Dell EMC Unity – Bulk enable Advanced Dedup after upgrade

One of the shortcomings in an otherwise really good UI in the Unity platform is the inability to make bulk changes to many objects. While making the changes are easy, applying it to many or even hundreds of objects is impractical and time consuming. Boring. Recently after an upgrade to Continue Reading

Dell EMC CloudIQ – Mobile version

CloudIQ, the free, cloud based monitoring and management application provided by Dell EMC is a very useful tool.  You can get the low-down onit https://blog.dellemc.com/en-us/cloudiq-a-web-based-fitness-tracker-for-your-storage/ Jon @ Fast Storage also give some excellent details here: https://faststorage.eu/cloudiq-is-looking-out-for-your-storage-systems-health/ Recently the notification/updates showed , a mobile version was released, and it’s very useful. Once installed, Continue Reading

ESXi 5.5 – Automating VMFS UNMAP w/ PowerCLI and PowerShell

With vSphere 6.5 recently released, a nice feature was the automated execution of the UNMAP command against thin provisioned datastores to reclaim space. This requires no user interaction, it’s fully automated for you and can free up significant amounts of space from your datastores. There’s some good information regarding the Continue Reading

VMware DRS rule manipulation using PowerCLI (EMC VPLEX use case) Part 1.

VPLEX is another of my favourite products,  and for good reason. I currently run a Metro cluster underneath a VMware platform that has proven to be super reliable. One important design consideration for this is to ensure that VM’s are configured for site bias. Why ? Glad you asked. In Continue Reading

EMC VPLEX, RecoverPoint Warning: Failed to retrieve VPLEX management view

Quick post with a quick VPLEX/RecoverPoint fix. (CL & EX) During some regular checking, I noticed that a warning had crept into the VPLEX Management console;     Quick cluster check showed there were no apparent errors; Checking RecoverPoint also showed a warning; There was no issues found, data was Continue Reading

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

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

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