields are unfortunately empty.

3) PowerMax OS is supporting now a name tag for the volume in addition to the HexID, it would be really nice if you could grab them somehow and insert them into the label-field, so we can search also for the name in OCI. It's not very handy to have a couple of 0001 LUNs instead of speaking names.

I hope these recommendations are somehow appealing to others too.

Best regards

Ingo

[ostiguy]

Hey Ingo,

I hope you are well. For the "name" of storage arrays and volumes, *CI need mandatory, unique values. So, Dell/EMC has bolted on the ability to add a descriptive name to the array and volumes, but those are not mandatory.

I don't think we are currently capturing the descriptive name of a Symm in the commands we are running today. This is also true for volumes - but there, we explicitly don't do that because years ago the symcli command we were using to obtain that data had a performance problem in some environments. We probably should think about looking into that topic again.

As for the manage URL, I am not sure if that is even known to Solutions Enabler - does it necessarily know what the Unisphere for *Max instance is for an array if there is one.

Matt

[prcpa8w3p]

CI currently has a datasource connector for VMax/PowerMax Family of devices. How would this datasource connector be different?