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
Storage
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 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
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
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
Heads Up ! – EMC VNX1 – Potential Data Unavailability during NDU
First time in a little while, but another EMC TA bulletin arrived in my inbox last week. The inclusion of “potential data unavailability” in the subject got my attention. Full release here This particular bulletin affects only VNX Series 1 Arrays (5300, 5500, 5700 and 7500) that are upgrading to Continue Reading
EMC VPLEX Metro: Cluster Witness Server Maintenance
Although it’s not mandatory, the Cluster Witness Server (CWS) in a VPLEX Metro Cluster serves a very important purpose as the arbitrator between inter-cluster network partition failures and actual cluster/site failures. It’s a lightweight (<3GB) VMware vm deployed from an OVA that establishes itself in a 3 way VPN between Continue Reading