Ask the Expert: Meet the EMC Unity Family

This Ask the Expert session is now open for questions. For the next couple of weeks our Subject Matter Experts will be around to reply to your questions, comments or inquiries about our topic.

Let’s make this conversation useful, respectful and entertaining for all. Enjoy!

Sounds good. Looking forward to this

Thank you for your question. Unity will support (in Q42016) inline compression for block LUNs on a Unity All-Flash configuration and All-Flash pools in a Unity Hybrid array. ILC for Hybrid Pools in Hybrid configuration and for file will be supported in 2017.

Can you tell something more about the "Additional inline data services" that are coming later?

I assume its some comp/dedup features but what and when?

Two VNX features that the VNXe are lacking are:

1) LUN Migration (non disruptive migration of LUNs between storage pools)

2) The concept of "Storage Groups" where you can add a bunch of ESXi servers to a single "initiator group" and then grant LUN access to the entire Storage Group.  On the VNXe when you create a LUN you need to grant host access host-by-host which can lead to user error for multiple-cluster configurations.

Are either of these features available in the EMC UnityOS?

Thanks,

Bill

Hello,

Does the Unity Snapshot feature utilize an underlying Snapshot Mount Point when attaching or detaching block snapshots similar to a VNX2 Snapshot?

Thanks,

Hi Alan,

Yes Unity snapshot feature utilizes Snapshot Mount Point (SMP) similar to VNX2, however in Unity at launch, each LUN has a default SMP and only one snap can be attached to the host at a time. This limitation will be removed in a follow-on release.

LUN Migration will be supported by end of this year in Unity, but not at launch.

Hello,

What's the username/password of UnityVSA-4.0.7329527?

Does the LUN replication support replication with VNX2 or VNXe?

Will Unity release make VNXe/VNX2 EOL, or what's the plan?

Hi Che -  thanks for the question.   here is the username/password answer!

Procedure

1. 1. Launch Unisphere. To do so, enter the management IP address in your browser.
2. 2. Log in with the default username and password.

Note

UnityVSA ships with a default username, admin, and password, Password123#. You

must change the administrator password during this first login. You can also change

the service password at this time, either making it the same as the administrator

password or creating a separate service password.

Unity supports sync/async replication for block and async for file. To do block replication between Unity and VNX you can use RecoverPoint.

There are no plans to date for EOL of VNX2 and VNXe

Hi Bill,

Addressing your second question on creating an initiator group to add a bunch of ESXi servers - this feature is not available in Unity.

Thanks !

Hello Unity Experts,

When selecting the "Custom" view for the Performance Dashboard, the dropdown allows you to select the time interval for the charts.  How much of performance metrics is stored within Unity, in other words how far back in time can you go.

Thank you.

Hi Alan,

Great question. I think it may depend on the sampling interval and total consumed space for storing the metrics. The Performance metrics aging policy section in the following document may help. Click here.

Hope this helps.