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IA-L04 Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware; Improve Storage Path Management: Course Description: Dive into the VMware environment and explore the benefits of Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware. In this lab you'll learn how to increase visibility, availability and resiliency in your VMware environment with automated I/O management, load-balancing and reporting. This lab assumes a basic understanding of the VMware vSphere ESX environment, and the tools used to perform management of VMware ESX, such as vCenter. Guidance through the lab via screen shots and explanations should be adequate, should attendees not be familiar with these concepts before the lab. At the end of this lab, you should be able to: Install DMP for VMware console and vCenter Plug-In Install DMP for VMware MPP onto ESXi 5.0U1 using VMware Update Manager Install licenses to enable full functionality Basic understanding of system settings Array specific settings Enable and Disable DMP Paths Visualization of I/O metrics within the ESX Datacenter Have a baseline level of knowledge necessary to conduct a Proof-of-Concept or evaluation Notes: A brief presentation will introduce this lab session and discuss key concepts. The lab will be directed and provide you with step-by-step walkthroughs of key features. Feel free to follow the lab using the instructions on the following pages. You can optionally perform this lab at your own pace. Be sure to ask your instructor any questions you may have. Thank you for coming to our lab session. Please fill out your Evaluations of the lab! LAB CONFIGURATION vCenter Server: ia-dmpvcXX.ia1.tso.cloud --- XX is the number for your lab group 01, 02, etc… ESXi Server: ia-esx-XX.ia1.tso.cloud – where XX is the number for your lab group 01, 02, etc… vCenter Server Login: Administrator vCenter Server Password: Passw0rd RDP Gateway Username: tso\ia-lab-X – where X is the number of your lab group 1, 2, etc… RDP Gateway Password: Vi$1On - Capital letter V, lowercase letter i, dollar sign, numeral 1, Capital letter O, lowercase letter n DMP for VMware Evaluation Key: AJP9-RXJV-NWUN-W438-WPP8-PPPP-PPPP-PCC Note: Should you need the root password for your ESXi server, please ask your instructor. Throughout the lab, commands or actions you need to take will be highlighted, such as: Click Command
Transcript
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IA-L04 Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware; Improve Storage Path Management:

Course Description:

Dive into the VMware environment and explore the benefits of Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware. In this lab you'll learn how to increase visibility, availability and resiliency in your VMware environment with automated I/O management, load-balancing and reporting.

This lab assumes a basic understanding of the VMware vSphere ESX environment, and the tools used to perform management of VMware ESX, such as vCenter. Guidance through the lab via screen shots and explanations should be adequate, should attendees not be familiar with these concepts before the lab.

At the end of this lab, you should be able to:

• Install DMP for VMware console and vCenter Plug-In

• Install DMP for VMware MPP onto ESXi 5.0U1 using VMware Update Manager

• Install licenses to enable full functionality

• Basic understanding of system settings • Array specific settings • Enable and Disable DMP Paths • Visualization of I/O metrics within the ESX Datacenter

• Have a baseline level of knowledge necessary to conduct a Proof-of-Concept or evaluation

Notes:

A brief presentation will introduce this lab session and discuss key concepts. The lab will be directed and provide you with step-by-step walkthroughs of key features. Feel free to follow the lab using the instructions on the following pages. You can optionally

perform this lab at your own pace. Be sure to ask your instructor any questions you may have. Thank you for coming to our lab session. Please fill out your Evaluations of the lab!

LAB CONFIGURATION vCenter Server: ia-dmpvcXX.ia1.tso.cloud --- XX is the number for your lab group 01, 02, etc… ESXi Server: ia-esx-XX.ia1.tso.cloud – where XX is the number for your lab group 01, 02, etc… vCenter Server Login: Administrator vCenter Server Password: Passw0rd RDP Gateway Username: tso\ia-lab-X – where X is the number of your lab group 1, 2, etc… RDP Gateway Password: Vi$1On - Capital letter V, lowercase letter i, dollar sign, numeral 1, Capital letter O, lowercase letter n DMP for VMware Evaluation Key: AJP9-RXJV-NWUN-W438-WPP8-PPPP-PPPP-PCC Note: Should you need the root password for your ESXi server, please ask your instructor. Throughout the lab, commands or actions you need to take will be highlighted, such as: Click Command

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LAB AGENDA Lab Exercise 1:

Installation of DMP for VMware Console and vCenter Plug-In

The first step to perform during DMP for VMware installation is to install the vCenter Plug-In and the DMP Console. The DMP Console provides the communications bridge between the vCenter Plug-In and the Common Information Model components running on the ESX server.

For production deployments, it is recommended that the DMP Console be installed on a Windows 2008 64-bit system, which may be a Virtual Machine. If Application HA is installed, the same server may be used for the DMP Console. It is not recommended for production to install the DMP console on the same system as the vCenter system. However, due to lab constraints, we will be co-locating the vCenter and the VxDMP Console software on the same administrative server.

To begin with the lab, we will need to establish a Windows RDP session to your assigned desktop. From the VMware Workstation guest, click on the assigned RDP icon for your system. Ultimately, your RDP session will connect to ia-dmpvcXX.ia1.tso.cloud, where XX has been assigned to you. There are 16 available systems, and you may need to work in groups. You can take turns, or designate an individual to perform the steps. Make sure to use the appropriate RDP connection file located on the desktop of your classroom virtual machine environment to connect.

Please refer to the assigned systems you were given at the beginning of the lab. You will access the vCenter server over RDP. The VMware Workstation image you are using has the necessary RDP sessions already on the desktop.

Double-click on your assigned RDP connection. You will be presented with a credentials authentication similar to the following:

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Enter the RDP Gateway Userid and Password as provided on the previous page of this guide. Your screen should appear similar to the following:

You will next be prompted for the desktop credentials. Provide the vCenter Server login and password credentials as indicated on page 1 of this guide. The completed credentials should appear similar to the following:

Should you be prompted for any certificate or site acceptance criteria, please accept them. The login process may take a few moments while the session is secured; please be patient. After successful authentication, an RDP desktop should be visibile, and looks similar to the picture below:

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Open the DMP for VMware installation folder located on the vCenter desktop by double-clicking or selecting Open.

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Install vSphere Plug-in, Console Software and CLI interface

In this section, we will install the vCenter Plug-in for VERITAS DMP for VMware and the DMP console that is used to allow for a bridge between the plug-in and the ESXi components. These are required components to ensure that the vSphere plug-in can talk to VxDMP ESX components and to allow for statistics to be gathered from the ESX hosts.

To do this, run the following steps:

1. Locate the Setup.exe and double click on the (Setup.exe) executable:

After executing Setup.exe, the following screen will display momentarily.

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This will start the VERITAS Dynamic Multipathing Installer (above).

2. Next, click on the Install button to install the VxDMP Console and Command Line Interface (CLI). Clicking this will also install the vCenter Plug-in required by the VxDMP product.

Note: The Product Installer will take a few minutes while it verifies the prerequisites. Please be patient. If not already installed, the installer will install a C++ and a J# Redistributable package on the node. We have taken care of this step for you, so the wait times are less.

Once the prerequisites are done, you will see the items on the GUI below

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Note to students: Notice that the ports 14241 and 14242 are needed by the VxDMP product. Only port 14242 must be open through any firewall. In this lab, we have taken care of this step for you. In your environments, please note you will need to handle these port requirements for DMP Management.

The screen above will appear after pre-requisites are done and any packages for installation are installed. Click Next. Please Accept the EULA License Agreement and Click Next

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Now we will see the installation screen. This allows you to choose the lab system you are installing on and the directory where the DMP Console will be installed. Since these binaries are small, there is little need to change the defaults, however, if your environment restricts installation to this common directory, it gives you the chance to change it.

Note that you may change the installation directory and re-verify any settings. Accept the defaults. Please click Next

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On the next screen, fill in the details of the vCenter Server that you are using with your lab.

You do not need to change the IP of the VxDMP Console IP, this is the IP of the local node where the installation is occurring (the vCenter Server in our case). Fill in the name of the vCenter Server you were assigned: ia-dmpvcXX.ia1.tso.cloud where XX is the number given to you by the instructors.

Leave the vCenter Web Service Port with the default value

Enter your vCenter User Name and Password shown below:

Login: Administrator

Password: Passw0rd

See below for an example:

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Once you are done with the values, click Next

The product installer will verify the login credentials with the vCenter Server, please be patient. It may take a few moments to accomplish this task.

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Click Next after verifying the pre-install report

The installation will take a few moments to install the binaries to the machine. Note the installer will provide an overview of features and settings for the product as it is installing. You may also click on Show Details which will provide more detailed information as the DMP Console is installing.

See the next few images as verification.

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Once the installation completes successfully (pictured above), you can click Next.

This will register the console service with vCenter and sets up the DMP Console configuration.

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Note: You may get a Security Warning complaining about a Certificate Warning. If so, click the checkbox to Install this certificate and do not display any security warnings,

Then click on Ignore

Once you are done you can click Finish. See below:

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You can now close the Installer Screen. Click on the “X” on the upper right hand corner of the installer application.

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Note the two new short-cuts on the Windows Desktop (shown above). These are discussed in the appendix of this lab guide. VxDDLAdm and VxDMPAdm are the two shortcuts which you can use to interact with VxDMP on ESXi through the command line.

.

Congratulations! You have now installed and configured the Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware vCenter Plug-in, DMP Console, and the Command Line Interface. BUT Wait! You are not done yet. This is only the vSphere plug-in and the DMP Communications console the VxDMP needs to work with ESXi. We will prepare to install the DMP Binaries on the VMware ESX system in the next section.

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Lab Exercise 2:

vSphere Client and VxDMP VMware Update Manager Push Installation

In this section we will use the vSphere Client to utilize VMware’s Update Manager tool to install the Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware binaries to the appropriate ESXi host in the lab. This is not the only method that you can use to install the VxDMP binaries onto the ESXi servers. Alternatively, you can use the ‘vihostupdate’ (ESX 4.1) or ‘esxcli’ (ESX 5.x) CLI provided by VMware to install the components. This is a manual CLI process, however it can be used where needed, and is fully documented in the DMP for VMware installation guide. To show the ease of installation of VxDMP, we will use VMware Update Manager to install to the hosts. This is VMware’s most direct and supported method of installing patches, and third-party tools on ESXi. This will more closely match what most VMware administrators will use in their production environments.

Note: If you would like to install VxDMP using the manual method, please inform an instructor. They will guide you through the process of manually installing the packages on the ESXi host. It is not required.

Experts: If you are familiar with vSphere Client and how to navigate through it, you can log into the vSphere client here, go to “Hosts and Clusters”, select your ESXi hosts, and select VMware Update Manger. Skip down to the Scan Host section below after logging in.

To Begin:

On the Windows GUI, double click on the VMware vSphere Client icon on the Windows Desktop

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This will bring up the login screen, fill out the appropriate credentials here as previously given:

Hostname: ia-dmpvcXX.ia1.tso.cloud (where XX is your lab number provided by instructors) User Name: Administrator Password: Passw0rd

(Or you may click on the Use Windows session credentials check box)

Click on Login

Since this is (assumedly) the first time this vCenter Server has been logged into, you will get a Certificate Warning (see below), please click the “Install this certificate “checkbox and then click Ignore.

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After a few moments, you will see the vSphere GUI.

Click on the Home Symbol in the Navigation tool bar

Using VMware Update Manager to install the VxDMP binaries to the ESXi server provides a scalable way for administrators to distribute packages and patches across a VMware environment. The process to deploy packages thru Update Manager requires that the packages be imported to the Update Manager database, and a policy or ‘baseline’ created to apply to ESX servers. The first step is to import the packages into Update Manager. Double-click on Update Manger under the Solutions and Applications in the above screen shot (highlighted). You will see the main Update Manager screen. It is then necessary to import the packages to the Patch Repository. Click on the “Patch Repository” tab as shown.

Click the “Import Patches”. Browse to Desktop->VxDMP 6.0.1 Install Media -> Pkgs -> ESX-ESXi and select the “VxDMP-6.0.100.000_ESX5.x_offline-bundle.zip” file, then click on Open, followed by Next.

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Select “Install this certificate” and select Ignore for any Security Warnings.

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Finally, confirm the import of the packages by selecting “Finish”.

Now that the packages are available to Update Manager, a Baseline may be created to associate the DMP for VMware binaries. Select the “Baselines and Groups” tab, followed by “Create” under the Baselines.

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Populate the New Baseline dialog using “VxDMP Baseline” as the name, an appropriate description, and ensure that “Host Extension” is selected, then click Next.

Next, add the Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing packages to the baseline by selecting the package in the top frame, and adding by pressing the down arrow as indicated in the screenshot below.

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Validate that the Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing extension has been added, and then press Next, followed by Finish in the next dialog. The DMP for VMware baseline has now been created and may be associated to ESX hosts within vCenter.

The steps required to setup and configure VMware Update Manager (VUM) for use with Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware are also outlined in the DMP for VMware installation guide available on the installation media or via SORT.

Next, the VxDMP Baseline that was just created must be associated with host(s) within vCenter.

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Return to the Home view by Clicking on Home, and then Click on the Hosts and Clusters Icon near the top of the working pane of the GUI.

Select the appropriate ESXi server assigned to you (it should be the only one there) named ia-esx-XX.ia1.tso.cloud (where XX is your assigned lab system, 01, 02, … 16, etc.)

Then, on the tabs to the right, select the Update Manager Tab

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Associating a Baseline with the ESX server will allow Update Manger to scan the host and ensure compliance with the baseline. The “VxDMP Baseline” that was created in the previous step will now be attached to the ESX server for the lab. Select “Attach”

Select the “VxDMP Baseline” and click Attach.

Since the Lab environment is a fresh install, we will need to run the ESXi host through the Update Manager scan process. Select Scan from the Update Manager tab.

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In the dialog that pops-up, select the checkbox that will scan for “Patches and Extensions” and then click Scan.

While this runs, notice in the Recent Tasks the Progress of the scanning of the Host.

When the scan is done, the status will change to Completed…

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After the scan completes, you should see in the Update Manager screen under hosts compliance view that the ESXi host is “Non-Compliant”. This is simply indicating that the physical host does not have the appropriate software installed for VxDMP as outlined in the baseline.

To Remediate (this will actually perform the installation of DMP for VMware), click the Remediate button at the bottom of the screen in the Update Manager tab.

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This will bring up the Remediate Wizard dialog for this host.

Ensure that the VxDMP Baseline on the right underneath Baselines is selected. Validate the selections match above and then click Next. Verify that the package for VxDMP is selected (see below) and then click Next

Next, on the Schedule Screen, you may optionally fill in the Task Description.

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On the Host Remediations Options screen, please select the Failure Response drop down to “Power Off virtual machines and Retry”, and set the Retry Delay 2 minutes. Leave the number of retries set to 3 (default). Please see the screenshot below.

Once done, click Next Now you should see the Ready to Complete panel which will allow you to confirm your selections:

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Click Finish to begin the remediation

You will see tasks in the bottom task bar, where the DMP for VMware packages are being installed to the ESX host.

Once the packages have been installed, Update Manager will reboot the ESX system. This reboot may take several minutes. If the ESX host shows disconnected from vCenter for a long period of time, please inform your instructor who has console access to the systems and can further assist.

Note: In regular production use of Update Manager, VMware vMotion would be used to move running virtual machines to other ESX nodes while the ESX server reboots, ensuring no guest virtual machine impact.

Once the ESXi host is back on line, it will automatically reconnect to vCenter. Go back into the Update Manager tab.

After the reboot, the system may already show that it is compliant with the attached VxDMP Baseline, indicated by the following screen shot.

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If the host does not show as Compliant, Scan the host again using the same process as previously. The host should be compliant. If the host does not indicate as Compliant, please notify your lab instructor.

After the reboot, one of the things you can see now, is that VxDMP now owns the SAN Devices under the storage configuration. To show this, Click on the Configuration tab, followed by clicking the Storage selection under Hardware, and then on the Devices View in the working pane. Note the Owner column in the Device listing (you may wish to sort by Owner):

Congratulations! You have now successfully installed VxDMP for ESXi. Using the VMware Update Manager tool allows the greatest simplicity in installations across many ESXi nodes. We now have the environment ready to use VxDMP as the multi-pathing solution for ESXi. The next section will introduce you to the environment and VxDMP licensing.

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Lab Exercise 3:

Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware Licensing

In this section, we will demonstrate the existing I/O path status before license installation along with installing a valid Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware license using the vSphere Client.

First, if you are not already in the vSphere Client, please log in using the steps in the previous vSphere section.

Select the assigned ESXi host(s) from the Hosts and Clusters view in the vSphere Client. Then, select the VxDMP tab which now appears at the top in the working pane.

Note: You may get a security warning when first selecting the tab, just select Yes

Your vSphere GUI screen should look something like what is depicted below.

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Now expand the storage array “3PARdata0” selection tree on the left under VxDMP Configuration, and highlight one of the LUNs presented to the Host from that array. Note the small yellow triangle and the state of the paths attached to this LUN (only one path will be enabled, while the others show NO_LICENSE). See below. This indicates that the appropriate license for VxDMP has not been installed on the vCenter Server. Without a full license, VxDMP will only utilize one path, but would fail-over should the enabled path fail.

To enable all ports, a license key will be added in the next step.

To install a VxDMP license, select Inventory > Solutions and Applications > VERITAS Dynamic Multi-Pathing from the vSphere GUI navigation toolbar.

OR, you can select Home, then Click on the VERITAS Dynamic Multi-Pathing Icon (see Next Page)

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This will send you to the main VxDMP Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware plug-in configuration (console) page.

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Next, click on the License Management Tab on the top of the working pane.

Select the ESXi host you are assigned to for the lab (ia-esx-XX) and either right click on the host or click on the Apply License button (see below)

Use the following evaluation license to apply to the ESXi host you selected above:

AJP9-RXJV-NWUN-W438-WPP8-PPPP-PPPP-PCC Enter this key, exactly as it appears above, into the text box and check the “I accept the terms of the License Agreement”.

Then, click on the Apply button.

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When the dialog completes, you will see the following entry for the ESXi host you installed the key on:

Then, once the license has been uploaded to the ESXi host, you can click OK to dismiss the Add New License dialog.

Notice the host now has a license and is using an active key:

Navigate back to Hosts and Clusters in the vSphere Client by Selecting Inventory > Hosts and Clusters

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Please make sure you select also the VxDMP tab on the tabs on the top of the working pane.

Navigate through the VxDMP Configuration pane on the left to the LUNs presented to the host. (Select the array, expand it, and select a LUN.)

Once there, click the Refresh button in the upper right hand corner of the working pane

Now notice that all paths for the LUNs presented to the ESXi Host are now ENABLED.

Congratulations! At this point you have licensed the product and enabled both of the paths to the storage LUNs presented to the ESXi host. You should also have a basic understanding of how to browse the Arrays and LUNs sections of the VxDMP Plug-in.

In the next section, we will walk through the basic usage of VxDMP for VMware using the vSphere Client.

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Lab Exercise 4:

VxDMP vCenter Operations using the vSphere GUI

In this section we will familiarize you with how to gather statistics and navigate through the VxDMP vSphere plug-in for DMP on ESXi. Follow these steps to see how you can alter paths, select DMP algorithms, and observe the differing I/O patterns that can be seen using the Plug-in. We will use these to see how generated I/O on a guest can be seen easily in the GUI.

Now that we have installed the license and verified that paths are enabled, you can click on the ESXi server (ia-esx-XX) beneath the pane of the VxDMP Configuration panel on the left.

Note that this displays the information about the Arrays attached. You can also hover over the graphics below to get high-level, real-time statistics for the array for reads and writes.

By default, the GUI displays the Storage View. Select the HBAs tab (shown below) to get information about the HBAs attached to this host and associated array. Note the granular statistics available to VMware administrators directly in the vSphere GUI using VxDMP. Hovering over any information bubble provides context information.

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Another important feature here includes being able to reset and disable statistics gathering, and the ability to change which type of statistics you can view:

The available statistics within vCenter include:

• Operations • Block • Average Time (ms)

You can select these two tabs to get other views of the statistics gathered by VxDMP by selecting the links. The page will update automatically. Try selecting on the Blocks view.

You can also change the Auto Refresh times as well by selecting the dropdown next to Auto Refresh:

This will alter the amount of time between automatic updates. The data is obtained in real-time from the ESX server.

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Next, select or highlight the 3PARdata0 array on the left. Note that the statistics and LUN names are now displayed which will also detail the statistics gathered for these devices.

You can select the Array Ports tab at the top of the DMP Plug-in to get information about the array ports that these devices use as well. This gives you another view of how the array side is performing. NOTE: Not all arrays, such as the 3PAR, provide array port data. Other array types will show different data, depending upon their support for array port information.

Next, select one of the individual LUNs attached to this array. These are under the array listing on the left hand pane of the working view.

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Note the Number of paths attached, shown at the top of the working pane.

Also note at the bottom of the view that each path is shown with statistics for each of the HBAs interaction with the selected LUN. We will make use of this view in the next section of the lab.

You may also select the Tabular form to observe the statistics gathered in tabular form if you wish.

Now let’s get some further detail on the DMP settings and tunables available for VMware ESXi using the VxDMP product. DMP is highly tunable for specific I/O workloads, though the default configuration should meet most customer needs. You can also set up DMP to have differing alerting and timeouts depending on the storage attached to the ESXi host environment. Follow these steps to look at these settings:

Select/Highlight the ESXi server under VxDMP Configuration on the left hand pane. This is the ESXi server you installed VxDMP on. It is the lab node assigned to you (ia-esx-XX).

Then, select the Settings button on the right hand side of the working pane. (It looks like a gear)

This will pop up a dialog which will allow users to configure various DMP and Storage path settings.

Select the DMP Daemon Control group on the left. Note the number of tunables and values which can be set here.

If you use your mouse and hover over the settings, a help dialog will appear showing a brief description of each of the settings. This is helpful in determining what features can be enabled and changed using the dialog. Additionally, context sensitive help is available by pressing the blue question mark shown on screen.

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Detailed help is available in the system browser, as shown below.

Close the help window, at this time.

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For the purposes of this lab, there is nothing that needs to be changed in the tunables. Simply note that there are many tunables available to end users to maximize the throughput and availability of storage using VxDMP. There is detailed documentation on these settings in the VxDMP Administrators guide which comes with the software or is downloadable from http://sort.symantec.com

You may look at the other Settings groups to see them, but you do not need to change them for the purposes of the lab. Note the DMP Error Recovery tunables which can be changed to your specific array type and environment. Also note the Error Recovery group which allows you to set specific error recovery in the event of path loss.

Please dismiss the settings dialog by clicking ‘Cancel’. We will come back to settings and I/O settings in the next section.

Lab Exercise 5:

VxDMP Array and I/O Algorithm Operations

We will begin to look at how the VxDMP product can be used to add availability and ensure performance across Array Enclosures. This section shows examples of how to change the I/O algorithms to maximize Array functionality while preserving availability.

To Begin, we need to get some VMware I/O going in the test lab so that you can begin to see I/O patterns.

First, Login to vSphere Client if you have not already done so. See the above section on how to do this if you need assistance.

Power on the RHEL 6.3 SAN-XX VMware guest in your Lab, which is running on the ia-esx-XX (where XX is the number given to you in the lab). You can do this by right clicking on the RHEL 6.3 SAN-XX entry in vSphere Client > Power > Power On. Or you can highlight it and click the Green arrow on the top of the GUI. Please give this a few moments as the host needs to start. Note: Please do not manipulate the power state of other Virtual Machines on this host.

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After the node has started (3-5 minutes maximum), you can check to see if it is fully up by selecting Open Console to see if the server is at the desktop login prompt.

Note: We have taken care of generating Read, Write, and Random I/O in this Guest for you, starting at boot time. There is no need to login to this node if you don’t want to. If you wish, as an extra exercise, you can ask your instructor how to log into this console to look at the I/O generation script and modify it to your needs.

At this point, I/O should be occurring, and we will observe it within the VxDMP vCenter Plug-in.

To look at the I/O generation, navigate to the ESXi host (ia-esx-XX) and click on the VxDMP tab on the top of the working panel.

Once there, note the I/O patterns and amounts on the bottom section of the Plug-in window. Again, remember I/O’s are already occurring, so there should be some data displayed.

Set a refresh rate of 15 seconds on the GUI by selecting the Auto Refresh dropdown box and selecting ’15’.

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Next, use the Settings button to change the I/O algorightm of the selected array for this lab. Make sure you select the 3PARdata0 array on the left under VxDMP Configuration, then select the Settings button on the right.

This will bring up the Settings dialog where the default I/O policy (iopolicy) will be set to MinimumQ. This algorightm is the VxDMP default. MinQ tells DMP to use the path to the array which has the least amount of I/O in its specific path (HBA) queue. This is the best general purpose algorithm to use all paths effectively, ensuring that none of the HBAs are left idle. If we left the setting of iopolicy to MinimumQ and you went and viewed the statistical graphs, you would see that the HBAs would start to evenly distribute the I/O being generated to the array. You can see an example of this in the bar charts in the diagram below.

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Now we can use the settings to change the I/O Policy to whichever you decide is best for your environment. For the purposes of the Lab, change the I/O policy to Single-Active, then click OK. Observe over the next minute or so the changes in the I/O patterns displayed in the statistics pane (or tabular view). Watch which of the LUNs on the bottom of the graphical representation to see which LUNs are receiving the varying I/O on the RHEL host. To see what happens to the I/O pattern after making these IO policy changes, click on one of the LUNs below the registered array and notice the changes in the I/O (in this case from using all eight paths to only using one).

After a few minutes of observation, go back into settings and change the I/O policy to another pattern of your

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choice. Then repeat your observations based on your needs. This is your opportunity to explore the different I/O algorithms available with VxDMP for VMware. You may get an explanation of each of the algorithms by selecting the blue help icon while on the Settings page.

When you are finished exploring, please reset the default I/O policy to MinimumQ for the next set of exercises.

So, you are thinking, what if a path fails? We can simulate this using VxDMP to show you what will happen when a path fails, disappears, or is taken out of the configuration. Let’s discuss this below.

Since we are in a lab and cannot physically shut down a path (by unplugging it or rebooting a switch), we will simulate this by shutting down an HBA from the host. You may identify the HBA’s attached to the storage array from the view shown below. DO NOT disable both HBA’s simultaneously!

To disable the HBA, highlight the ESX server on the left (1) and then select the HBAs tab at the top of the working window (2). You should see the HBAs and their current status displayed. See below. Select one of the HBAs, Right click and Select Disable (3).

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This will bring up a dialog. Confirm the HBA you are disabling, and then click OK.

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You will see VxDMP disabling the HBA controller.

Once the HBA is disabled, the screen will refresh and you will see that the HBA is now disabled, and the LUNs for the storage array are highlighted with a warning indicator next to them in the panel on the left of the VxDMP Plug working pane. This is indicating that a DMP event has taken place (in this case, disabling the HBA, resulting in the loss of some paths to disk).

You may also access the DMP Events notifications by selecting the Events button, indicated by the red arrow above. A window will pop up showing the DMP Events. You will see the various events related to disabling the path. You may dismiss this box by clicking OK.

If would like to see the difference in the I/O, highlight one of the LUNs you observed before and look at the I/O statistics for that LUN. You should observe a skew in the I/O between the paths since an HBA is now disabled. The alternate HBA paths will begin to handle I/O. The statistics may take a few moments to refresh, so please be patient. You may also be able to observe this better in the Tabular View.

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Note: Even if you left the lab section above in Single Active or in another I/O policy, VxDMP will ensure that even if you disabled a path, it will use the remaining path.

Please take a few moments to explore if you wish. I/O will still be generated by the RHEL client for some time.

After you are done exploring the environment, please re-enable the HBA by selecting the ESX Host > select the HBA tab > then right click on the disabled HBA and choose Enable.

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Choose the HBA controller, and then click OK. The HBA will re-enable. The warning icons on the LUNs should disappear upon successful re-enabling of all HBAs.

If you wish, you can view the statistics view of the LUNs to see the I/O pattern return to using both paths (depending upon your selected algorithm).

Congratulations! You have now completed this section of the VxDMP Lab. You should be able to configure a path, monitor its status, along with resulting I/O pattern changes.

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Lab Exercise 6:

VxDMP in the vSphere DataCenter View

VxDMP for VMware ESXi is much more than an availability tool. You can also use it to display statistics on I/O for multiple ESX servers in a vCenter environment. In this section of the lab, we will demonstrate how VxDMP can display statistics for all ESXi I/O across the datacenter. This view would show all storage visible to the ESX servers registered to vCenter in this datacenter. Screenshots from a configuration with multiple attached ESX servers are shown below. Note: The concepts are identical for this lab, just with a smaller vCenter configuration.

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All vCenter datacenter attached storage arrays are visible (1). Host connectivity is available by hovering over the information bubble (2). Array serial information is shown (3), as well as load distribution to the selected array for all ESX hosts (4), and the storage array port usage information (if applicable for the array connected) (5).

Clicking the Read/Write bar graph (4 above) for an individual host brings up detailed information shown on the next page.

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The details provided in this view include the LUN (1), mapping of virtual machine guests that are running on a specific LUN (2), the virtual disks for specific guests (3), and cumulative I/O statistics for the LUN (4). This view is invaluable to administrators in determining the real-time performance of their ESX environment, and is also a vital tool in troubleshooting performance issues, and I/O bottlenecks.

To look at some of these statistics for the DMP lab environment, we will navigate to the DataCenter view.

Select the “DMP Lab” datacenter on the left of the screen, then select the “VxDMP” tab on the working pane of the vSphere GUI. Ensure that the “Host” tab is selected.

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This will show the individual ESX servers which are part of the vCenter datacenter, as well as an overview of the DMP Version installed, any associated Tuning Templates, License Status, and summary information about the number of arrays and hosts.

If you have made DMP tuning changes to your environment, it may be desirable to save these to a Tuning Template, so that they could be applied to other ESX hosts, rather than having to manually make changes. To save the current Tuning Template for your lab system, select the host, right-click, and highlight “Save Template”. You can save this file to the Desktop of your vCenter system by selecting Save in the resulting pop-up. Scrolling in this pop-up will show the configuration parameters that are captured in the template. You could subsequently apply the Tuning Template to other systems by selecting the host, right-clicking on “Apply Template” and providing the file previously saved, and selecting which other ESX hosts to apply the template. For the purposes of this lab, we will only save the template file.

Let’s now take a look at the attached arrays. Select the “Storage” tab. This will display the array(s) attached to ESXi hosts in this datacenter. Observe the various statistics and information available on the “Load Distribution” and “LUNs” tabs.

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Observe the Arrays and the hosts attached (for purposes of the lab there is a single array and single host). For larger configurations, all the arrays and attached hosts would be shown here. Note: You can hover over the small information bubble next in the Hosts Connected tab. This will list all of the VMware hosts attached to this Array.

Also note that the datacenter view can also display array port I/O distribution by Port in a Pie Chart. This is useful in noting how the I/O is being distributed to various ports in your datacenter storage (arrays). This data is not available for all array types, but is shown here from an array that support array port discovery. The 3PARdata array used for the lab does not provide array port information. The screenshot below was taken from an array which reports array port information.

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These charts are another powerful tool to note how your environment is behaving. You can see in the example above that more I/O is going over one port than another.

Next return to the “Load Distribution” tab, and note the graphical bar charts for the host(s) at the bottom of the working pane.

Here we can highlight and click on either the “read” or “write” bar to get statistics and mappings of the Virtual Machine and Virtual Disk to the individual LUNs. Please see below.

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Observe the various statistics available for Operations, Blocks, and Avg Time. Additionally, statistics can be exported to CSV as well. Finally select the tabular view in the upper right corner as shown above to access the “Load Distribution by LUN” information.

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Think of this as your way of getting I/O statistics on a per-VM per-LUN view. This helps identify which LUNs are receiving the most I/O, and which virtual machines reside on those LUNs, and finally how each of those I/O’s are performing.

Obviously with only one VM per lab environment, you will not see a great deal here. However, it is important to point out this valuable piece of information which can be used to aid in identification of nodes which may have I/O issues. With many VMware environments sharing a single, or a few, disk arrays, you can quickly see how easily having these types of statistics will help you drive optimal performance, availability, and visibility across the datacenter.

While you are exploring, have a look around in the Blocks/Average Time tabs or you can look into the individual views. Note the various changes in statistics as your view changes and how this can be used to troubleshoot and gather information on application behaviors. Remember, these values are available to you on a granular per HBA or Array port basis as well if you expand and highlight objects in the view selection.

Congratulations! You have completed the VxDMP Lab. If you have time, and would like to view some of the command line interface operations, please refer to the Appendix. Please remember to fill out your evaluation forms and thank you for your attendance!

Lab Appendix (aka I want to do more!): Optional Exercise 1:

Dynamic Multi-Pathing, Alternative I/O Policy

In some customer environments, physical infrastructure limitations or application setups where the I/O connectivity is not symmetrical may necessitate restrictions on how I/O is balanced in an environment. You can use the power of DMP to weight the amount of I/O sent down a particular path by setting a Priority Path I/O Policy. Think of the following scenario.

A customer may have an environment where a redundant 16-port SAN fabric is deployed. The first fabric is a standard 4GB 16-port switch. The other, redundant fabric is built from two legacy 8-port 2GB switches, with a 2GB ISL between them. You can see here that if you want to balance I/O across both environments, but not overwhelm the legacy 2GB port environment, you would want more I/O to go over the 16-port 4 GB switch. This is depicted in the diagram below.

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You can see that this from using DMP’s Priority I/O algorithm to use both fabrics effectively.

We will demonstrate the use of a Priority Policy in VxDMP here. To begin, navigate back to the ESX host, select the VxDMP tab and select the 3PARdata enclosure, followed by the Settings button to view the active enclosure I/O policy.

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Select the Priority I/O policy from the iopolicy drop-down, and then click OK. This immediately turns on the Priority Policy for the enclosure for this ESX host (Note: Different hosts may access the same physical array using different I/O policies simultaneously), with no guest impact.

Next, once the Priority Policy has been enabled, select an individual 10GB LUN in your lab environment, sort on the “HBA” column to sort by HBA. Choose the lower numbered HBA device individually, right-click and Select “Set Preferred”.

We will assign the lower number HBA to be Priority 10 (higher numbers indicate a path can sustain more load). The use of a significantly larger Priority will make the preference more pronounced for the purposes of the lab, and may not be appropriate for production environments.

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Select the “Set Priority for the preferred path” box, and assign a priority of 10 to the path connected to lower numbered HBA. Click OK to confirm your settings. Repeat for the second path on the same HBA. Repeat this process for both paths on the other HBA (higher numbered), using a priority of 1.

Repeat the above steps for each LUN.

Once this is done, wait a minute or two to allow some I/O to begin to be sent down the ports based on the assigned priorities (higher values receive more I/O). Click on the LUN statistics and begin to view the pattern changes. You should see a noticeable difference between the I/O on the paths to the LUN (you may wish to reset the statistics to observe this more easily). View this over the next couple of minutes. Remember, you can sort the tabular view to look at the statistics.

You have now completed the I/O Priority section of the Lab Appendix.

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Optional Exercise 2:

DMP Command Line Interface

If you have prior experience with DMP on other VERITAS Products, you may wish to see some of the command line interface operations which could be useful to users in an ESXi environment. While it isn’t required to learn and use the command line to work with VxDMP for VMware, there may be some scripting or other operations which may be valuable to some users. This section has a few basic commands and procedures to list information to alter or configure your DMP environment.

These command line utilities were installed as part of the DMP Console installation performed earlier.

VxDMPAdm (DMP Administration)

Double click on the ‘vxdmpadm’ icon on the vCenter Server Windows Desktop:

Just double clicking on the icon will list the help section (as above)

Using this interface we can manipulate VxDMP configurations, settings, and operations. The command can also be used in a script to manipulate settings on a as needed basis or as part of an operation to affect I/O patterns based on needs during off-business hours.

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Run some of these commands below as an example of how you can interact with the VxDMP settings in your environment.

To set the host you want to interact with you may specify it on the command line or set an environment variable using: set ESX_HOST_NAMES=<ia-esx-XX> Note: Multiple ESX hosts may be specified to run the same command on a number of hosts simultaneously. For the purposes of the lab, we’ll use just the host assigned. You may specify the vCenter username and password on the command line, or you may simply press Enter to be prompted interactively for credentials. You should only need to enter your username/password once, as vCenter provides a time-limited authentication key. Should you not execute a command for a few minutes, you would need to authenticate again.

vxdmpadm listenclosure 3PARdata0 all vxdmpadm license vxdmpadm listapm vxdmpadm getattr vxdmpadm listapm

Note that many of the items, such as the getattr option, will display the same settings available to be manipulated as in the GUI. There are many operations available to you. Explore as you wish.

Device Discovery Libraries:

Another tool is the DDL listing for assigning Array Support Libraries for use with DMP.

Here you can use the vxddladm command to alter the Array Support Libraries and Disk Discovery Libraries available in DMP to match your specific configuration. As new arrays come in to your enterprise, some Array Libraries need to be changed to match these configurations. Use this tool to modify an existing installation, to update a library, or to add new arrays to your configuration.

Please see the command options below.

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Congratulations! You have completed the VxDMP Lab Optional Exercises. Feel free to further explore the product, and please don’t forget to fill out your evaluation forms! Thank you for your attendance!


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