Heads Up ! – EMC VNX2 – Potential Data Unavailability

I’m back from the wilderness ! Whenever I see an EMC ETA with the words “Potential Data Unavailability”, I give it immediate attention. Data. Is. Everything. This hot off the press item is titled “ETA 489936: VNX2: A firmware issue may cause certain solid state drives to become faulted, which Continue Reading

CommVault v10 SP14 – Issue with Synthetic Full Backups

I recently upgraded my CommCell from v10 SP13 to SP14. As usual, the upgrade was easy. Centrally deployed, no issues. The next set of scheduled fulls kicked off a few days later, and soon after there appeared to be an issue with Synthetic Full backups. In the Job Controller they Continue Reading

EMC XtremIO PowerShell support – Finally!

EMC have released XIOS version 4.1.10-33 and XMS version 4.2 recently, and although they look like minor point releases, there are some long awaited improvements that I certainly have been pleased with. The first one is a PowerShell support. Readers of this blog will now I’m a big PowerShell guy. Continue Reading

EMC RecoverPoint-Increase CG Journal size using GUI or RPCLI

Getting a RecoverPoint environment takes some planning to get right. You’ve diligently calculated your Protection Windows and set the Consistency Groups accordingly so that your RPO’s are safe. Fast forward a few months….. You’ve squeezed more apps in, the rate of change has ramped up. RecoverPoint has told you your Continue Reading

VMware ESXi – Get VM’s by VLAN ID with PowerCLI

Often when when working in large environments you’ll get interesting requests. These may be to assist in troubleshooting, auditing, reporting or any other reason. I was recently requested to provide a list of mac addresses for every VM with a vNIC in a specific vlan. I had a feeling this was going Continue Reading

Dell PowerVault MD3660f – Firmware Upgrade Process

The DELL PowerVault MD series Storage Arrays are solid and reliable units. Whilst I don’t use any for what may be considered “Primary” Storage, I use them for many workloads. Backup targets, Image Respositories, Archives, Unstructured data etc. In a 5 RU form factor, it’s a dense package with over Continue Reading

CommVault – The need for speed, pt 1

Speed and performance is an important capability of a Data Protection solution. Most people logically attribute this to being able to finish all tasks in a defined “window“. I’ve used CommVault for a long time and it’s one of my all time fav’s. It truly does “what it says on Continue Reading

EMC XtremIO 4.x – AD LDAP Configuration

Configuring Active Directory (or really LDAP) based authentication for your infrastructure is basically standard fare. Default accounts should always be changed and centralized management and control of access credentials saves you effort over time, and is “Security 101” With that in mind I set about configuring LDAP authentication against an Active Continue Reading

EMC RecoverPoint : Automated Protection Window Summary

One thing that is often overlooked after a RecoverPoint solution is implemented is the ongoing Protection Window value for your Consistency Groups.  During the design phase, the Journal sizes are (hopefully) diligently and accurately calculated according to your RPO. But as time goes by, how many people actually check that Continue Reading