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

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

EMC – Self Help Pt2 : SolVe Desktop

** Updated August 2016** Some good news received today from Kirsty Allen from the SolVe desktop team @ EMC. SolVe Desktop has now been updated to include some new products; RecoverPoint VNX (1 & 2) VxRail Unity VMAX All Flash To get them included in your own catalog should just require Continue Reading

EMC VNX – Self Help using “MyDocs”

I’m a big believer in “helping yourself”. By researching and actually doing things, we learn, grow and become more self-sufficient. I’ve blogged before about what I sometimes refer to as hidden gems, in particular MiTrend. There are other tools from EMC that are very useful. The first is My Documents Continue Reading

VMware ESXi,Nexus 1000v: Add New vDS Port-Group + error “spec.numPorts exceeds the limit..”

If you’re familiar with Cisco IOS and networking in general, creating a new PortGroup on a Nexus1000v is pretty straightforward. Here I’m going to add a new Port-Profile, of type ‘vmware port-group‘ called “VM_Prod_29” with VLAN ID “29 “. Login to the active VSM and first create the VLAN;

Then Continue Reading

VMware PowerCLI – What are you waiting for ?

I still talk to people who are reluctant to jump in and learn some basic scripting techniques. Usually their response is that it’s easy in the gui or “scripting is hard” or the “I’m not a developer so why bother ?”. Meh, make it happen. The facts is, learning some basic Continue Reading

VMware PowerCLI – What are you waiting for ?

I still talk to people who are reluctant to jump in and learn some basic scripting techniques. Usually their response is that it’s easy in the gui or “scripting is hard” or the “I’m not a developer so why bother ?”. Meh, make it happen. The facts is, learning some basic Continue Reading

ESXi – An oldie but a goodie – CDP info via PowerCLI and Host CLI

When you don’t use something for a while, you tend to forget how valuable it can be. Even from its very early iterations, ESXi has been able to display CDP information so you can quickly establish “what’s patched where “.  Easy to get from the gui, but far more useful Continue Reading

EMC VPLEX – Quick tip: Recover lost admin password

We all have too many passwords to manage and despite our best intentions and practices, sometimes they get lost. This happened to me recently. When verifying some access before a code upgrade, I found the admin password I expected to work for VPLEX ( cli or Unisphere) did. not. work. Continue Reading