VMware KB: Troubleshooting ESX virtual machine performance issues

This article gives some basic guidance on how to isolate a performance issue on ESX. Bad performance can be caused by several different areas: CPU constraints, memory overcommitment, storage latency, or network latency. If one or more of your virtual machines has a bad response time, consider each of these areas to find the bottleneck.

VMware KB: Troubleshooting ESX virtual machine performance issues.

Storage, SAN: EMC Clariion LUN Trespass

Problem  = High amount of LUNS trespassed on Clariion.

Resolution =  using “naviseccli” type :-

naviseccli -h <SPA>  trespass mine 

Where <SPA> is the ip address of the storage processor.

eg:  C:\>naviseccli -h 127.0.0.12 trespass mine

 

Dell announce VASA for next gen Equallogic SAN

New Dell EqualLogic Storage Platform

• EqualLogic PS4100 Series — ideal for small-to-medium businesses or remote office locations with growing storage needs. The SANs, supporting up to 36TB in a single array and 72TB in a single group, can scale as storage demands increase by seamlessly adding additional PS4100 or PS6100 arrays into an EqualLogic group.
• EqualLogic PS6100 Series — designed to provide mid-sized customers with a scalable storage environment, up to 72TB in a single array and 1.2PB in a single group, that can easily accommodate both high-performance and high-capacity drive options. The PS6100 family is ideal for customers looking for a storage solution to support the storage demands of a highly virtualized data center environment where the seamless movement and protection of virtual machines, applications and data is crucial.
•  EqualLogic FS7500, the company’s latest NAS solution that works with EqualLogic PS Series arrays to deliver the only scale-out, unified storage platform for mid-size deployments. The FS7500 uses the Dell Scalable File System, which offers several advanced features including cache monitoring, load balancing and multi-threading for fast I/O processing.

Support for vSphere5 Storage Awareness APIs (VASA) in next gen of Equallogic Storage

• Dell EqualLogic Host Integration Tools for VMware 3.1 — provide customers with enhanced storage visibility and datastore management as well as improved performance and availability through tight integration with VMware vSphere 5, VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness, VMware Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS), and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager™ 5.
• Dell Compellent Storage Replication Adapter for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 — supports automated failback from a disaster event and new workflows for planned migrations and downtime. Dell also is updating its Compellent plug-in support for VMware vSphere 5 to help customers more easily link their Compellent storage environment with virtualized resources.
• Dell PowerVault Integration with VMware vSphere 5 — adds certification and enables customers to manage multiple PowerVault MD3200/MD3600 series of storage arrays from a single VMware vCenter Server instance using the vCenter Plugin for Dell PowerVault MD. The Dell PowerVault MD storage arrays (iSCSI and Fibre Channel) also support VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness. The PowerVault MD3600f/MD3620f series of storage arrays support VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.1 and 5 using the Dell PowerVault Storage Replication Adapter (SRA).

 

NetApp adds free Flash Cache

NetApp is providing 512GB – not 512MB – of free Flash Cache on the FAS6240 and 6280 arrays and the V6240 and 6280 controllers.

The V Series is a detached FAS controller that can be used to virtualise third-party storage arrays and present them as NetApp storage.

The Flash Cache stores frequently accessed or hot data in solid state storage in the controller, and read access to that data is up to 10 times faster.

NetApp claims it reduces the cost of storage for standard applications by up to 50 per cent. The storage array can use fewer, larger and cheaper disk drives than before.

VMware vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)

• VSA is a new product offering in vSphere 5.0
• vSphere Storage Appliance is software that delivers shared storage capabilities without the cost and complexity of shared storage hardware
• It installs with just a few mouse clicks and is centrally managed in VMware vCenter Server.
• Use vSphere’s business continuity features, all without shared storage hardware.

 Key Features of vSphere Storage Appliance

• Affordable Shared Storage –  Turns internal server storage into fully virtualized, clustered, shared and highly available datastores at a dramatically lower cost than networked, external shared storage
• Supports up to three nodes
• Simple installation – Fully automated installation and configuration of vCenter Server, vSphere and VMware VSA
• Ensures correct configuration for high availability
• Simple Administration – Tight vCenter Server integration provides simplified administration via VSA plug-in
• Storage Resilience and Availability  – Mirrors datastores with RAID1 across nodes/RAID 10, within each node. 99.9% availability with HA.
• Flexibility to migrate to hardware SAN – using storage vMotion.
• Run vCenter Server separately from your VSA cluster for best protection

VSA Restrictions

• It is a virtual NFS filer only, and not a block-level storage appliance as VMware implied.
• NFS shares cannot be created on the VSA for the apps on the VM to access.
• Storage only presented to the hypervisor and not the VM.
• Does not support CIFS, ISCSI, FCOE.
• Does not support VAAI 1.0 ( vStorage API for Array Integration)

Summary

VSA provides an alternative shared storage solution for small-to-medium business (SMB) customers who might not be in a position to purchase a SAN or NAS array for their virtual infrastructure.

• Aimed at SMB market
• Simple to setup
• Resilient, has High Availability features
• Uses NFS protocol
• VSA pooled storage only presented to Hypervisor

EMC ISM Certification

After attaining my VMware VCP 4, I was pondering which qualification I should look to attain, and I decided to study the EMC ISM certification.

I have had the privilege of working with enterprise level EMC Storage for over 4 years, including Clariion, Centera, Celerra, Rainfinity, Source One, Data Domain, and Networker.

Having worked with all the EMC technologies, I thought I should attain the qualification, just to make it official

Below are the resources that will be needed to attain the qualification:-

Hands on experience using EMC storage systems

EMC ISM Book https://education.emc.com/ISMbook/default.aspx

Book the exam https://education.emc.com/guest/certification/exams.aspx

Wish me luck, and anyone who has achieved the qualification let me know of your road to success