Install & Run the EMC

VNX Virtual Storage

Appliance (VSA)

Simon Seagrave Kiwi_Si

EMC vSpecialist Technical simon.seagrave@emc.com
Enablement Team & Blogger

© Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 1

 Goal of this session
In this session I want to show and demonstrate to you the following:

• Overview: Gain a high-level overview of the EMC VNX including

the core components that make up the overall solution
• Simplicity: In this session I want to show you how Simple and
Quick it is to have your very own fully functioning EMC Virtual
Storage Appliance (VSA) up and running in your own VMware
vSphere lab environment.
• Cost Effective: Running a fully featured VSA in your lab doesn’t
have to be expensive, with the EMC VNX VSA being a fully
functional and FREE way to become familiar with the VNX VSA
including the easy to use management interface, Unisphere.
• How To: Learn how to install, configure, and run the VNX VSA in
your vSphere lab environment.
• Other Cool Things: We will also look at how easy it is to integrate
the EMC VNX VSI plug-in (also free) into the VMware vCenter
Server which provides a more detailed views into the VNX VSA.

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 The Small Print

• The VNX Virtual Storage appliance is not for

production use and as such is not supported by
EMC.
• Not Restricted
• Some Emulation

Though great for a vSphere lab!

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 What is a Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)?
Traditional Physical Traditional Virtual

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 What is a Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)?

EMC VNX
VSA

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 EMC VSA – Shared vSphere Lab Storage

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 EMC VSA – Play with VMware Coolness!

• vMotion
• High Availability (HA)
• Fault Tolerance (FT)
• Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

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 Why would you want to run the EMC
VNX VSA in your lab?
Common Reasons…
• Product assessment
• Career development
• Certification & Education
• Cheap fully featured shared
storage
• Local disk only available
• Easy first steps into
virtualisation when paired with
VMware ESX/ESXi

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 The EMC VNX VSA shouldn’t be confused
with VMware’s new VSA offering …

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 But first some VNX basics …

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Simple. Efficient. Powerful.
Built for the most demanding virtual environments

#1 SAN Platform Fastest-Growing in NAS

3X
faster
Raising
the 3X
bar in
more
unified
efficient
storage
3X
easier

CLARiiON Celerra

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 What is a EMC VNX Storage Appliance?

It’s about having choices….

AND/OR

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 EMC VNX – For businesses of all sizes

EMC
Unisphere

VNXe3100 VNXe3300 VNX5100 VNX5300 VNX5500 VNX5700 VNX7500

Affordable. Simple. Efficient. Powerful.

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VNX Series Models
Simple. Efficient. Powerful.

VNX5100 VNX5300 VNX5500 VNX5700 VNX7500

Form factor 4U 4U–7U 4U–7U 5U–8U 5U–8U
Number of drives 75 125 250 500 1,000
Drive types 3.5” Flash, SAS, and NL-SAS and 2.5” SAS
I/O slots per X-
n/a 3 4 4 5
Blade
X-Blades n/a 1 or 2 1, 2, or 3 2, 3, or 4 2–8
File system
modules 6 GB/blade 12 GB/blade 12 GB/blade 24 GB/blade
Memory n/a
12 GB 36 GB 48 GB 192 GB
Protocols n/a NFS, CIFS, MPFS, pNFS
Storage Processors 2

Storage I/O ports per SP 4 Fibre Channel ports, 2 back-end SAS ports n/a n/a
Pool I/O slots per SP n/a 2 2 5 5
modules Memory 8 GB 16 GB 24 GB 36 GB 48 GB
Protocols Fibre Channel Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet, iSCSI

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VNX: Modular Unified and Gateway

Gateway GATEWAY
File
Object

Fibre
Channel SAN

Servers Symmetrix VNX series CLARiiON

• Leverage existing storage investment

• Scale performance and capacity
• Shared storage
• Add to existing block implementation
– File: NFS (including pNFS), CIFS, MPFS
– Object: REST, SOAP

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 Software. Simple. Powerful.

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VNX Storage Processor
Dedicated processing for block services
Administrator • Block services
Unisphere – Flexible RAID options (10,3,5,6) provide optimal
performance AND protection
– RAID Groups and Virtual Pools

Private • Administration/management
Network – Through storage processor Ethernet ports
– Aggregated to single file/block view in Unisphere

Storage Processors
• Single point of management/control
• High availability Active/Active controller
FC/iSCSI failover option
SAN
• Connects to Hosts via FC, FCoE, iSCSI for
VNX flexibility of connection
• Connects to storage via 4 lane 6Gbit SAS for
up to 24Gb/SAS bus (6x prior generation)

HARDWARE

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VNX X-Blades
Run the world’s most mature NAS operating system
• Up to eight independent file servers contained in
a single system
– Scale by adding enclosures: 2 X-Blades per X-Blade
enclosure
Network
• Managed as one, high-performance, high-
X-Blade availability server
X-Blade
X-Blade • Connects data to the network
X-Blade Enclosure
X-Blade
• VNX operating environment for file
– No performance impact after failover
Control Station – Concurrent Network File System (NFS), Common Internet
File System (CIFS), File Transfer Protocol file access,
Control Station
MPFS/pNFS

• Hot-pluggable
VNX series
• Flexible N-to-M failover options
VNX, Symmetrix • Continues to operate even if control station fails
or CLARiiON
• No internal disks in the Gateway

HARDWARE

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VNX Control Station
Secure management and control for VNX for file
• Installation
• Administration/management
– Through X-Blade and Storage Processor Ethernet
Administrator ports

Unisphere • Configuration changes

• Monitoring and diagnostics
– Heartbeat pulse of X-Blade
Private
Network • Monitors and manages X-Blade failover
Control Station
Control Station • Enterprise Linux-based (RHEL 5)
Control Station • Initiates communications with X-Blades for
VNX series greater security
• Single point of management/control
• Failover redundancy option

HARDWARE

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VNX System Architecture
Object:
Application servers Exchange servers Clients Virtual servers Oracle servers Atmos VE

SAN LAN

VNX Unified Storage

10Gb 10Gb
FC iS FCo
Enet
FC iS FCo Enet
E E

VNX X-Blade Failover VNX X-Blade

VNX
VNX
VNX X-Blade
X-Blade
X-Blade VNX
VNX
VNX X-Blade
X-Blade
X-Blade VNX OE FILE

VNX SP Failover VNX SP VNX OE BLOCK

Power Supply
Power Supply

SPS SPS
LCC LCC

Flash drives
Near-Line SAS drives SAS drives

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 EMC VNX Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)
The VNX UBER VSA v1:
• Free to download & use
• ESX/ESXi & Workstation VSA formats – also runs under Fusion
• Uses the same code as run in the EMC VNX storage appliances
• Fully featured eg: dedupe, replication
• Already optimized for performance
• New look Unisphere management console
• 64 bit
• One data mover only with v1
• Compatible with VSI plugin for VMware vCenter
• Simple to install & configure
• Not intended for production use

IDEAL FOR A LAB ENVIRONMENT!

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 Will there be the VNX VSA work with
VMware vSphere 5.0?

YOU BETCHA!

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 Will there be an iSCSI EMC VNX VSA?

POSSIBLY
/MAYBE

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 Run Your Own EMC VNX UBER VSA

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 Download the EMC UBER VNX (NFS/CIFS)
VSA from:

http://nickapedia.com

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 Whoops!

Temporary Download Link:

http://www.techhead.co.uk/cool-links

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 Demonstration
- Deploying the VSA OVA

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 Unisphere Management Interface
The newly released storage management interface Unisphere is included for
free in both the UBER Celerra VSA and the UBER VNX (v1). It is based on
Adobe Flex – light weight and good for performance

Quick glance
status view

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 Check Out The Hardware (Emulated)

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 Demonstration
- Quick Unisphere Tour &
Configuring the VNX VSA
for vSphere 5 NFS
Connectivity

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 VMware vCenter Server – EMC Unified
Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) Plugin

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 What can I do with the Unified VSI
plugin?
• Provision new NFS, VMFS and RDM storage
• Extend existing NFS and VMFS storage
• Compress VMs in an NFS datastore
• Clone VMs in NFS datastore
• Fast Clone support – limited to the same
file system
• Full Clones support – limited to file systems
on same data mover
• Integrate with VMware View

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 Other VSI plugins for vSphere (also free)

Covering EMC storage products including

Symmetrix, VPLEX, VNX, CLARiiON & Celerra
• VSI Storage Viewer
• VSI Storage Pool Management
• VSI Symmetrix SRA Utilities
• VSI Path Management – Powerpath VE

Visit EMC Powerlink for more information &

downloads

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 Where can I get the EMC VSI plugins for
VMware vCenter?

Free to download at: http://powerlink.emc.com

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 Demonstration
- Installing, Configuring &
Using the EMC Unified
VSI plugin for VMware
vCenter
(9.30 Minutes)

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 EMC VSA – Other cool things to try

Replication

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 EMC VSA – Another cool thing to try

Single White Box vSphere Lab

• VMware vSphere 5.0

• EMC VNX VSA – Shared storage
• Virtualized ESXi hosts
• Nested VMs – now x64 OS !

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 Plenty of great EMC VSI vCenter Plugin
Information Available

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 Q&A

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 Visit us at VMworld 2011!

• VMworld Labs – EMC Action Packed Lab!

• EMC Diamond Booth - 1101
• EMC Integrated Demo Booth - 1001

Get Early Bird registration … anytime with EMC's exclusive link

www.vmworld.com/registration.jspa?sponsorCode=EMC

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 THANK YOU!

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com

http://www.techhead.co.uk

http://nickapedia.com

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