EMC VPLEX Uptime Bulletin

A newsletter from VPLEX Engineering

Volume 6 — March 2012

Welcome to the Q1 2012 edition of the EMC® VPLEX™ Uptime Bulletin. We are excited by the positive
responses that we’ve received from customers when asked for their opinions about VPLEX. EMC’s
Inside this issue:
focus to continue to grow the product and add the features and functionality you need is what
drives us every day. Target Software Level 1
This issue of the EMC VPLEX Uptime Bulletin has valuable information about a recently released
Cisco Validated Design paper that discusses high availability with VPLEX, Cisco, and VMware. We New Metadata 2
also delve into a great new way for the entire VPLEX community to share information and discuss Volume Requirement
what is important to them when using VPLEX. As usual, there is plenty of important technical infor-
mation throughout. VPLEX EMC 2
Community Network
VPLEX GeoSynchrony™ 5.0.1 Patch 1 was recently made target code for VPLEX. This most current
version of code is quickly being adopted by our customers, and we’ve received great feedback Cisco Validated 3
about the stability and features offered in this newest version. We recommend that all customers Design
upgrade to ensure maximum availability in their VPLEX environment.
Single Host Cross- 3
As always, VPLEX Engineering welcomes your comments about the Uptime Bulletin and what you’d Connect
like to see in future editions. Please email your suggestions to UptimeForVPLEX@emc.com.
EMC VPLEX Hot 4
Also, remember that last year’s EMC VPLEX Uptime Bulletins are always available individually and a
Topics
consolidated edition, containing all past issues, is also available on Powerlink® at this path: Prod-
ucts > Hardware/Platforms > VPLEX Family > Uptime Bulletins.

- VPLEX Engineering

The EMC VPLEX Uptime Bulletin Is Available for Download on Powerlink

Powerlink > Products > Hardware/Platforms > VPLEX Family > Uptime Bulletins
Be sure to click on the “Alert Me!” icon next to the “Consolidated Edition” link.
This will ensure you are instantly notified of newer editions as they are released!

Target Software Level

Remaining current on the target version of EMC GeoSynchrony software is an EMC best practice to
maintain stable and reliable environments. GeoSynchrony 5.0.1 Patch 1 for VPLEX is the current
target release of software and contains fixes that are critical to the continued stability of the VPLEX
system. In addition, GeoSynchrony 5.0.1 Patch 1 includes the new GeoSynchrony 5.0 features out-
lined in the Q2 2011 edition of the EMC VPLEX Uptime Bulletin.

Software Release Date % of Systems

GeoSynchrony 5.0.1 Patch 1 December 9, 2011 More than 20%

Upgrading to target GeoSynchrony software at least twice a year is an EMC best practice.
Contact us:
Please contact your local EMC Customer Service Representative for information and requirements UptimeFor
for upgrading to the highest quality and feature-rich version of GeoSynchrony.
VPLEX@emc.com
 Page 2 Uptime Bulletin: EMC VPLEX Edition

New Metadata Volume Requirement

When implementing VPLEX for the first time, administrators must now assign previously unused
LUNs for use as metadata and logging volumes. It is critical to ensure there is no preexisting data
on the volume before they are assigned to VPLEX and used as either metadata or logging volumes.
There are several ways to accomplish this task:
 Verify that any LUNs to be used as metadata volumes have not been previously used and con-
tain only zeros.
 Utilize the back-end storage’s low-level formatting capabilities. In some cases this may require
contacting Customer Service to perform this task.
 Assign the LUN to a UNIX host and write all zeros to the entire block range of the LUN.

- Be sure to write to the entire device; do not limit writing to only the disk header area.
- One example of how to accomplish this task would be to use the dd command:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<device name> conv=notrunc
This new requirement applies to all new installs with GeoSynchrony 5.0.1 Patch 1 (5.0.1.01.00.05)
and earlier. Please contact your local EMC Technical Services Representative for more information.

Additional Qualifications Coming Soon to the VPLEX Support Matrix

 Hyper-V Cross Connect  RHCS GFS Stretch Cluster

 1600 Initiators per Cluster

VPLEX on the EMC Community Network

EMC is launching a new community on ECN to collaborate with EMC customers on VPLEX. The new
Join the VPLEX VPLEX community will drive engagement and active conversations between and among:

conversation on the  EMC subject matter experts (SMEs) and VPLEX users
EMC Community  Individual VPLEX users and the community of VPLEX users
Network!  Potential VPLEX customers, existing customers, and SMEs

The community will increase the overall awareness of the VPLEX offerings among the EMC customer
Talk directly to base. Additionally, EMC customers will have direct access to VPLEX SMEs from Engineering, Product
engineers, field Management, and Corporate Systems Engineers.
personnel, and The VPLEX community will serve as a central public online meeting place for VPLEX solution plays,
customers about demos, white boards, tech tips, blogs, surveys, and discussions.
VPLEX! Access to the VPLEX Community
If you are an ECN member, you access the community through the following link:
https://community.emc.com/community/connect/vplex. Once you access the community, we en-
courage everyone to participate in the community by:
 Tagging “VPLEX” on your ECN profile

 Adding your photo to your ECN profile

 Starting a discussion, asking a question, or answering a question

Contact us:
If you are not a registered ECN member, you can register at the following link: https://developer-
UptimeFor content.emc.com/login/register.asp.
VPLEX@emc.com
Uptime Bulletin: EMC VPLEX Edition Page 3

Cisco Validated Design

Cisco recently published a paper titled, “Mobility and Disaster Recovery Solution for Virtualized
Tier-1 Enterprise Applications.” This paper describes a validated modular solution that combines
the technologies of Cisco, VMware, and EMC to provide for business continuity in the case of a site-
level disaster, as well as changing IT infrastructure requirements across two data centers. The pa-
per is broken down into two types of solutions: live mobility and automated disaster recovery,
which use much of the same building blocks. A few of the important points contained in this docu-
ment are: Tier-1 Mobility and
 Both solutions can coexist in the same environment, or be implemented on their own Disaster Recovery
 Cisco validated both solutions using the same physical environment Using VPLEX,
 Validation of the design was done using Tier-1 applications virtualized in VMware with work-
VMware, and Cisco
load generators (Oracle 11g and Microsoft SharePoint with Microsoft SQL Server 2008)
 Workload generation was done from a third branch site with client systems running load gen-
eration (Swingbench and Microsoft Visual Studio)
 Unlike other papers describing similar solutions, this one details the network infrastructure
configuration (particularly Cisco Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) and Locator/ID Separa-
tion Protocol (LISP).
Key technology enablers are:
 EMC VPLEX Metro (for Live Mobility)
 EMC RecoverPoint (for Automated DR)
 VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) (for Automated DR)
 VMware vMotion (for Live Mobility)
 Cisco OTV provided "Seamless mobility...eliminating the need to re-IP the application VMs
after vMotion ..."
 Cisco LISP provided "Network route optimization for the client-server traffic after vMotion..."
and after SRM failover between data centers.
This paper does an excellent job of illustrating details of the infrastructure that aren’t typically de-
tailed in similar papers. The paper provides specifics of client/server network infrastructure—
details that customers worry about—and provides mention of VPLEX and RecoverPoint as proven
infrastructure basics used to merely highlight the Cisco technology.

Single Host Cross-Connect

Although VPLEX has supported limited cluster cross-connect, or connecting all nodes of a host clus-
ter to both sides of a VPLEX Metro for improved availability, there has not previously been any sup-
port for single host cross-connect. We are pleased to announce the availability of this improved
configuration for single hosts. We find that it adds benefits as long as the configuration falls within Cluster cross-connect
the VPLEX Support Matrix and that best practices are followed.
comes to supported
It is required that the consistency group attribute auto-resume-at-loser be set to true in order for
stand-alone hosts!
VPLEX to behave properly in the event of a failure. Use the following steps to ensure the consistency
group is set correctly:
1. Log in to the VPLEXCLI
2. cd /clusters/<cluster name>/consistency-groups/<CG name>/advanced
3. Run ls, verify auto-resume-at-loser is true
4. If not, run set auto-resume-at-loser true
If left to the default of false, this could cause the host to hang if one of the clusters failed and came Contact us:
back online with the consistency group in a suspended state. This attribute is set to false for hosts
UptimeFor
that are only connected to that cluster as a precaution to allow the administrator to restart the ap-
plication on that host so write pendings won't cause an inconsistency in the data. VPLEX@emc.com
 Page 4 Uptime Bulletin: EMC VPLEX Edition

EMC VPLEX Hot Topics

VPLEX Back-End Paths
In order to ensure maximum performance and high availability to back-end storage devices, admin-
istrators may believe that more is always better. With VPLEX, that is not the case. It is important to
understand that the VPLEX architecture is optimized for only four back-end paths per Storage Vol-
ume per director.
This limit applies only per director. It is possible, and recommended, to configure additional paths
to multiple directors to ensure there is no single point of failure in the VPLEX environment. For more
information, please refer to the Implementation and Best Practices Guide for EMC VPLEX Technical
Notes, available on Powerlink.
Note: The VPLEX GeoSynchrony 5.0.1 Release Notes had incorrectly stated different information. Do
not allocate more than four paths per Storage Volume per director on 5.0.1 or any version of Geo-
Synchrony.

VPLEX Engineering is busy finalizing the content that will be presented at EMC World 2012. EMC
World is an opportunity for customers to see and sample the latest technology and features under
development. This year’s EMC World will bring another exciting announcement for VPLEX, along
with the usual complement of VPLEX labs and VPLEX sessions. Some of the sessions currently in the
planning stages include:
 Best Practices for Deployment in VMware and Microsoft Environments

 Reducing Complexity and Improving Availability with Oracle Stretched RAC over Distance

 Performance and Configuration Best Practices Made Easy

 Building Mission-Critical ESX Environments

 Multiple VPLEX Labs

VPLEX Uptime Bulletin Powerlink > Hardware/Platforms > VPLEX Family > Uptime Bulletins

VPLEX Simple Support

E-Lab Navigator > Simple Support Matrix > EMC VPLEX and GeoSynchrony
Matrix

VPLEX Procedure Powerlink > Support > Product and Diagnostic Tools > Procedure Generators
Generator > VPLEX Procedure Generator

EMC Corporation
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Phone: 508-435-1000
Email: UptimeForVPLEX@emc.com
EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information
is subject to change without notice.
THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” EMC CORPORATION MAKES NO REPRE-
SENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION,
AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICU-
LAR PURPOSE.
Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applica-
ble software license.
EMC2, EMC, GeoSynchrony, Powerlink, VPLEX, and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trade-
marks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein
are the property of their respective owners. Copyright © 2012 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.
Published in the USA. 03/12