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April 9th, 2015 08:00

VPLEX Simple questions if you know the answer

Hi All

IHAC that will be installing VPLEX initially to assist in migrating from CX4-960 onto VNX5600. They have some basic questions around the instal and migration, unfortunatley i have no experience with VPLEX. IS there anyone who could assist please

Many Many Thanks

As part of the migration work and introduction of the VPLEX engines, will we need to :

  • Encapsulate all existing luns as part of the migration process or only ones that are going to used as part of the VMWare Metro VMotion, so as they appear as a distributed volume?

  • With regards Physical Servers that have SAN volumes, I understand that we will require an short outage to point them to the VPLEX front end once zoning has been completed. If so how long do you estimate we require for downtime per system and is this just time it takes for system reboot ?

  • Will we need to update configuration for the SP IP addresses in the Powerpath to provide visibility of the VNX/VPLEX?

  • Is there a limit on how many systems can be encapsulated as part of the migration process in one go, since the traditional SAN copy would only allow for  a specific number?

  • For Vsphere, we have multiple data stores and these will need to be mapped across Gold, Silver, Bronze pools on the VNX.  Will there be an outage or do we just present the Vsphere hosts with the new LUNs and then VMotion from CX4 to VNX without disruption to systems?

  • We have a couple of systems that are already using storage on the VNX that have traditional luns, will these require an outage to encapsulate and repoint through VPLEX?

  • Is there a potential for system degradation on the VNX whilst the migrations take place in the background, since we do have critical systems running off the VNX

April 10th, 2015 02:00

  • Encapsulate all existing luns as part of the migration process or only ones that are going to used as part of the VMWare Metro VMotion, so as they appear as a distributed volume?

Distribution volume concept come into the picture when you are using Metro cluster.! Also encapsulation as the part migration you can consider at some point in front of the customer, but that is not really a part of migration as migration can be done at the backend once encapsulation completed. (hosts never know what is happening in background once encapsulation completed)


With regards Physical Servers that have SAN volumes, I understand that we will require an short outage to point them to the VPLEX front end once zoning has been completed. If so how long do you estimate we require for downtime per system and is this just time it takes for system reboot ?

No this is time consuming work, but it depends on the number of luns and how you are executing them.

Take minimum at least 3-4 hours to do the encapsulation for one server!


Will we need to update configuration for the SP IP addresses in the Powerpath to provide visibility of the VNX/VPLEX?

not required, it just a same luns as your VNX luns...the only things LUN ID/LUN Serial will change.

Is there a limit on how many systems can be encapsulated as part of the migration process in one go, since the traditional SAN copy would only allow for  a specific number?

Migration is the back-end copy once the encapsulation completed. But yes max 24 sessions are allowed at a time. If in case you have several luns, you can configured all in one go! but as the process of migration it will automatically take next lun once existing lun migration completed in that session....


We have a couple of systems that are already using storage on the VNX that have traditional luns, will these require an outage to encapsulate and repoint through VPLEX?

Yes! whenever encapsulation is in the picture and In order to introduce the VPLEX you would be needing downtime. Again this is depends how well you are prepared for the encapsulation.


Is there a potential for system degradation on the VNX whilst the migrations take place in the background, since we do have critical systems running off the VNX

No! VPLEX utilize there own resources, will not have much impact.

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