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Information in this publication is subject to change without notice. 2011 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of these materials in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden. Trademarks used in this text: Dell, the DELL logo, and PowerVault are trademarks of Dell Inc. Microsoft and Windows are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. VMware, vCenter, and vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMWare, Inc. in the United States or other countries. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this publication to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and trade names other than its own. January 2011 Rev. A00
Contents
Overview .
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Application and vCenter Server Configuration Configuring the Storage Administrator Role Modifying or Creating a Role . Adding a User ID to a Role No Access
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Uninstalling the Dell Storage vCenter Plug-in Dell MD Storage vCenter Plug-in Features Configuring Storage Arrays
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Activate Multipathing for Software iSCSI Initiator . ESX Host Configuration Wizard Storage Array Summary
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Contents
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Using the Predictive Scheme to Make LUN Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . Using the Adaptive Scheme to Make LUN Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . Creating a Virtual Disk .
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Disabling and Re-creating Snapshots Creating a Virtual Disk Copy . Mapping a Virtual Disk Datastores View
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Preventing Slow Script Warning Messages Manually Unregistering the Dell MD Storage vCenter Plug-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Restrictions. Conclusions
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Contents
Overview
The Dell MD Storage Array vCenter Plug-in is a VMware vCenter 4.0 plug-in that provides integrated management of Dell MD Storage Arrays within vCenter. The plug-in will allow the vCenter administrator to configure ESX hosts to Dell MD Storage Arrays, create, map, delete storage virtual disks from the Dell MD Storage Array to the ESX host, and view the vCenter datastores to Dell storage array virtual disks. The plug-in will also allow for the creation of hardware Snapshots, and Virtual Disk Copies, if these premium features are enabled on the storage array. The plug-in utilizes an application server to facilitate the interface between the vSphere Client and the Dell storage array based on the authenticated logged-in user and the permissions assigned to that user's role. NOTE: The Dell Storage Array vCenter Plug-in requires that a vCenter Server be installed within the environment. The plug-in will not function in a vSphere Client and ESX host-only configuration.
Figure 1. Communication Detail
Installation Requirements
The following requirements must be met in order to install and use the Dell MD Storage Array vCenter Plug-in. Dell MD Storage Array vCenter Plug-in VMware vCenter 4.x server (installed) (Recommended) Windows 2003, 2003 R2, 2008, or 2008 R2 server (either 32-bit or 64-bit) acting as the application server Dell storage array with VMware certified firmware
In addition, system names and IP addresses of vCenter and Dell Storage arrays are required during installation. Use the following table as a template to document the system names and IP addresses of the equipment to be used during the installation process.
Table 1. Configuration Worksheet Example vCenter Server Name vCenter Administrator Name Application Server Name VCENTER-4 administrator DNS Name IP Address Password vcenter-4.dell.com 192.168.51. 217 password
App-Server
Dell Storage Array 1 WinterPark-173Name 174 Dell Storage Array 2 Name Dell Storage Array 3 Name Storage User 1 Administrator User ID Storage Administrator User ID
Table 1. Configuration Worksheet Example (continued) vCenter Server Name Storage Administrator User ID VCENTER-4 DNS Name IP Address vcenter-4.dell.com 192.168.51. 217
Recommended Configurations
The Dell MD Storage Array vCenter Plug-in utilizes SMI-S to communicate with the storage arrays that will be managed within the vSphere infrastructure. Due to the nature of the SMI-S protocol, numerous procedure calls must be made to obtain and send changes to the storage array, which require large amounts of data to be passed between the storage arrays, application server and vSphere Client. For this reason, it is recommended that you limit the size of the storage arrays and number of objects to be managed. The following are the recommended maximums for this release of the plug-in. The number of systems being managed and the number of virtual disks and physical disks on each system will determine the overall performance of the plug-in. Recommended maximum configuration: 10 Dell MD Storage Arrays 256 Objects per array (Virtual Disks, Virtual Disk Copies, or Snapshots)
Software Installation
Obtain the correct version of the Dell Storage vCenter Plug-in for your environment (x86 or x64) from the following link: x86 link or x64 link. The file should be named SMIA-vCenter-WS32-10.70.36.50 for the Windows 32bit version or SMIA-vCenter-WSX64-10.70.36.50 for the Windows 64-bit version. The file should be copied to the application server. NOTE: It is highly recommended that the application server be installed on a separate Windows 2003 or 2008 server from the existing VMware vCenter Server. However, the application server may be installed on the same host as the existing vCenter Server if adequate resources are available on the vCenter Server.
After the Dell Storage vCenter Plug-in software has been downloaded, run the package on the application server to launch the installation wizard. The installation wizard will install a Jetty application server, SMI-S provider, and register the plug-in within the vCenter server. Note that the details of the equipment in the environment, such as IP addresses and DNS names, must be supplied during the installation process. The above table may be used to help facilitate recording this information for the installation. Follow the procedure below to install the software: 1 Read the introduction screen, and click Next. 2 Read through the license agreement and if you accept the terms, select the appropriate option, and click Next. 3 Either select the local installation directory for the plug-in manager, or click Next for the default. 4 Review the installation details, and click Install if the details are correct. 5 Change the port number of the Jetty server if you wish to, or accept the default of 8084 and 8081, and click Next. 6 Change the IP address of the application server if desired. The IP address will default to the IP address of the system the installer is running on. Click Next. 7 The next screen prompts you for the IP address of the vCenter server that the plug-in will be installed on. Enter the IP address of the vCenter server, and click Next. 8 Enter the Administrator's email address for alerts, and click Next. 9 Enter the vCenter Administrator's User ID, and click Next. 10 Enter the vCenter Administrator's password, and click Next. 11 The installation is now complete. Click Done to close the installation wizard. NOTE: To verify successful installation of the application server, run services.msc, and verify that the cimserver service has been installed and has started along with the Jetty6-Service service. Also note that after the application server has been rebooted, the name of the CIMOM service will change to Pegasus CIM Object Manager.
3 Select the permissions that member or members of this role will need. 4 In addition to the permissions selected above, select the appropriate permission from the Storage Administrator group to allow for Read Only or Read Write access to the storage arrays. See Figure 4.
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5 Click OK to apply permissions to the role. NOTE: The administrator role is not editable and, therefore, if the administrator user will be used to manage storage, a new role must be created that has all of the privileges added to it. The administrator user must then be added to this role as the following procedure details.
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3 From the wizard, click Add, and select the User ID or IDs that will require access to the storage arrays. 4 Select the modified role from the drop-down list, and click OK to apply changes. 5 Click OK to apply permissions to the role.
No Access
If users are not members of a role that has either the Read Only or Read Write Storage Administrator permission, they will not be able to view any statistics from the plug-in and will receive a No Access message if they attempt to access a plug-in feature as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6. No Access Message
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1 On the vSphere Client, select a resource element, such as an ESX host, VM, or Resource Pool, and select the Datastore tab. This action generates a security alert, which lets you install the new SSL certificate.
Figure 7. SSL Certificates
2 On the Security Alert window, select the View Certificate button, and verify the certificate information. 3 On the Certificate window, select the Install Certificate button, and click OK to close.
Enhanced IE Security
If the vSphere client system has Microsoft's Enhanced IE Security installed, the warning message appears. See Figure 8. Click Add to configure a trust relationship with the application server.
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Clicking the icon will open the Storage Array Manager view where you can manage Dell storage arrays. The Storage Array Manager view displays a list of known storage arrays and lets additional storage arrays be added or removed. See Figure 10.
Figure 10. Array Manager View
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With port binding, you create a separate VMkernel port for each physical NIC using 1:1 mapping. You can add all network adapter and VMkernel port pairs to a single vSwitch, as shown in Figure 11.
Figure 11. Port Binding Single vSwitch
Another alternative is to create a separate vSwitch for each network adapter and VMkernel port pair, as shown in Figure 12.
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After you map VMkernel ports to network adapters, use the esxcli command to connect the ports with the software iSCSI initiator.
To activate multipathing for software iSCSI initiator: 1 Identify the names of VMkernel iSCSI ports assigned to physical adapters. The vSphere Client displays the port's name below the network label. Example 1: Figure 13 shows the ports' names as vmk1 and vmk2.
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2 Using the vSphere CLI, connect the software iSCSI initiator to the iSCSI VMkernel ports. Repeat this command for each port. esxcli swiscsi nic add -n <port_name> -d <vmhba> 3 Verify that the ports were added to the software iSCSI initiator by running the following command: esxcli swiscsi nic list -d <vmhba> 4 Use the vSphere Client to rescan the software iSCSI initiator. 5 To disconnect the software iSCSI initiator from the ports, run the following command: esxcli swiscsi nic remove -n <port_name> -d <vmhba> If there are active iSCSI sessions between your host and targets, discontinue them before running this command. You can do so by removing static targets that the ports use from the vSphere Client. esxcli swiscsi nic remove -n <port_name> -d <vmhba> Example 2: Connecting Software iSCSI Initiator to Two VMkernel Ports This example shows how to connect the software iSCSI initiator vmhba33 to VMkernel ports vmk1 and vmk2. 1 Connect vmhba33 to vmk1: esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmk1 -d vmhba33 2 Connect vmhba33 to vmk2: esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmk2 -d vmhba33
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3 Verify vmhba33 configuration: esxcli swiscsi nic list -d vmhba33 Both vmk1 and vmk2 should be listed. In this example, if you use the vSphere client to display the Paths view for the vmhba33 initiator, you can see that it uses two different paths to access the same target. The runtime names of the paths are vmhba33:C1:T1:L0 and vmhba33:C2:T1:L0. C1 and C2 in this example indicate the two network adapters that are used for multipathing.
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The wizard then displays progress while the requested configuration changes are being made. Close the progress window manually after the changes are complete. See Figure 16. NOTE: To use multiple host groups as described, the storage array must have the Storage Partitioning premium feature enabled.
Figure 14. ESX Host Configuration Wizard Menu
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The ESX host has now been configured to the storage array. The next step is to create new virtual disks on the storage array to be used by the ESX host. New virtual disks are created using the Dell Storage vCenter Plug-in.
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The Create Disk Group link launches a wizard that walks you through creating a new disk group. See Figure 19. During this process, you will need to choose from the available free physical disks the physical disks that will make up the new disk group and select the RAID level to be used.
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You might want more, smaller LUNs for the following reasons: Less wasted storage space. Different applications might need different RAID characteristics. More flexibility, as the multipathing policy and disk shares are set per LUN. Use of Microsoft Cluster Service requires that each cluster disk resource is in its own LUN. Better performance because there is less contention for a single virtual disk.
When the storage characterization for a virtual machine is not available, there is often no simple answer when you have to decide on the LUN size and number of LUNs to use. You can experiment using either predictive scheme or adaptive scheme.
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To delete a snapshot, select the Snapshot virtual disk in the Virtual Disks tree, and click the Delete link under the Commands box.
Figure 21. Snapshot Wizard
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From this tab, all virtual disk copy operations are displayed along with the current status of all virtual disk copies. On the Commands box, the following options are available: Create Virtual Disk Copy, Recopy, Stop, Change Virtual Disk Copy Parameters, Remove Copy, and Refresh. To create a new virtual disk copy, select the Create Virtual Disk Copy link from the Commands box, which launches the Virtual Disk Copy wizard. From this wizard, select the source volume to use for the virtual disk copy. NOTE: During the establishment of the Virtual Disk Copy, the source virtual disk is read-only to the host that it is presented to. If Snapshot premium feature is enabled, the plug-in use this feature to create a snapshot of the source virtual disk before the virtual disk copy is initiated and the Virtual Disk Copy operation uses the Snapshot virtual disk to establish the virtual disk copy with. This action lets continued readwrite operations to the source virtual disk from the host during the establish period.
Dell MD Storage Array vCenter Plug-in
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Click Next to select the target virtual disk for the virtual disk copy, and select the copy priority to use.
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After the virtual disk copy is established, it may be managed from the Virtual Disk Copy tab. To stop a copy operation that is occurring, select the copy set to modify, and click the Stop link from the Commands box. To recopy an existing virtual disk copy, click the copy set, and click the Recopy link. To delete a copy set, select the copy set to modify, and click the Remove Copy link. This action removes the Virtual Disk Copy relationship between the two virtual disks, but does not modify or delete the target virtual disk that will still contain a copy of the original data from the source virtual disk.
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From the wizard, select the host group or host to which the new virtual disk will be mapped. Select the LUN number to use and virtual disk to be mapped. Click OK to complete the mapping. NOTE: If your environment uses multiple groups of SAS HBAs per ESX host, the new virtual disks should be balanced across all hosts or host groups. Do not add all the virtual disks to a single host or host group; I/O balancing cannot occur in this case. After the virtual disks have been mapped to the ESX host, the storage adapters on the ESX host must be rescanned to detect the new storage virtual disks. This action is accomplished from Hosts and Clusters viewConfiguration tabStorage Adapters for the ESX host being configured. See Figure 26. NOTE: It may be necessary to run the rescan twice to detect all of the new storage virtual disks that have been mapped to the ESX host.
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From this view, you can also verify that the correct number of paths have been configured and the Fibre Channel switch zoning is correct. By right-clicking on one of the devices listed under the storage adapter and selecting Manage Paths, a window is displayed that shows the number of paths for the target device. There should be four paths to each device with once Active and three Standby as shown in.
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Datastores View
After datastores are created on storage array virtual disks, you can use the Datastore tab to understand the mapping of datastores to storage array virtual disks. The intent of this view is to provide you with a quick status and view of the datastores and their underlying storage virtual disks. Use this view to identify the storage array where the datastore resides and the associated storage array virtual disk. You can view the health status of the virtual disk, the associated host and host group, RAID level, capacity and datastore free space. This view also displays the details of the datastore, such as the extent, LUN number, and health status. The Datastores view is context sensitive, so selecting a VM in the tree only displays storage elements for the selected VM. See Figure 28.
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Troubleshooting
This section describes the following topics: Application Server logs Common errors Maximizing client performance Preventing slow script warning messages
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Additional log files are also maintained in this directory that are useful for technical support to resolve issues, but are generally not user friendly format. vcenter2debug-x.log.yDebug log used by technical support jetty-service.logJetty service log, used by technical support <date/time stamp>.request.logLog of IP addresses for all Jetty service requests from clients
Common Errors
The most common errors encountered are: Unable to communicate with Application Server Check firewall settings to ensure the Jetty TCP port is enabled. Verify the cimserver/Pegasus server service is started on the Application Server. Verify the Jetty6-Service is started on the Application Server. Verify the current user ID has correct storage administrator privileges assigned to their role.
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Restrictions
The following issues have been identified within this release and the following workarounds must be used to resolve them.
Table 1-1. Restrictions ID P200098715 Description Changing the password of a storage array does not prevent the Plug-In from displaying the storage array properties. Any changes to the storage array from the plug-in will fail, however. The Plug-In does not reflect the name change after performing a clear configuration on the storage array. Default host group mappings are not displayed within vCenter Plug-In. If no virtual disks are mapped to the ESX host or host group, mappings from the default host group are used and not displayed within the vCenter Plug-In. The installation log does not contain any information about the Pegasus service starting. Workaround If the storage array password is changed, remove and re-add the storage array to the Plug-In or edit the settings of the storage array from the Plug-In and set the password field to the current password. If the storage array configuration is cleared from PowerVault Modular Disk Storage Manager, the storage array must be removed and re-added to the Plug-In to detect the change. Explicitly map a virtual disk to the ESX host or host group to prevent the default host group virtual disks from being mapped.
P200085031
P200097562
P200088431
After installation, verify that the cimserver service has been started from services.msc window.
P200085831
The Plug-In displays Due to the limited return codes improper error messages in from SMI-S provider, some error some situations. codes might be erroneous. Include all information and details when troubleshooting these errors.
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Conclusions
The vCenter plug-in allows administrators in small environments to have a single management interface (vCenter) to manage all of their day-to-day storage needs along with their VMware infrastructure. This alleviates the need for vCenter administrators to learn another management tool and focus instead on the entire virtual infrastructure.
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