Ask the Expert: All about what's new with VMAX in Q2 2013.

Following today's press release, we are delighted to open up this discussion on what's new with VMAX.

We look forward to a fun, collaborative and informative discussion.

Regards,

Mark

so what are you Symm guys are most excited to see in this new version, which of the new features has been the most requested by customers ?

Matty,

Well said, drive CRU, especially with additional cabinet locater capability will be very useful —also adding IBMi support to VMAX 10K is helpful to open up more opportunity for VMAX to penetrate into more price sensitive markets requiring IBMi host attach.

Regards,

Paul

Hi Dynamox....I'm excited about CRU...Customer Replaceable Unit...which allows the customer to replace failed disk drives in their VMAX arrays. Once a drive has failed and a successful permanent sparing operation has taken place, CRU gives the customer the ability to replace the NR spare drive at their convenience. Since the customer is replacing the drive themselves they don't need to clear EMC staff through security, accompany them to the data center or take data center staff away from other responsibilities.

Lee

The CRU process is a fully scripted process, and indeed works directly with cabinet, DAE, and drive locaters via blinking lights to locate the replacement drive.

Paul

Sent from my iPhone

Hi Lee

Just to expand on Paul’s answer a bit…Once the customer contacts their account team and decides to participate in the CRU process, an EMC Field Engineer will set a CRU setting on the VMAX. There will also be a training video available to the customer so they can be familiar with the process before they replace their first drive. As Paul stated it’s a fully scripted process that will also generate a printable step by step process along with a diagram of where the replaceable drive is located. The front LED will blink, all of the DAEs will blink, except the DAE with the replaceable drive. In that DAE the replaceable drive will have the amber LED lit while the other good drives will have the green LED lit. Once the drive has been replaced the customer packs up the bad drive in the same box that the new drive shipped in, they put a purple CRU sticker and a Return Way Bill on the box and return the drive to EMC.

Thanks,

Matt

Matt,

I have worked for another major vendor and the closed loop approach that is a feature that can be enabled is just a really great and unique idea.

The choice is back with the customer and that is a great move.

How does one use the new Offline Performance Viewer and what kinds of performance analysis can you do with it?  Can you provide a screenshot?

Hi Matt,

May I ask if the CRU script support the Muti-Language? thanks

Hi Fenglin-

The CRU script is English only as of right now.

Thanks,

Matt

Hi John-

Performance Viewer is distributed as a vApp and is designed to be run from a PC. To populate the PV’s database, you import a special backup of the customer’s Performance Analyzer database and local symapi_db.bin file. The backup will contain all of the historical data, any Real time traces and custom dashboards as well as the last 24hours of Diagnostic data. Once imported, you chart the available metrics the same way you would in Performance Analyzer.

From a screenshot perspective it looks just like Performance Analyzer in Unisphere. I don’t have any screenshots that I can provide at the moment.

Thanks,

Matt

So does FAST VP now work across all SRDF 3-site and 4-site configurations?

Matt,

i got to see Performance Viewer at EMC World (VMAX booth), it's really slick and i think it will allow me to finally decommission EMC ControlCenter that we use for WLA archives. I tried to search for PV on support.emc.com and could not find it, does it also require Unisphere for VMAX 1.6 ? ( that i don't see on under downloads either).

Thanks