Many people may ask why BRS, and hopefully over the coming months I will show you why. I am joining as a Principal Corporate Systems Engineer. I will be entirely focused on Virtualization integration. So what that means is taking things like a VMAX, and loading it full of VM’s (thousands) and figuring out the best way to protect that. This will allow me to learn even more VMware products and how we protect them. This also means my pre-sales role will change into a more technical role, but I will still be posting blogs, attending trade shows, and of course tweeting about the new things I am working on.  So you will still see me around. In the mean time, all of my efforts are focused on EMC World vLabs and making a smooth transition. Thanks again to my great teammates and for all of their support over my 2+ years at EMC. I look forward to many more!

The first thing you will need is a base linux image. I use CentOS, and in this case I used version 5.7 x86. You can use x86 or x86_64. If you are going to install SPA then you will want at least 120GB of space for possible growth of the logs. If its just SMC, then you can do 20GB or so. The safest way to install CentOS would just to use the default, when I build mine I uncheck X, as I want mine as lightweight as possible. I also include development librariers and Legacy Libraries such as glibc.

Once you have your linux VM built, you will need to assign some gatekeepers as RDM’s. The general rule of thumb is 6-8 GK’s. So go ahead and present those GK’s and then reboot the Linux VM. Once that is finished you will need to go to powerlink and download the Solutions Enabler package for linux, and the SMAS package.

Solutions Enabler is located here

Home > Support > Software Downloads and Licensing > Downloads S > Solutions Enabler

the current version is 7.3.1 and for linux you will want this package

se7310-Linux-i386-ni.tar.gz

Kit for Linux x86 and x64 hosts.
MD5 Checkum = 9809ac14ed8bfcc19789d7d5671d6015

Once you have the tar file, SCP it over using a tool like WinSCP or Cyberduck.

Once it is over on your VM, you will want to decompress it.

[root@smc ~]# tar xzvf se7310-Linux-i386-ni.tar.gz

Once it is decompressed, lets go ahead and kick of the install, I am including all of the options and output I used.

[root@smc ~]# ./se7310_install.sh -install

 #----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 #                            EMC Installation Manager
 #----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Copyright 2010, EMC Corporation
 All rights reserved.

 The terms of your use of this software are governed by the
 applicable contract.

 Do you want to import public key for verifying Digital Signatures? [Y]:

 Solutions Enabler Native Installer [RT] Kit Location : /i386

 Install root directory [/opt/emc] :
 Working root directory [/usr/emc] : 

 Checking for OS version compatibility......
 Checking for previous installation of Solutions Enabler......

 Following daemons can be set to run as a non-root user:
 storsrvd, storevntd, storgnsd, storwatchd
 Do you want to run these daemons as a non-root user? [N]:

 Checking for active processes.....

 Checking for active SYMCLI components...

 Checking for LIBGCC version compatibility......

 Install All EMC Solutions Enabler Shared Libraries and Run Time Environment ? [Y]:
 Install Symmetrix Command Line Interface SYMCLI ? [Y]:
 Install Option to Enable JNI Interface for EMC Solutions Enabler APIs ? [N]:
 Install EMC Solutions Enabler SRM Components ? [N]:
 Install EMC Solutions Enabler SYMRECOVER Components ? [Y]:

 Do you want to change default permission on /var/symapi directory from [755]? [N]:

 Installing symcli-data-V7.3.1-0.i386.rpm.....

 Installing symcli-thincore-V7.3.1-0.i386.rpm.....

 Installing symcli-base-V7.3.1-0.i386.rpm.....

 Installing symcli-symcli-V7.3.1-0.i386.rpm.....

 Installing symcli-symrecover-V7.3.1-0.i386.rpm.....

 Enabling stordaemon...

 Do not forget to run 'symcfg discover' after the installation
 completes and  whenever your configuration changes.

 You may need to manually rediscover remotely connected
 arrays. Please see the installation notes for further
 information.

 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # The following HAS BEEN INSTALLED in /opt/emc via the rpm utility.
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  ITEM  PRODUCTVERSION
  01    EMC Solutions EnablerV7.3.1.0
        RT KIT
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now you have successfully installed Solutions Enabler, now you can test it by doing a few things.

First thing is run the symcfg discover command to tell Solutions Enabler to find the GK’s you presented as RDM’s.

After that runs, you will do a sympd list. This will show you the GK devices and its details. If for some reason you don’t get a list, then the OS does not see the GK’s and you need to troubleshoot that first. Without a GK present, then SMC will not be able to communicate with the VMAX.

[root@smc bin]# /opt/emc/SYMCLI/bin/symcfg discover

This operation may take up to a few minutes. Please be patient...
[root@smc bin]# ./sympd list

Symmetrix ID: 000194900728

        Device Name           Directors                  Device
--------------------------- ------------- -------------------------------------
                                                                           Cap
Physical               Sym  SA   DA :IT  Config        Attribute    Sts   (MB)
--------------------------- ------------- -------------------------------------

/dev/sdb               003D 08E:0 07B:D0  2-Way Mir     N/Grp'd RW 3 /dev/sdc 0061 08E:0 07D:C5 2-Way Mir N/Grp'd      RW       3
/dev/sdd               0062 08E:0 08C:C5  2-Way Mir     N/Grp'd      RW       3

So now, we have verified that we can see our GK devices, and we are ready to install SMAS.

Download the latest version of SMAS here

Home > Support > Software Downloads and Licensing > Downloads S > Symmetrix Management Solution

Now there is a specific version for 32 or 64-bit. So make sure you get the one that is appropriate for you.

Now transfer this file over to your VM.

Now we are ready to install SMAS, I am going to save you time by not making you read the install guide, and give you a command you need to run so that the MySQL installation will work. Without doing this SPA will NOT work correctly.

[root@smc ~]# groupadd mysql
[root@smc ~]# useradd -m -g mysql -p mysql mysql

This creates the correct mysql user and group that SMAS needs to operate correctly.

Now we need to make the installer we downloaded executable. So perform the following command.

[root@smc ~]# chmod +x SMAS_V7.3.1.4_LINUX_X86_32.bin

Now we can go ahead and run the installer, I am going to paste all of the output here

[root@smc ~]# ./SMAS_V7.3.1.4_LINUX_X86_32.bin
Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment... Launching installer... =============================================================================== EMC SMAS (created with InstallAnywhere) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Preparing CONSOLE Mode Installation... Custom code execution Started... Custom code execution Completed... Custom code execution Started... Custom code execution Completed... Custom code execution Started... Custom code execution Completed... =============================================================================== Introduction ------------ InstallAnywhere will guide you through the installation of EMC SMAS V7.3.1.4. It is strongly recommended that you quit all programs before continuing with this installation. Respond to each prompt to proceed to the next step in the installation. If you want to change something on a previous step, type 'back'. You may cancel this installation at any time by typing 'quit'. PRESS <ENTER> TO CONTINUE: =============================================================================== Choose Install Folder --------------------- Where would you like to install? Default Install Folder: /opt/emc ENTER AN ABSOLUTE PATH, OR PRESS <ENTER> TO ACCEPT THE DEFAULT : Custom code execution Started... Custom code execution Completed... =============================================================================== Choose Install Set ------------------ Please choose the Install Set to be installed by this installer. ->1- SMC 2- SPA ENTER THE NUMBER FOR THE INSTALL SET, OR PRESS <ENTER> TO ACCEPT THE DEFAULT : 2 =============================================================================== SPA Install - MySQL User and Group ---------------------------------- Create the 'mysql' group and 'mysql' user before continuing.

PRESS <ENTER> TO ACCEPT THE FOLLOWING (OK): 

===============================================================================
Symapi Connection Type
----------------------

Enter your Initial Setup User and select a Symapi Connection
Type. If you select Remote connection, enter the Node Name
and Net Port.

Enter Initial Setup User (DEFAULT: smc):
  ->1- Local
    2- Remote

Symapi Connection Type(Default:Local): 

===============================================================================
Ports Configuration
-------------------

Please select port(s) type and enter the port number to connect
to Symmetrix Management Application Server

Note: Use the specified port(s) in your browser to launch
Symmetrix Management Application Server software features.

Enter HTTPS Port Number  (DEFAULT: 8443): 

  ->1- Yes
    2- No

Do you want to configure HTTP Port?(DEFAULT:1):
Enter HTTP Port Number  (DEFAULT: 7070):
Enter DB Port Number  (DEFAULT: 3324): 

===============================================================================
Pre-Installation Summary
------------------------

Please Review the Following Before Continuing:
    Install Folder:
       /opt/emc

    Install Features:
       SPA,SMC

       HTTPS:8443
       HTTP:7070
       DB Port:3324

    Symapi Connection:
       SMC Username:smc
       Connection Type:Local

    Disk Space:
       Required Disk Space:81920.0MB
       Available Disk Space:133817.4MB

NOTE: The system must meet or exceed the disk space requirements. If you do not have enough disk space, the install may succeed, but the application may not function properly and you may lose application data.

Press Enter to continue: 

===============================================================================
Installing...
-------------

 [==================|==================|==================|==================]
 [------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------]

===============================================================================
Installation Complete
---------------------

Congratulations. EMC SMAS has been successfully installed to:

   /opt/emc

PRESS <ENTER> TO EXIT THE INSTALLER:
Custom code execution Started...
Custom code execution Completed...

That completes the SMAS install, give it a few minutes to start as it does a lot of initialization for the MySQL database. One of the things we can do in the meantime is make sure that SMAS starts up whenever the VM boots. So we execute the following command.

[root@smc bin]#  chkconfig --level 345 smas on

This tells the OS to launch SMAS for us at boot-time.

Now you can launch your web browser and go to the following URL

Https://<SMC IP ADDRESS>:8443

Then login using the defualt account we created

Login: smc
Password: smc

Now you have a working SMC install!

Now we can also launch SPA

https://<SMC IP ADDRESS>:8443/spa

There you have it! you now have a SMAS linux appliance.

Onne thing to note, we do have pre-built vApp’s in OVF format for both Solutions Enabler and SMC/SPA, they are in the same sections on the Powerlink website, with instructions on how to use/deploy them.

here is a screenshot of where the vApp files are for SMAS.

And where the vApp is for Solutions Enabler.

Reaction internally to the VSA has been amazing! It has gotten exposure at very high levels within EMC. I am happy to say that it looks like we will be getting even more development help and hopefully something that we can actually release to the public at some point. Now before you ask when, it will be a while, these things take time, and there are a lot of things that need to get cleaned up and optimized before the general public can use it. But its very good news, and all the attention it has gotten from everyone at the show on online has been a tremendous help. Thank you for expressing interest, and hopefully I will have something to give you soon!

As the title suggests there is indeed a Symmetrix VMAX VSA. I have been working on this project since shortly after EMC World. As I look back through my emails, I received the code on 6/3/11 and I have been working on it in almost all of my free time since then.

Now finally it will make its public debut this week at VMworld 2011 as part of the EMC Interactive Demo booth on the show floor. As part of its grand unveiling I thought I would tell you a little about what makes it work.

Now to make a few things clear up front, this is a science project, I cannot distribute it, it does “work”. As part of the lab (I will publish the guide) the student actually provisions an iSCSI disk from the VSA to a ESXi 5.0 host.

One of the first things I noticed with the code when trying to virtualize it.  It’s HUGE. There are 2 parts to the VSA.

1. The Service Processor (SP). In a physical VMAX this is the 1U server that is racked in the system bay. It has a special image of Windows XP and contains all of the proprietary software used to manage a VMAX. If you own a VMAX this is what you will see EMC field service personnel using when they come to work on your system. This is NOT accessible by a end-user as it requires special RSA credentials that change weekly. (one reason we can’t distribute it). Its specs are 2vCPU and 2GB of RAM and about 10GB of disk space.

2. Enginuity. This is the Operating Environment of the Symmetrix. For the purposes of this VSA it runs in a SuSE Enterprise Linux 11VM. One of the big deals with the VMAX was that Enginuity was ported from a PowerPC CPU to a Intel x86 based architecture. Without this change this VSA would never exist. Now this VM is big, so big as a matter of fact i had to use a RC build of vSphere 5 in order to even get it to work. I was finally able to scale it down a bit, but at one point it was using 32 vCPU’s 92GB of RAM and about 250GB of disk space.

Obviously one of the challenges for using this in a lab is that I needed it to use fewer resources. In the beginning this VMAX was a Single Engine model, which means it had 16 “slices” running. Each director has 4 DA (backend) directors, and 4 FA (front end) directors. I quickly found this was the biggest reason i needed so much memory and CPU. After working with one developer Chakib, who totally rocks by the way.  We were able to scale this down to 1 FA and 1 DA per director. One interesting side note, when I was going down this path I asked Chakib what kind of VM he was using to test this.  His reply was, “I am not using this in a VM, I have a physical Linux box with 200GB of RAM”. So I clearly had some work to do. But in its current state it uses 8 vCPU and “ONLY” 48GB of RAM. Which is still pretty darn big, but a lot better than it was when we started.

The networking requirements are pretty simple, the SP needs 1 Public NIC so that we can use its management tools. 2 Internal NICs which is used for internal communication to the directors. In our case that’s the Linux VM. The Linux VM needed the 2 internal NICs and 1 NIC to present an iSCSI target to. Then we put out ESXi host’s VMkernel NIC on the same vSwitch so it can use the iSCSI target provided by the VSA.

So that’s all great you say, but what actually works? That’s a good question.

What works is using Standard Devices, and very small ones today. One of the things I was told when I was given the code was that this WON’T and CAN’T do any I/O. Which obviously proved to be a bit of an issue. Chakib really worked his butt of to get me something that does I/O. So this is not like the Celerra UBER VSA by @lynxbat, where you can run a VM off of it. We hope we can do that one day. Thin Pools work to the extent you can create them, and put devices in a pool, but when you present it to a host it will not work. This kept me from using the VSI SPM plugin for vSphere as part of my lab, hey we always have next year! The really neat part to me is that the internal tools (SymmWin) that run on the SP fully work. It’s like having an actually VMAX, but without all the fuss of getting a few 50A power drops. As an ex-customer this to me is the coolest part, I got to put on my own BIN files, use Inlines (internal tool used to directly talk to the hardware). As a total nerd this thing is a dream come true.

So what’s next?

Well a lot of that depends on YOU! Since this is a total science project we need to show those in Symmetrix Engineering this is worth putting their time and money into. I need everyone here at VMworld this week to come try this thing, give me feedback, leave comments here, and if you aren’t at the show, express your desire for us to continue working on it. If no one is interested this will ultimately die on the vine. Please fill out this form so we can show how many of you all would like to see this project continue.

I have to give special thanks to Chad Sakac (@sakacc), Chris Horn (@horn_Chris) for getting me involved in this project and letting me run with it. Also all of the support they gave me during this process.

Here is a link to the lab guide being used this week at VMworld. Take a look and let me know what you think!

VMAX Lab Guide

Big thanks to Matt Cowger (@mcowger), Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe), and Tee Glasgow (@teeglasgow) for their help with the lab guide. Also to Rick Scherer (@rick_vmwaretips) for the blog help

vmware_vmax_webcast_BP

vmware_vmax_bp

This blog post is not meant as an authoritative article. This is more just a cursory description of what a VMAX is and how it functions, what its basic building blocks are and how its fits in a virtualized world. This will be a multipart series.

With Part 1 we will take a brief look at the history and evolution of Symmetrix, we will then delve deeper into the current hardware for the VMAX, and later into the basic constructs of the system, and how it integrates with VMware.

So lets get started……..

The following picture shows us the hardware of Symmetrix and how it has evolved.

Starting with the first generation, the Symmetrix 4400 you will see at the heart of the Symmetrix is cache. Every single IO, read and write goes through cache. It is what makes a symm a symm. As we look down the line of the family, you will find major leaps in performance/capacity, and scalability which is common among all hardware. But what we find here is a platform that has evolved from a Mainframe only system, and beginning with the 3000/5000 series, a system that worked with Open Systems as well. Something else to note is with the introduction of the DMX-3 the cabinet was no longer 1 fixed unit, but rather a modular system able to add capacity, something the older symm’s could not do. Also as a former customer, moving from the large cabinet was a relief when installing or removing the unit, as I once had a DMX2000 fall through a floor!

The next part we will look at is the Software evolution. In the following picture you will see what major features were added and when.

The red text signifies the generation of the system, notice they don’t really correspond to the model numbers we saw before. But something you will notice is when we talk about software releases in another part it does correspond to the generation. For instance we will hear Chad Sakac, Barry Burke, Storagezilla and other EMC’ers refer to 5875. the 8 in that represents the generation, in this case the 8th generation or the VMAX. Later we will dive deeper into the meanings of the code numbers. The blue text under the red tells us what model numbers were part of that particular generation.

As you can see Moore’s Law clearly applies here, as every new generation introduced more cache, and bigger drive densities. Which is not uncommon throughout the storage and computing industry. One thing that is unique however is all of the feature/functionality advancements and more recently the features introduced to be the perfect platform for virtualized environments such as VMware. As you will see in later posts this is why the VMAX is the storage platform of choice for the Vblock2. As it can scale far beyond any other platform, while delivering the best performance.

So that’s a pretty basic overview of the history, obviously there is a lot of details we could spend many many hours covering, but this is just to give some color as to where the platform started and how it has evolved. In the next installment we will take a look at the hardware of the current generation, the Symmetrix VMAX.

I hope this provides some background to the Symmetrix and hopefully you will be back for Part 2

I am David Robertson currently a vSpecialist with EMC based out of Dallas,TX. Now as I am sure a lot of you know that the vSpecialist’s all have a love and passion for VMware, but everyone also has other specialties that they focus on. In my case that would be storage. My experience with ESX goes back to ESX 2.5 and GSX, and the first beta’s of VMware workstation running on Linux.

I have been into Enterprise storage for about 7 years now. Dating back to the Data General Clariion FC4700. About 6 years ago I was an administrator of my first Symmetrix, a DMX2000. Since then I have had a love affair with the Symmetrix, working on models like 3700, the 8830,8840,DMX-3,DMX-4, and VMAX, but by no means does that mean I have any less love for the CX and Celerra. As I have used all of them extensively. On the vSpecialists however I happen to be one of the more experienced Symmetrix users. And in particular running a VMware environment on a Symmetrix. So the articles you will see from me well be from more of a administrators perspective than a EMC’ers perspective. Of course I work for EMC so you would expect I am a bit of a homer for the Symmetrix, but anyone that has worked with me prior to my joining EMC, will tell you how much I believe in the product. So I hope that gives you some background on me before I post more about the Symmetrix.

Also worth noting, I am by no means a professional writer, I will leave that to Scott Lowe. He is much better than I will ever be. So please forgive any run on sentences or misspellings in advance

Please feel free to give any feedback….

one last thing……

The name storageboy was coined by a former coworker, because I was about 22 years old when I started as a storage admin, and well, I looked like I was a freshman in high school.

The second week started the following Saturday, I volunteered to help setup some of my team’s demo’s for EMC World. Including Pat Gelsinger’s keynote. A huge shout out to Nick Weaver who worked his ass off on the demo, and really created the magic that made it all look so awesome.

The last 2 EMC World’s that I attended was as a customer, with this being my first time attending as a Employee I now see how much work really goes into a show of this size. The keynote went off great, but my work wasn’t done, I also helped with another setup for a demo with Chad Sakac presenting. Also in this week was a chance to meet up with a large majority of the vSpecialists (70 of us). WOW!!!! what an amazing group of talent. I feel so honored and humbled that I am fortunate enough to belong to this special fraternity. Scott Lowe and I also spent some time together, and I hope I didn’t annoy him too much Thanks again Scott for allowing me to come to dinner with your amazing family.

For really the first time in my career life, I feel I have found the perfect place for me. I no longer feel like a big fish in a small pond, but part of the school of fish in the community.

As a side note Rick Scherer has the biggest watch ever created!

The last thing is how hard it has been to be away from my children and girlfriend Melissa. I really return to Texas with a renewed sense of whats important and maintaining a work/life balance. Thanks to everyone I met at EMC World and here is to a great year! See everyone next year Las Vegas for EMC World 2011!!!!

As you can see we are getting amazing IOPS. The response time is also very low at about 2.5ms average. So each server was doing aboiut 27k-30K IOPS each. Pretty Impressive. If you were to try this with traditional 15K FC drives. At 180 IOPS per drive on average, you would need ~250 drives to achieve this level of performance.  The other thing about EFD is they dont slow down as you put more data on them like a traditional spinning disk does.  I will continue my testing tomorrow with Linux and MySQL.