Hello, welcome to part one of the demo video series on protecting data on PowerMax arrays with PowerProtect Data Manager. In continuation of our data protection support for storage arrays, data protection for PowerMax 2500 and 8500 is supported starting with Data Manager version 19.17. Before planning to protect PowerMax array data with Data Manager, refer to the section roadmap for PowerMax storage group protection in the technical white paper, ""Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Protecting Data on Dell PowerMax Arrays"" for prerequisites and instructions.
In this demo, we will perform these tasks: enable a PowerMax asset source and add Unisphere to Data Manager, enable PowerMax storage arrays for management in Data Manager, discover PowerMax storage arrays, resources, and storage groups as assets, set the protection level for parent and child storage groups, set stream count on the asset level to control the number of protection engines used for backup, and create and customize a backup storage group from the Data Manager UI.
We start by navigating to Infrastructure and selecting Asset Sources. We have a new asset source called PowerMax. Click Enable Source. These are the instructions to protect the PowerMax array with Data Manager. Close the instructions, click the PowerMax asset source tab; Data Manager provides an option to add the Unisphere management server as an asset source to discover and protect PowerMax storage array assets storage groups.
To add the Unisphere management server as an asset source, we do the following: click Add, enter the details of Unisphere such as name, address, port, and credentials. By default, discovery happens automatically after you add the asset source. Subsequent discoveries are either manual or scheduled. To schedule a full discovery at a certain time every day, select Schedule Discovery and then specify a time. After adding Unisphere as an asset source, Data Manager starts a discovery in the background of all the PowerMax arrays managed by the configured Unisphere management server.
We now see that a PowerMax array 1640 has been discovered from Unisphere. This is the array we have discovered in Data Manager, and these are the storage groups that we will be using for this demo. To allow protection of the storage groups for the PowerMax arrays, select the array, click More Actions, and select Enable Management. In the Enable Management box, click Enable. The manual discovery of the array is successful, and the storage groups are now discovered as assets here. We see that the storage groups created for this demo are discovered.
You can change the protection level for parent storage groups if it is required based on protection requirements. If their protection level of a storage group is set to parent, only parent storage groups can be added to the protection policy and asset group. When we add a parent storage group, all of its child storage groups are automatically protected. However, if the protection level of a parent storage group is set to child, only individual child storage groups can be added to the protection policy and asset group, and you cannot protect at the parent storage group level. To change the protection level, switch to the tree view to view the relationship between parent and child storage groups.
Choose a parent storage group, select More Actions, Change Protection Level, and then click Continue. We now see that the protection level has changed to child. Optionally, you can set the asset parallelism to control the maximum number of block volume protection engines used during the backup session of this asset. To do this, select the asset, click More Actions, then select Set Stream Count. You can set the maximum number of parallel backup streams per asset up to a maximum of 72 streams for six protection engines. For this demo, I will select 12 streams since I will use only one block volume protection engine as part of the prerequisite tasks we mentioned earlier.
We need to create a backup storage group with the name PPDMBV Proxy SG to map volumes to protection engines. However, you can change the name of this storage group. For example, in this demo, I created the backup storage group with the name TMEPPDMBV Proxy SG. This backup storage group should have a gatekeeper or an empty volume which is required for masking this storage group to the ESXi hosts. In addition, a masking view should already be created between the backup storage group and the ESXi host HBA initiators where the block volume protection engines are going to be deployed.
If there is a change in the backup storage group name, you must update the name of the storage group in the SDMNG configuration file. This SDMNG configuration file application.yml is located on the Data Manager server in the following directory path in the file. We can see the default backup storage group name DMBV Proxy SG. I will change it accordingly to the backup storage group name I created in the Unisphere. We can also modify the working storage group prefix as needed. For more details about customizing this configuration file, refer to your storage array user guide.
When you have finished editing this configuration file, restart the SDMNG service. In our next video, part two, we'll go on to deploy the block volume protection engine and create the protection policy to protect these storage group assets. For more details about what we've covered here, see the technical white paper, ""Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Protecting Data on Dell PowerMax Arrays,"" and refer to the PowerProtect Data Manager storage array user guide. Thanks for watching.
