EMC D-VPX-DY-A-24 - Dell VPLEX Deploy Achievement

When using VPLEX Metro, the supported round trip time (RTT) between clusters is a crucial factor for optimal performance. The RTT is the time it takes for a signal to travel from one cluster to another and back again.

RTT Importance: The RTT affects how quickly data can be synchronized between the two clusters. A lower RTT means faster synchronization, which is essential for maintaining the high availability and data consistency that VPLEX Metro is designed to provide1.

Supported RTT: The supported network round trip latency for VPLEX Metro is up to 5 ms. This is the maximum latency that allows the system to perform optimally without significant performance degradation1.

Performance Considerations: If the inter-cluster FC/IP WAN network experiences congestion, it can result in an increased RTT, which may cause performance issues. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that the network infrastructure supports the required RTT1.

Best Practices: Dell EMC recommends keeping the RTT as low as possible, ideally around 1 ms for a campus-wide network, to provide the best performance. However, VPLEX Metro can support RTTs up to 5 ms under optimal conditions1.

Monitoring and Management: It’s important to monitor the RTT regularly and manage the network to avoid congestion. Tools and techniques should be in place to measure and maintain the RTT within the supported range1.

In summary, the supported round trip time between clusters when using VPLEX Metro is 5 ms. This parameter is critical for ensuring that the VPLEX Metro operates within the designed performance specifications.

When configuring a VPLEX Metro cluster, especially for a company planning to create distributed volumes with a large amount of storage like 200 TB, it is essential to adhere to EMC best practices for the size of logging volumes.

Purpose of Logging Volumes: Logging volumes in VPLEX are used to store write logs that ensure data integrity and consistency across distributed volumes. These logs play a critical role during recovery processes1.

Size Considerations: The size of the logging volumes should be proportional to the amount of active data being written to ensure that all write operations are captured in the logs. For 200 TB of distributed storage, a minimum size of 10 GB for each logging volume is recommended to handle the logging requirements1.

Configuration: The logging volumes should be configured on each cluster to provide redundancy and high availability. This means that both clusters in a VPLEX Metro configuration should have logging volumes of at least the minimum recommended size1.

Best Practices: EMC best practices suggest that the logging volume should be sized appropriately to support the operational workload and to ensure that there is sufficient space to capture all write operations without any loss of data1.

Verification and Monitoring: After setting up the logging volumes, it is important to monitor their utilization to ensure they are functioning correctly and to adjust their size if necessary based on the actual workload1.

In summary, consistent with EMC best practices, the minimum size for logging volumes at each cluster in a VPLEX Metro cluster being installed for creating distributed volumes with 200 TB of storage should be 10 GB. This size ensures that the logging volumes can adequately support the write logging requirements for the amount of storage being used.

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After deploying the VPLEX Cluster Witness, the next step is to configure a 2-way VPN between the Witness and both VPLEX sites. This is essential for the Cluster Witness to communicate with each cluster and provide the health check heartbeats required for monitoring.

VPN Configuration: Configure the VPN to ensure secure communication between the VPLEX Cluster Witness and the management servers of both VPLEX clusters1.

Enable Cluster Witness: Once the VPN is configured, enable the VPLEX Cluster Witness on the VPLEX sites. This involves setting up the Cluster Witness to monitor the health and status of the VPLEX clusters1.

Test Connectivity: After enabling the Cluster Witness, test the connectivity between the Cluster Witness and the VPLEX clusters to ensure that the health check heartbeats are being transmitted and received correctly1.

Finalize Setup: Complete any additional setup tasks as required by the VPLEX Metro configuration, such as configuring consistency groups or completing the VPLEX Metro setup1.

Documentation Reference: For detailed instructions and best practices, refer to the Dell VPLEX Deploy Achievement documents, which provide comprehensive guidance on deploying and configuring the VPLEX Cluster Witness1.

In summary, configuring a 2-way VPN is a critical step after deploying the VPLEX Cluster Witness to ensure it can perform its monitoring role effectively within the VPLEX Metro environment.

When using the EZ Setup wizard for VPLEX, the correct interface and port to SSH into is the Management Server’s eth1 interface. This is typically the interface configured for management access and is used during the initial setup process.

Management Server Access: The Management Server is the primary interface for managing and configuring the VPLEX system. It is through this server that the EZ Setup wizard is accessed1.

eth1 Interface: The eth1 interface on the Management Server is usually dedicated to management traffic. This interface is configured with an IP address that allows SSH access for configuration purposes1.

EZ Setup Wizard: The EZ Setup wizard is a guided setup tool that simplifies the initial configuration of the VPLEX system. It prompts the user for necessary information to configure the system1.

SSH Protocol: Secure Shell (SSH) is a network protocol used to securely access network services over an unsecured network. When configuring VPLEX, SSH is used to connect to the Management Server and run the EZ Setup wizard1.

Configuration Steps: To SSH into the Management Server, the customer engineer would use an SSH client, input the IP address assigned to the eth1 interface, and connect using the appropriate credentials provided during the VPLEX installation1.

In summary, to use the EZ Setup wizard for configuring VPLEX, the customer engineer should SSH into the Management Server using the eth1 interface. This interface is set up during the initial installation and is used for management access to the system.

One of the key benefits of VPLEX continuous availability is the elimination of complex failover procedures. VPLEX provides a unique implementation of distributed cache coherency, which allows the same data to be read/write accessible across two storage systems at the same time. This ensures uptime for business-critical applications and enables seamless data mobility across host arrays without host disruption1.

Continuous Application Availability: VPLEX maximizes the returns on investments in infrastructure by providing continuous availability to workloads, ensuring that applications remain up and running even in the face of disasters1.

Operational Agility: VPLEX offers operational agility to match the infrastructure to changing business needs, allowing for rapid response to business and technology changes while maximizing asset utilization across active-active data centers1.

Seamless Workload Mobility: The seamless workload mobility feature of VPLEX creates a flexible storage architecture that makes data and workload mobility effortless, contributing to the overall operational efficiency2.

Non-Disruptive Technology Refresh: VPLEX supports non-disruptive technology refresh, enabling data center modernization efforts through online technology refresh without impacting business operations2.

Active-Active Data Centers: VPLEX Metro allows applications to simultaneously read/write on both sites, increasing resource utilization and providing a true Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of zero2.

In summary, the elimination of complex failover is a key benefit of VPLEX continuous availability, providing businesses with the assurance that their critical applications will continue to operate smoothly even during disruptions.

For a company with a VPLEX Metro installation that wants to perform data mobility between clusters, the feature they should use is device mobility. This feature allows for the seamless movement of data across storage arrays without host disruption, ensuring uptime for business-critical applications1.

Device Mobility: Device mobility is the process of moving a virtualized storage device from one storage array to another within the VPLEX Metro environment. This is done without affecting the hosts’ access to the data1.

Seamless Data Movement: The unique implementation of distributed cache coherency in VPLEX allows the same data to be read/write accessible across two storage systems simultaneously, facilitating seamless data mobility1.

Non-Disruptive: One of the key advantages of using device mobility in VPLEX Metro is that it is non-disruptive. Hosts can continue to operate without any interruption while the data is being moved between clusters1.

Use Cases: Device mobility is particularly useful in scenarios such as tech refreshes, cloud mobility, consolidation, relocation, and more, where data needs to be moved without affecting the ongoing operations1.

Procedure: To initiate device mobility, the administrator would use the VPLEX CLI to execute commands that orchestrate the movement of the virtualized storage devices between the clusters1.

In summary, device mobility is the recommended feature for a company with VPLEX Metro to perform data mobility between clusters, providing a robust and efficient way to move data without disrupting host access.

When LUNs belonging to an ESXi cluster are encapsulated behind VPLEX, the ESXi administrator needs to be provided with the Virtual Volume Page Data (VPD) of the virtual volumes. The VPD contains metadata about the virtual volumes that allows the ESXi host to properly identify and interact with them.

Encapsulation Process: During the encapsulation process, the physical LUNs are virtualized and presented as virtual volumes through VPLEX. This process involves the VPLEX claiming the LUNs and presenting them to the ESXi hosts as new devices1.

Re-discovery of Datastore and RDM LUNs: After encapsulation, the ESXi administrator must perform a rescan of the storage adapters to discover the new virtual volumes. The VPD of the virtual volumes, which includes information such as the device identifiers and characteristics, is crucial for the ESXi host to recognize and mount the datastores and RDM LUNs2.

Importance of VPD: The VPD is essential because it provides the ESXi host with the necessary information to differentiate between the virtual volumes and other storage devices. Without the VPD, the ESXi host may not be able to properly identify the encapsulated LUNs, leading to issues with datastore accessibility1.

Best Practices: It is recommended to follow the best practices and required configurations for a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using EMC VPLEX Storage array as outlined in VMware KB articles and Dell support documents. This ensures a smooth encapsulation process and proper functioning of the ESXi hosts with the VPLEX storage volumes1.

In summary, sharing the Virtual Volume VPD with the ESXi administrator is a critical step in ensuring that the ESXi cluster can successfully re-discover the datastore and the RDM LUNs after they have been encapsulated behind VPLEX.

For zoning FC WAN COM ports on a VPLEX Metro, the requirement is that each WAN COM port in the local cluster must be zoned to all WAN COM ports in the remote cluster. This setup ensures that there is a redundant network capability where each director on one cluster communicates with all the directors on the other site, even in the event of a fabric or network failure1.

Zoning Configuration: The zoning needs to be fixed such that all A2-FC00 only see (are zoned with) remote A2-FC00 ports, and similarly for A2-FC01 with A2-FC01, and so on for all WAN COM ports1.

Redundant Network: This zoning configuration provides a redundant network capability, which is essential for maintaining communication between the two VPLEX clusters in a Metro configuration1.

Fabric Separation: The FC WAN COM ports will be connected to dual separate backbone fabrics or networks that span two sites, allowing for data flow between the two VPLEX clusters without requiring a merged fabric between the two sites1.

Best Practices: For configuring FC WAN COM ports, it is recommended to refer to the “Implementation and Planning Best Practices for EMC VPLEX Technical Notes” provided by Dell1.

In summary, the requirement for zoning FC WAN COM ports on a VPLEX Metro is to ensure that each WAN COM port in the local cluster is zoned to all WAN COM ports in the remote cluster, providing a robust and fault-tolerant communication network.