XtremIO VIAS integration with VPLEX

Question

Hello, I am cross-posting here has no one on the VPLEX forum has responded: In anticipation of going to 5.5, I had a couple questions I was seeking clarification to with regards to ensuring best practices are met for XtremIO and VPLEX integration. From reading some of the guides and training manuals, the following questions don't seem to be called out so I wanted to validate: 1. The docs stats that each XtremIO is registered to the VPLEX cluster in a 1:1 fashion and that multiple XtremIO arrays have to be registered separately. This is OK, but what is the limitation around an XMS managing multiple XtremIO clusters today? Do I have to revert the XMS consolidation back to a legacy 1:1 mapping of XMS to XtremIO array if I want to have more than 1 XtremIO cluster registered with the VPLEX? It seems that way and this seems counter-productive to consolidating XMS's so I wanted to validate if there was a way to utilize a multi-cluster XMS with VIAS or if I had to go back to 1:1 and re-deploy XMS's to make them 1:1 again? 2. Is there a hard requirements to have ONLY a SINGLE IG created with all VPLEX BE ports on it registered in the XtremIO array or can VIAS operate when the VPLEX is registered using multiple IG's on the XtremIO? Thanks, -Keith

matteo_marchett · Answer

I quote these questions since I'd like to move to VPLEX 5.5 for the VIAS integration. Thanks.

echolaughmk · Answer

Hi Guys,

Here is the thread that was answered initially in the VPLEX forum. I have since followed up seeking additional clarity to one of them and I am waiting to hear back from EMC on this thread...but when they answer, it will be all contained here:

https://community.emc.com/message/919142?et=watches.email.thread#919142

-K

Kumar_A · Answer

VIAS provisioning functionality does not support the multi-cluster functionality of XtremIO at this time. This means that if you have multiple XtremIO arrays behind a single XMS, you cannot use the VIAS provisioning feature that came out in VPLEX 5.5. This does NOT mean that you cannot use such a system behind a VPLEX – this deployment model is fully supported, its just that you would need to provision storage manually just like the way you provisioned storage before VIAS Provisioning support came out for XtremIO.

This is something that we are working on and would be supporting in a future VPLEX release.

Kumar_A · Answer

If the same XMS is managing more than one XtremIO array, you cannot use VIAS Provisioning feature.

matteo_marchett · Answer

Thanks for the clarification. As usual, I haven't found any clear statement of this limitation on VPLEX 5.5 release notes.... Quite disappointing !

matteo_marchett · Answer

Is this also true if I have a VPLEX Metro and two xtremio arrays (one per site) managed by a single XMS? Can I use VIAS provisioning with this configuration or not? Thanks

Kumar_A · Answer

I have passed on this feedback to the VPLEX team. Thanks for pointing it out.

echolaughmk · Answer

Avi, there is a VIAS doc that is in need of updating as well as the admin guide.....

https://support.emc.com/docu53266_White-Paper:-Provisioning-with-EMC-VPLEX-Integrated-Array-Services.pdf?language=en_US

Thanks.

Kumar_A · Answer

Thank you – I will pass on the link for this document as well to the VPLEX team.

XtremIO

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