Install & Run the EMC

VNX Virtual Storage

Appliance (VSA)
Simon Seagrave
EMC vSpecialist Technical
Enablement Team & Blogger

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

Kiwi_Si
simon.seagrave@emc.com

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 doesnt
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.

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

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!

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

What is a Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)?

Traditional Physical

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

Traditional Virtual

What is a Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)?

EMC VNX
VSA

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

EMC VSA Shared vSphere Lab Storage

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

EMC VSA Play with VMware Coolness!

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

The EMC VNX VSA shouldnt be confused

with VMwares new VSA offering

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

But first some VNX basics

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

10

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

Celerra

11

What is a EMC VNX Storage Appliance?

Its about having choices.

AND/OR

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

12

EMC VNX For businesses of all sizes

EMC
Unisphere

VNXe3100

VNXe3300

VNX5100

VNX5300

VNX5500

VNX5700

VNX7500

Affordable. Simple. Efficient. Powerful.

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

13

VNX Series Models

Simple. Efficient. Powerful.

VNX5100

VNX5300

VNX5500

VNX5700

VNX7500

Form factor

4U

4U7U

4U7U

5U8U

5U8U

Number of drives

75

125

250

500

1,000

3.5 Flash, SAS, and NL-SAS and 2.5 SAS

Drive types

File system
modules

I/O slots per XBlade

n/a

X-Blades

n/a

1 or 2

1, 2, or 3

2, 3, or 4

28

Memory

n/a

6 GB/blade

12 GB/blade

12 GB/blade

24 GB/blade

12 GB

36 GB

48 GB

192 GB

Protocols

n/a

NFS, CIFS, MPFS, pNFS

Storage Processors
Storage
Pool
modules

I/O ports per SP

I/O slots per SP

2
4 Fibre Channel ports, 2 back-end SAS ports

n/a

n/a

n/a

Memory

8 GB

16 GB

24 GB

36 GB

48 GB

Protocols

Fibre Channel

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet, iSCSI

14

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

15

Software. Simple. Powerful.

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

16

VNX Storage Processor

Dedicated processing for block services
Block services

Administrator

Flexible RAID options (10,3,5,6) provide optimal

performance AND protection
RAID Groups and Virtual Pools

Unisphere

Administration/management

Private
Network

Through storage processor Ethernet ports

Aggregated to single file/block view in Unisphere

Single point of management/control

Storage Processors

High availability Active/Active controller

failover option

FC/iSCSI
SAN
VNX

Connects to Hosts via FC, FCoE, iSCSI for

flexibility of connection
Connects to storage via 4 lane 6Gbit SAS for
up to 24Gb/SAS bus (6x prior generation)

HARDWARE
Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

17

VNX X-Blades
Run the worlds 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
X-Blade
X-Blade

X-Blade Enclosure

X-Blade
X-Blade

Control Station
Control Station

Managed as one, high-performance, highavailability server

Connects data to the network
VNX operating environment for file
No performance impact after failover
Concurrent Network File System (NFS), Common Internet
File System (CIFS), File Transfer Protocol file access,
MPFS/pNFS

Hot-pluggable
VNX series
VNX, Symmetrix
or CLARiiON

Flexible N-to-M failover options

Continues to operate even if control station fails
No internal disks in the Gateway

HARDWARE
Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

18

VNX Control Station

Secure management and control for VNX for file
Installation
Administration/management
Through X-Blade and Storage Processor Ethernet
ports

Administrator

Configuration changes

Unisphere

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)

VNX series

Initiates communications with X-Blades for

greater security

Control Station

Single point of management/control

Failover redundancy option
HARDWARE
Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

19

VNX System Architecture

Application servers Exchange servers

Clients

Virtual servers

Oracle servers

SAN

Object:
Atmos VE
LAN

VNX Unified Storage

FC iS

10Gb
FCo
Enet
E

FC iS

Failover

VNX
X-Blade
VNX
X-Blade
VNX
X-Blade
VNX
X-Blade
VNX SP

10Gb
FCo Enet
E

VNX
X-Blade
VNX
X-Blade
VNX
X-Blade
VNX
X-Blade
VNX SP

Failover

VNX OE FILE
VNX OE BLOCK

Power Supply

Power Supply
SPS

SPS

LCC

LCC

Near-Line SAS drives

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

Flash drives
SAS drives

20

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!

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

21

Will there be the VNX VSA work with

VMware vSphere 5.0?

YOU BETCHA!

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

22

Will there be an iSCSI EMC VNX VSA?

POSSIBLY
/MAYBE

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

23

Run Your Own EMC VNX UBER VSA

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

24

Download the EMC UBER VNX (NFS/CIFS)

VSA from:

http://nickapedia.com

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

25

Whoops!
Temporary Download Link:
http://www.techhead.co.uk/cool-links

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

26

Demonstration
- Deploying the VSA OVA

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

27

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

28

Check Out The Hardware (Emulated)

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

29

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

30

VMware vCenter Server EMC Unified

Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) Plugin

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

31

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

32

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

33

Where can I get the EMC VSI plugins for

VMware vCenter?

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

34

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

35

EMC VSA Other cool things to try

Replication

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

36

EMC VSA Another cool thing to try

Single White Box vSphere Lab

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

VMware vSphere 5.0

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

37

Plenty of great EMC VSI vCenter Plugin

Information Available

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

38

Q&A

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

39

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

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

40

Join us Every Thursday @11:00 am ET

Check out our August EMC Solutions for VMware
webcasts:
http://info.emc.com/mk/get/DBM11986-21140_RAF_LP?reg_src=PA_VMware

New Approaches to Managing Your Virtualized Data

Center - Resolve problems 60% faster, ensure maximum
service uptime, and achieve a 2x improvement in
operational efficiency with EMC Ionix IT Operations
Intelligence Management Suite for Virtual Data Center
environments.
Supercharge Your Cloud with PowerPath/VE for
vSphere - Discover the latest innovations to automate
and standardize data path management across VMware
infrastructure.

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

41

THANK YOU!

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com

http://www.techhead.co.uk

http://nickapedia.com

Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

42