Dell PS Series vLAB guide - Amazon S3...demonstration of the Dell PS Series Storage array. You will illustrate its ease-of-use in handling basic storage management tasks, demonstrate

f

Dell PS Series vLAB guide

Demos.dell.com – Storage domain

Dell Confidential

Dell

Document Version: 1.40

Date: November 2015

Dell | Global Sales Learning & Development

Page 2 of 117 Dell confidential

Table of Contents

Demonstration Labs .................................................................................................................. 4

Introduction and preparation ............................................................................................................................................. 4

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Your demo environment ...................................................................................................................................................... 4

Preparing the environment ................................................................................................................................................. 7

Preparing the agenda ........................................................................................................................................................ 7

DPACK and Dell Services ................................................................................................................................................. 9

Navigation – Set the scene ................................................................................................................................................. 9

1 Demo session 1 – PS Ease-of-use ..................................................................................... 10

1.0 - Introduction................................................................................................................................................................... 10

1.1 Gotchas ............................................................................................................................................................................... 13

1.2 Technical selling points ............................................................................................................................................... 13

1.3 Technical Objective Handling ................................................................................................................................... 13

1.4.1 - Adding a New Member to existing PS Group ......................................................................................... 15

1.4.2 - Using the PS Group Manager GUI .............................................................................................................. 20

1.4.3 - Volume Management and Microsoft iSCSI Initiator tool ................................................................... 30

1.4.4 Access Policies and Policy Groups ................................................................................................................. 59

2 Demo session 2 – Data protection ................................................................................... 63

2.0 - Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................. 63

2.1 Gotchas ............................................................................................................................................................................... 65

2.2 Technical selling points ............................................................................................................................................... 66

2.3 Technical objective handling .................................................................................................................................... 66

2.4.1 - Creating a Snapshot of a Volume and Recovering data.................................................................... 67

2.4.2 - Replicating a volume ....................................................................................................................................... 80

2.4.3 - Using Auto-Snapshot Manager to perform a Smart Copy of a volume..................................... 85

2.4.4 - Asynchronous Replication between two Groups (Optional for this demo.) .......................... 96

3 Demo session 3 – SAN Headquarters ............................................................................. 103



3.0 - Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 103

3.1 Gotchas ............................................................................................................................................................................ 103

3.2 Technical selling points ............................................................................................................................................ 104

3.3.1 - Introduction to the SAN HQ GUI .............................................................................................................. 104

3.3.2 - Demonstrating specific reports, graphs, and views ......................................................................... 106

3.3.3 – Interpreting historical workloads using SANHQ ................................................................................ 111



Demonstration Labs

Introduction and preparation

Introduction

There are three structured demos that leverage the Dell Demo Center online labs to illustrate storage features of the PS Series portfolio and its associated software integration capabilities. As well as the basic demo task list, each demo outline is structured to supply additional information that you can use to deliver a compelling introduction to the product for customers. The purpose of this document is to provide provides delivers on “How” to deliver an effective live demonstration of the Dell PS Series Storage array. You will illustrate its ease-of-use in handling basic storage management tasks, demonstrate how its advanced data protection capabilities work and provide an overview of its management and monitoring features. The document will focus on the following elements:

Providing a short explanation of the PS Series storage architecture while delivering an overview of the PS Group Manager.

Initializing a new member and demonstrating how iSCSI path management is configured using the remote setup wizard on Windows.

Demonstrating the ease with which volumes can be provisioned and presented to a server.

Configuring snapshots and replication.

Demonstrating the use of Auto Snapshot Manager to create a smart copy of a Windows volume and introducing ASM’s ability to take application-consistent Smart copies for Exchange, SQL, Hyper-V.

Demonstrating the key features of SAN HQ, showing how it can be used for monitoring and analyzing a PS SAN environment.

Your demo environment

Before you begin, please take note of the information below which is required to run your demo. A quick start guide is also available on the Demo Details page of Dell Demo Center if you need further assistance.

You can open the demo environment information guide at any time during your demo by opening the default page in the Internet Explorer browser. This will list the configuration information shown below. As this environment can be used to demonstrate many additional features, e.g. vSphere integration, ASM SQL Smart copies etc., there are items listed below, e.g. the vSphere and SQL servers, that are not used during the demonstrations covered in this document.



Demo details

Demo Name: PS

Local Server Details vSphere Client/Web Client Login:

Username:

Password:

demouser

password

Username:

Password:

demouser

password

ESX Login SQL Server Login

Username:

Password:

root

password

Username:

Password:

sa

password01

EQL Group 1 Details

Uninitialized Array

Please use the following guidelines when initializing the second array

Group Name:

Username:

Password:

Group IP Address:

Subnet Mask:

Pre-Configured Member Array IP Address:

demo-group1

grpadmin

password01

10.10.10.10

255.255.255.0

10.10.10.11

Free IP Addresses:

Subnet Mask:

Join Group:

Group Password:

10.10.10.30 - 50

255.255.255.0

demo-group1

password

EQL Group 2 Details

Group Name:

Username:

Password:

Group IP Address:

Subnet Mask:

Pre-Configured Member Array IP Address:

demo-group2

grpadmin

password01

10.10.10.20

255.255.255.0

10.10.10.21



Environment overview

This demo is running on 2 x PS Series virtual arrays with firmware version 8.0 (configured), 1 x EQL Virtual Array with firmware version 8 (un-configured for discovery), EQL Hit Kit 4.6, VSM for VMWare Appliance 4.0.1 and SANHQ 3.0.

The first array is preconfigured as a member of demo-group1 with array ip-address 10.10.10.11. This network address of this array and its group membership must not be modified during your demo as this could affect the demo environment reset process and you must not modify the grpadmin password for demo-group1.

All of the demonstrations detailed below are carried out using a single PS Group with two members in two separate storage pools.



Preparing the environment

It is in your best interests to ensure the environment in which you will be demonstrating is clean and tidy before you begin. For this reason we recommend, where possible, that you log in to your demo at least 15 minutes prior to delivery and check the following;

Ensure any alerts/popups on your Windows Servers are resolved.

Check that your user credentials are functioning correctly. Do this by logging in to the PS Group Manager.

Check that remote setup wizard can detect an uninitialized member on the network.

Check that the PS VSS user account credentials are correctly configured.

Familiarize yourself with the environment and ensure your demo instance is set up correctly.

Make sure that there are no volumes configured on the SAN and that there are no old iSCSI initiator mappings to deleted volumes in the iSCSI initiator on your server.

Click Start, Run, cmd to open a command prompt window. Run ipconfig to obtain the “Ethernet adapter Storage” IP address of the Demo Center operating system you are logged in to. Record this IP address, as it will be needed later on when you are presenting a volume to this OS. (Example: 10.10.10.17)

Open the Windows iSCSI Initiator Tool, click on the Discovery tab, highlight any target portals listed, and select Remove. This will ensure the demonstration will look more realistic when you present the volume to the host.

In the Windows iSCSI Initiator Tool Targets tab, disconnect any and all discovered targets listed. This will ensure a cleaner presentation when performing the demo of Windows disk management.

Preparing the agenda

You should aim to have an understanding of the customer’s current storage requirements and their anticipated growth before scheduling the demo. Where possible, you should get the results of a storage assessment or have the customer run DPACK to provide tangible data as a starting point for discussions. Understand the customer’s environment and needs This is a critical preparatory step, and it should be a priority for all meetings and demo sessions. You don’t want to focus particularly on the customer’s “current storage platform”. What is really required is an end-to-end view of their environment including apps, server, networking, and storage hardware, and the operating systems they use. Critically, you need to focus on any business requirements around recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) and identify how their back-up regime works. One key question here is: “What pain points does your current infrastructure give you?”



You should focus more on the customer’s business requirements as opposed to specific storage features or capabilities. It is very important to listen to what you are being told by the customer – there is no point demonstrating a feature that the customer has no interest in just because it is a part of the standard demo process. Always tailor the demo to the needs of the customer. One of the first steps you should take prior to scheduling a demo is to understand how you are going to articulate the demo. In order to be most effective, you must work with your customer through questions and answers to decide which features and capabilities you should demonstrate.

To achieve this, focus on the right points:

Ask your customer to describe the core business of their company.

Identify why the existing infrastructure and especially the SAN (if any) is critical for their business?

Get a clear understanding of the customer’s level of experience with SANs. Knowing this will help you set the right level of technical detail.

Do they have experience with iSCSI? If not, highlight the key advantages of iSCSI.

Is this the customer’s first SAN?

The agenda and technical level of the demo will be based on your understanding of the customer’s needs. You must take time to do this thoroughly. Understand your customer’s desired infrastructure “Wins” This should tie into the pain points you have explored with the customer. You must focus on the customer’s biggest issues, what is affecting their business, and what are the top three priorities they would like to see from a new infrastructure. Ask your customer what are their expectations from the meeting/demo. Establish what the deciding factors are likely to be so that you can ensure that the Dell solution will be the solution they select.

Your objective here is to succinctly list outcomes such as the following:

Better disk utilization

Better I/O performance

Easy to manage: no need for dedicated storage administrator

Simplified capacity expansion on line

Simplified disaster recovery

More informative/more useful reporting

Faster data recovery to servers /less downtime

Simplify storage lifecycle

Reduce cost of storage purchased

Each of these items can be mapped to a compelling PS feature or capability. During the course of the demonstration, you must ensure that you make the customer aware of how PS will deliver on these items.



DPACK and Dell Services Your first steps in introducing the customer to the demo should start with an analysis of their existing environment. What does the customer require from a performance, capacity, and features perspective? Ideally this should include a review of DPACK results showing the customer’s workload and Dell’s view on what you would size for. At his stage, it is a good idea to remind the customer that Dell offers a range of services that can assist in a deployment, migration, or transformation of their storage environment, as they may not be equipped to handle some or all of the required work themselves.

Navigation – Set the scene

It can be easy to forget that the customer may have no idea what it is they are looking at during the demo, so spend a moment to emphasize the following:

Explain that the demo will be connecting to a remote lab where a combination of virtual machines and physical hardware will be used to provide a live demonstration of PS features and capabilities.

Introduce the management interfaces you plan to use:

o PS Group Manager

o PS Remote Setup Wizard

o Auto Snapshot Manager Microsoft Edition

o SAN HQ



1 Demo session 1 – PS Ease-of-use

Duration: 25 Minutes

1.0 - Introduction

In this demo, you will be performing a brief introduction to PS, You will set up a new member and navigate the PS Group Manager interface, highlighting groups, pools, members and volumes. The aim here is quickly show the key interfaces used to create volumes, control access, and configure management features.

Point out how to view the disk information and member health status graphics. In a physical demo, you can pull a disk and wait for the health status screen to show the failure. Although this isn’t possible in a remote demo, it should still be discussed. Ensure you show the e-mail alerting screen and explain how to set that up.

Key talking point: PS RAID At this stage, you must explain to the customer how PS RAID is configured at the member level. You can set the member RAID policy to whatever you choose, although RAID 5 is now discouraged for obvious reasons. Remember this is a single choice for the entire member. The benefits of having only one RAID level per member outweigh the complexities that are introduced by giving the customer the ability to set multiple RAID types within a member. There are two hot spares per member. Depending on the RAID policy there will be one, two or maybe more parity disks. There will be multiple RAID packs involved here, and for those who are interested, the specifics are detailed in the Firmware Release notes. But note that the detail is only relevant if you want to completely understand the precise values for the usable capacity of a specific member. In general, you will work with the rated capacity listed for each member and that is what you should use for your sizing and design exercises, as those numbers account for the hot spare, RAID parity and the metadata for the PS group. Key talking point: Ease-of-use The management interface was designed for ease-of-use, and intended to be usable by the first-time storage administrator. It’s ideal for any “mom and pop shop” but has true enterprise capabilities, so don’t be fooled by its simplicity. Performance per disk is as good as, or better, than any other solution out there. Key talking point: PS Storage Virtualization Once the new member is initialized and has a RAID configuration, you have a unified pool of storage that you can use to carve off volumes and assign them to servers or even groups of servers in a cluster. Because of SCSI-3 emulation, the servers “see” these volumes as local



disks. There is an OS compatibility list of servers and iSCSI initiators available. However, almost any server (MAC, Linux, Solaris, VMware, and Windows) can be used to connect to PS. PS Series storage virtualization design keeps all disks as busy as they need to be and shares I/O load across as wide a set of disks as it can. When a member is added to the group, the overall storage capacity of the SAN is obviously increased. However, because a volume can span across multiple members, introducing more disk spindles as well as back-end and front-end NIC ports will also improve the overall performance of the SAN. This modular approach avoids forklift upgrades and helps the customer to scale up and scale out. This is possible because of the way the PS Series implements storage virtualization at the controller level. In conjunction with the intelligence added into the clients, if that is also done, this ensures that contention is avoided by moving and rebalancing blocks so that overall latency on all members is minimized. This is smart load balancing – it makes sure that capacity is not left unused even if it is superficially “slower”. This allows the PS Series to dramatically boost performance on all volumes in a pool by adding a single additional high performance member – especially if you add an SSD or hybrid member that has huge I/O performance capacity. Capacity load balancing, network load balancing and automatic performance load balancing work together in a PS Series environment to ensure distribution of capacity and load within a pool. Note: You must understand these concepts and be able to explain that they are not the

same as tiering on our SC Series Storage. Key talking point: PS Series Automation and Simplicity These processes are constant in PS, leading to efficient use of the resources at all times without requiring a storage administrator to figure out precisely what needs to be put on your various tiers of storage. And remember, this is all compatible with an on-going, permanent lifecycle process of bringing in new members and retiring old ones. The key message to get across here is that the group is “intelligent” in its migrations of data. As the PS array’s circumstances change (both in terms of its own capacity and the server demands put on it), it responds by rebalancing where necessary to ensure latency is minimized. By focusing on latency, the array achieves efficient utilization of the members as a result. High latency is a direct indication of excess load that may be caused by the following: RAID type mismatch, pure I/O request volume, or network bandwidth. If any one of these issues edges into a problematic area, then latency rises and the load balancer will start to consider moving some blocks around to compensate. Some organizations may not want to leave this level of automation in control of their storage, and while we believe that the automated processes will always deliver the best possible result, it is possible for a customer to disable this behavior and be very precise about which volumes are stored on, and remain on, which members.



Key talking point: PS Group Manager A key point to make at this stage in the demo is to say that you’re not here to train the customers, you’re just walking through some key fundamentals and some tasks that a typical administrator will be doing day-to-day and you want to use that to show how PS can meet the customers desired storage outcomes. Emphasize that the PS Group Manager GUI can handle 99% of the tasks that will be required in administering a PS environment. Other management tools, such as Auto Snapshot Manager and SAN HQ, provide additional capabilities for automation and analysis. There is also an CLI if the customer prefers the command line. Key talking point: PS Groups, Pools and Members In a PS Series environment, all members are part of a group. To manage the individual member level features and to examine the specific operation\performance of an individual box, you work at the member level. In this example, you only have one member in the group but the concept applies whether you have one member or sixteen members. Within a group, members are also assigned to a specific pool. Be prepared to briefly whiteboard and/or explain how all members are part of a group, and within this, they belong to one and only one pool at a time. Also explain that volumes are assigned from the pools of storage. This allows us to segregate different storage needs into separate units for performance, cost, or other reasons. Key talking point: Networking settings The key talking point to make here is that IP-storage is not slow. Performance can match any other solution provided you configure sufficient back-end disk and controller capacity and provide sufficient (multi-path) network bandwidth. With the adoption of DCB and the implementation of automatic iSCSI traffic classification, DCB-enabled 10 GbE networks can deliver any level of storage performance required. Since iSCSI storage is a native block storage protocol, it removes all of the layers of complexity that act to complicate and slow down network file-level storage, such as CIFS/SMB and NFS. It also removes the complexity and cost of fibre channel switches, zoning and HBAs. Key talking point: Thin Provisioning Thin provisioning allows you to fully configure volumes for their anticipated eventual capacity without having to physically have the capacity in place immediately. Provided that the target system doesn’t need the capacity right now, you can avoid a significant level of future reconfiguration of servers by configuring for the capacity that may eventually be needed and allow PS group level intelligence to provision the storage capacity that is actually required as and when the need arises. You then need only to manage the overall level of available physical capacity in the groups and pools. Since you can dynamically add members at any time, and since the automatic load balancers will distribute both capacity and performance as needed, this allows you to dramatically reduce on-going maintenance of storage at the server side. This also avoids wasting large



amounts of capacity to cover empty space – wasting both the capacity and performance of the storage underlying the volume, if it is fully provisioned. So thin provisioning is recommended for all volumes for PS Series Storage– there is no performance penalty and you get to choose alert levels on the volume to be triggered when the amount of used space passes certain levels. So, for example, set an alert at 80% and that will warn you that you need to consider acquiring additional physical capacity or addressing.

o Key talking point: Smart Tags

Smart tags provide a mechanism for PS group administrators to organize, search, and filter the volumes in their groups. Volumes can be tagged with new or predefined tags, and a volume can have more than one tag associated to it. This feature makes it easier for the group administrator to manage a group with a large number of volumes. Smart tags can be either simple tags or extended tags:

A simple tag has no values. For example, the tag “Backup” indicates that the volume is used as a backup volume without going into further detail.

An extended tag uses a main tag and a value. For example, the tag “Applications” with the value “SharePoint” indicates that the volume information is used within that application.

Within Group Manager, only group administrators are allowed to create, rename, and delete tags. However, administrators with write privileges for the volume can assign tags to the volume

1.1 Gotchas

Make sure the environment is set up and accessible prior to starting. Confirm that you have multiple members available if you are going to demonstrate multi-member groups and pools. Make a note of the different RAID types if the members are pre-configured.

1.2 Technical selling points

Focus on ease-of-use at this point.

1.3 Technical Objective Handling

Q: You may get questions asking why the PS Series only allows only one RAID type per member,

or questions that are framed around the PS Series not allowing administrators full control of RAID

settings.

A: Be clear that this is true, and be very clear in explaining that this loss of very fine-grained

configuration choice is more than outweighed by the improvement in resilience and performance.

Since PS members have standard disk sizes and a uniform RAID type, they can consistently deliver



better performance than would normally be expected with the same number of disks. This is seen

over and over again in performance testing. The automated load balancing and capacity

management processes within a PS group ensures that administrators can design storage to meet

their needs. The customer can be assured that the PS Series solution will deliver sufficient capacity

and protection is provided for all volumes.

If the customer has a technical or very specific need for a volume to use a specific RAID type, they

can achieve this by adding the volume and the specific RAID member to a specific pool.

Q: What happens is you lose one member in a pool?

A: This is no different to a scenario where you lose both data processors in a dual controller solution

from another vendor. A PS Series member is a fully redundant enterprise product. In order to lose a

member you have to lose two power supplies, two controllers or more than two disks concurrently.

In the very rare situation where an entire member in a pool is lost, all volumes that depend on that

member will be suspended until the member returns in order to avoid exacerbating any data losses.

Q: Why is this iSCSI only? I need Fibre Channel!

A: Discuss the benefits of iSCSI and compare to Fibre Channel (FC) management – particularly

zoning. Note that you can configure all storage provisioning steps that you need from the EQL

Group Manager GUI and the target server. There is no equivalent of FC zoning, for example.

It is also worth having a brief discussion about 10\40\100Gig Ethernet at this stage. Note that the

medium-term roadmap for Ethernet has much faster speeds than FC, and the advent of DCB

provides lossless Ethernet that competes with FC on all technical merit points.



1.4.1 - Adding a New Member to existing PS Group

You are going to initialize a new member and add it into an existing PS group.

1. Double-click the Remote Setup Wizard shortcut on the desktop.

2. Click Yes at the security prompt.

3. Click Next.

4. Select Initialize a PS Series Array.



5. Wait ~15 seconds while Remote Setup Wizard scans for uninitialized arrays.

6. Select the new PS Series Array to be initialized and click Next.



7. Enter the values for this new array, as per the information in the screenshot below.

Note: Be sure to select the radio button to Join an existing group. Click Next.



8. Enter the information below in the Join an Existing Group screen. Click Next.

Note: Membership Password is password01.

9. It can take up two minutes for the array to be initialized.



While the array is initializing, you have an ideal few minutes to discuss some of the talking

points mentioned at the beginning of this lab.

o Key talking point: PS Series Storage Virtualization

o Key talking point: PS Series Automation and Simplicity

10. After a few minutes, the new member you initialized should successfully join the existing

group.

Click No to close Remote Setup Wizard without starting the PS Group Manager.

Click Finish to close the Remote Setup Wizard.



1.4.2 - Using the PS Group Manager GUI

Logging in to the PS Group Manager GUI

1. Double-click on the desktop shortcut Group1 – PS Series Group Manager.

2. When prompted, login using Name: grpadmin and Password: password01 and click Log in.

3. Click OK to accept the EULA warning.

4. You are now logged in to the PS Group Manager. From this GUI you can manage the PS

SAN. Initially the group comprised a single member. However, in the above steps, you used

the Remote Setup Wizard to detect a new member and joined it to the existing group.



Configuring the New Member and setting the RAID Policy

1. Click the + symbol to expand the Members section. Here you can see the new demo-

member3 that you added to the group.

Note: remember to talk about

o Key talking point: PS RAID

o Key talking point: Ease-of-use

2. Click on the new demo-member3 in red and select Yes to configure RAID.



3. Click Create new pool.

4. Type pool1 in the Name field of the Create storage pool window. Click Next and on the

summary screen, click Finish.



5. Select poo1 as Storage pool assignment and click Next.

6. Select RAID 50 for RAID Policy and click Next. (Leave all other settings as default).



Note: RAID 5 is no longer an option on PS. Explain that due to the size of disks and the risk

of failure during rebuilds of large arrays that contain a lot of data, RAID 5 is no longer

recommended.

7. Click Finish on the summary screen.

8. The new RAID set will take ~one minute to initialize.

9. Now the new demo-member3 is ready for immediate use by the group.



Displaying the Group Summary

You are going to demonstrate the various sections of the left-hand hierarchy of the PS Group

Manager: Group, Group Configuration, and Members.

1. Click on the group demo-group1 on the top left of the GUI.

Give an overview of how the left pane is to select Groups, Volumes, Replication and

Monitoring. In the Groups display, introduce the Activities pane where various

administration tasks can be performed. And finally, on the right-hand pane, show the high-

level view of the group information, the free space on the group in the pie chart, and how

you have two members in the storage pool.


o Key talking point: PS Group Manager

o Key talking point: PS Groups, Pools and Members



Displaying the Group Configuration

1. Click on Group Configuration. In the General tab, you can modify any of the settings you

just set up in the above Remote Setup Wizard such as the group IP address or the group

name. This part of the interface manages the overall configuration of the distributed group.

Discuss the middle Summary pane and how it summarizes all the group settings at a glance

without having to click through all the associated tabs at the top.

Displaying Group Members

1. Click on Members. The term “member” is used in a PS environment to refer to an individual

array of disks within a group. In this section, you will be demonstrating a variety of

information that the PS Group Manager can display about a member in the group.


o Key talking point: PS Groups, Pools and Members



2. Mouse over demo-member3 in the left hand GUI pain. Highlight how you can mouse over any item to see additional information.

Displaying Member details

1. Click on demo-member1 to see the member management features provided by the PS

Group Manager.



2. In the Status tab (see above), you see a visual graphical representation of the physical

member showing all of the disks and identifying their role and status. Failed disks will be

highlighted to make it obvious which physical part needs to be replaced in case there is a

failure. Hot spares are also clearly identified. The left-hand summary gives high-level health

information, and you can see that the member is healthy.

3. Select the Rear View radio button located above the picture of the disks.

4. Mouse over each of the hardware components: Power Cooling Module, Control Module,

Network Interfaces. Any errors or issues will be highlighted. For example, some network

interface ports do not have a cable attached so this is highlighted. The view helps to

physically identify failed parts or any item that needs to be checked or replaced.

5. There are eight tabs at the top that give more detailed and specific information about the

selected member. You will demonstrate some of these in turn and highlight a few key points.

Select the Enclosure tab to see environmental details such as power supplies, cooling fan

speeds, and temperature sensor information.

6. Click on the Controller tab to show the firmware that each Controller Module is running.

7. Click on the Disks tab to show a visual representation of the disk slots and an operational

status of each disk. Depending on the PS series array type, you will see 14, 16, 24 or 48 hard

disks. The disks highlighted in blue are the two hot spares that were mentioned earlier when



discussing the RAID configuration options for the array. You also see an error count, and

some other statistics options are listed under the center Activities pane.

Configuring E-Mail Notifications and Alerts

1. Click on Group Configuration on the left-hand pane.

2. Click on the Notifications tab. Here is where you can Add, Modify, and Delete e-mail

addresses that will receive e-mail notifications. You can also adjust whether you want to be

e-mailed Warning events, Fatal events or both. You can also set up more advanced

notification settings such as SMTP servers and syslog servers.



3. Select and then unselect the checkbox next to Send e-mail alerts to Customer Support (e-

mail home). Explain that when you first get your array, you will get an e-mail address from

Dell which you can enter here. Alternatively, you can call 24/7 support to get the correct

address. This is important as it ensures that the correct enterprise support team gets alerts for

your array. This is the “e-mail home” function and it comes included with your contract. For

example, if a power supply fails at 3 AM, then Dell Support will create a case and try to

contact the customer to arrange for the faulty part to be dispatched. Leave this option

unselected.

4. If the customer has their own preferred centralized management console – CIM, Tivoli,

OpenManage, Openview and System Center, etc. – these can all work with the PS group via

SMTPv3 traps and get the same diagnostic alerts.

.

1.4.3 - Volume Management and Microsoft iSCSI Initiator tool

Creating a New Volume Up until now, you have been working in the Group area of the GUI. Next you will demonstrate the Volumes area (bottom-left of GUI). This is where you provision storage as volumes, and selectively present volumes to servers or clusters. You will be creating a volume on the PS Series SAN and then presenting it to the Windows operating system using the iSCSI protocol.

1. Click the Volumes section on the bottom-left of the GUI.



2. Click Create Volume in the Activities pane.

3. Type volume1 for volume name, and click Next.



4. Type 1 for volume size to give the volume a size of 1GB. Select Thin Provisioned volume and

set Snapshot reserve as 1%. Click Next.

Note: while demonstrating the window shown, it would be a good time to talk about thin

provisioning and snapshot reserve space. For example, if the volume isn’t expected to change

much or if it is not expected that snapshots will be taken of the volume, then 100 percent

snapshot reserve might be excessive. These reserves can be adjusted at any time after the

volume has been created. In v8, if snapshot reserve or replica reserve are full then space can

be borrowed from other reserves and free pool which is explained in Space Borrowing

section.

o Key talking point: Thin Provisioning

5. In the “Step 3 – Define iSCSI Access points” window, you can set access to the new volume.

Explain to the customer why this is a necessary and recommended practice. From firmware

v7.0 we can now make use of Access Control Policies which can be created as templates for

multiple uses or copied from existing volumes.



6. Click Define one or more basic access points and enter 10.10.10.17 (or storage IP address

obtained in step 5.0.2 “Preparing the environment”). Leave other settings as defaults. Click

Next.



7. From Firmware v8.0 we now support Smart Tags. This feature helps you identify, organize,

and locate your volumes, facilities that can be especially helpful in a group with a large

number of volumes. Select an existing Tag or create a new one from Manage tags

o Key talking point: Smart Tags

8. From Firmware v7.0 we now support multiple sector sizes, 512 bytes was the original value

with new drives supporting 4k. For Step 4, chose 512 bytes per sector



9. Review the settings in the “Step 5 – Summary” window and click Finish.


o Key talking point: Thin Provisioning



Search for Volumes, Collections, Smart Tags, Pools, Partners, and Members

1. Click the magnifying glass icon, or press Ctrl + Shift + F.

The Find Objects panel opens.

3. Enter the text you want to search for. You can use the previously created Smart Tag to

search and show how it lists the Volume. If you have the opportunity to prepare the demo

environment before showing it to the customer, creating objects in multiple areas with

common functions or location naming will show a richer return. i.e. We’ve ESX based storage

pools, volumes and volume collections returned from our search



Restricting volume access by iSCSI IQN name

In this section you are going to demonstrate the use of the iSCSI initiator, how the iSCSI IQN can be used to further control access to the volume, and how to present the volume you created to the server.

1. In the Windows taskbar, click Start and then iSCSI Initiator to open the Microsoft iSCSI

Initiator Tool.

2. Select the Configuration tab to display the server’s unique iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN).

3. Right-click the Initiator Name and select All.

4. Right-click the Initiator Name again and select Copy.



5. Click Cancel to close the iSCSI Initiator Tool.

6. In the PS Group Manager GUI, click on volume1 and select the Access tab. Here you see how

you restricted the volume by IP address. Click Modify in the top-right area.



7. Remove the IP address, and select iSCSI initiator name.

Right-click in the white space and select Paste. The IQN you copied earlier will be pasted in.

Click OK.



Connecting and enabling the Volume in Microsoft iSCSI Initiator tool

Let’s present the PS volume to the Windows Server 2008 system over iSCSI. Once that is done, you can demonstrate the use of the volume just as any other normal Windows volume. To do this, you will mainly be using the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Tool and Windows Disk Management.

1. Open the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Tool using the Start menu as before.

2. Click the Discovery tab. This shows here the system will look for iSCSI targets.

Note: If the group IP (10.10.10.10) is already listed under Target Portals, remove it for

demonstration purposes by highlighting it and clicking Remove.



3. Click the Discover Portal button.

4. Enter in the group IP address (10.10.10.10). Click Advanced.



5. Change Local adapter to Microsoft iSCSI Initiator and Initiator IP to the IP address the server

is using for iSCSI traffic. (You identified this earlier as 10.10.10.17.) Leave all other settings as

default.

At this point you can introduce the concept of iSCSI network traffic versus normal network

traffic, and the importance of isolating iSCSI traffic by using VLANs or separate physical

networks.

6. Click OK to close the Advanced Settings window.

7. Click OK to close the Discover Target Portal window.



8. Select the Targets tab and click the Refresh button. A new target should appear listed as

Inactive.

Note: the end of the IQN Name is the same name as the “volume1” you created in PS Group

Manager! This can be helpful when looking at a long list of targets or to confirm that you are

working with the correct volume.

Tip: Double-click the column separator between the Name and Status column (see picture).

9. Select the Inactive target volume1 and click Connect.



10. Select Enable multi-path. Click OK.

11. You should now see your volume1 target as Connected in the iSCSI Initiator Targets tab.

12. Click OK to close the iSCSI Initiator. You will now scan the volume into Windows.



Scanning the volume in Windows Server Disk Management

1. Click the Server Manager icon located on the Windows Taskbar, next to the Start button.

2. In Disk Management, select Action from the top menu and click Rescan Disks.

Disk Management will now scan for new disks available to the server. A new disk with 1GB of

unallocated space is discovered. This is volume1 that was created previously in the PS Group

Manager.

Note: you may have to scroll down on the bottom pane to see the Offline disk.



3. Right-click the newly discovered 1GB disk and select Online.

4. Right-click the 1GB disk again and select Initialize Disk to initialize a new disk before Disk

Management can access it.



5. Click OK on the Initialize Disk window. Leave other settings as defaults.

6. Right-click the 1GB Unallocated partition, and select New Simple Volume to create an NTFS

partition on the volume.



7. Click Next to start the New Simple Volume Wizard.

8. Click Next. Leave other settings as defaults.



9. Assign M as a drive letter and click Next. This will give the 1GB drive a unique letter so you

can easily identify it.

10. Type volume1 for the Volume label. Leave all other settings as default. Click Next.



11. Click Finish to close the wizard and start formatting the partition with NTFS.

12. Right-click the volume1 (M:) NTFS partition and select Explore. This will open up Windows

Explorer.

13. On the Desktop is a file called 100 MB FILE. Copy it to the new M: volume to demonstrate

functionality to the customer.


o Key talking point: Networking settings



Configuring MPIO using PS Remote Setup wizard

Earlier, you used the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Tool to configure Multi-Path I/O (MPIO). The “Remote Setup Wizard” can also be used to initialize a new PS array, configure MPIO settings and configure group access. You will demonstrate how to use the Remote Setup Wizard as another way to configure MPIO on the operating system.

1. Double-click the Remote Setup Wizard shortcut on the desktop.

2. Click Yes at the security prompt.



3. Click Next.

4. Click Configure MPIO Settings.



5. Auto-Snapshot Manager will load.

6. You can demonstrate how this window can be used to configure some advanced MPIO

options such as Fail Over Policy, MPIO Connections, and Subnets excluded by MPIO.

Note: We recommend using Least Queue Depth for your Fail Over Policy, it allows us to best

leverage multiple connections to multiple members while ensuring even load across your

network connections. Round Robin will spread the load across links but not in a workload

sensitive manner while Fail Over Only will have an Active and a Passive path and only send traffic

on the Active path.



Expanding a volume

One of the fundamental features of using a SAN is that if a volume runs out of space, you can easily provision more storage to it using PS Group Manager. Then you can simply use Windows Server Disk Management to expand the NTFS Partition. You can also decide to switch over to thin provisioning even though the volume was originally fully provisioned. Demonstrate this feature by assuming that the volume1 is running out of space.

1. Open PS Group Manager (Sign in using grpadmin / password01 if needed).

2. Click volume1 to highlight it. Click Modify settings listed under the Activities pane.



3. Click the Space tab in the “Modify volume settings” window. Change 1GB to 2GB. Leave all

other settings as default. Click OK.

4. Click No on the Warning window.

Note: You can explain to the customer that because we are in a test and demo environment

you will not take a snapshot of the volume at this time. (You will be looking at snapshots later

on.) In a production environment, you would take a snapshot before adjusting the size of a

volume just in case the target host OS doesn’t support the new size!



5. Click on the Status tab to verify the new size of volume1 is now Reported Size: 2GB.

Note: You can also mouse-over volume1.

6. Open Windows Disk Management. Click Action, Rescan Disks. Note the unallocated space

that appears.

7. Right-click volume1 (M:) and select Extend Volume.



8. Click Next when the Extend Volume 2Wizard appears.

9. Click Next. Leave all other settings as default.



10. Click Finish to complete the Extend Volume Wizard.

11. Note how the NTFS partition is now 2GB.

12. Right-click volume1 (M:) and select Explore to open Windows Explorer.

Click on Computer and press the F5 key to refresh. Show the customer that the NTFS

Volume is now 2GB. Browse the volume to show the customer that the 100MB data file is still

there.



1.4.4 Access Policies and Policy Groups

In previous versions of the PS Series firmware, you secured access to volumes by configuring

individual access control records for each volume. Group Manager now supports access

policy groups and access policies that allow you to apply a single access control policy to

multiple volumes or volume collections.

1. Click the Access Policies tab on the Group Configuration pane and click New by the No

access policies

2. Give the new Access Policies a understandable name and click New by Access Points panel



3. Enter the iSCSI Initiator Name you used earlier when creating your first Volume. CHAP or IP

Addresses may be used here. Click OK to save and OK again to create the Access Policy

4. You can now view the Access Policy and expand each policy to view it’s details

5. You now have the option to use the Access Policy during the Create volume wizard



Note: We’ve defined an Access Policy to allow volumes to be easily assigned to a single

server. To manage groups of servers in an Application or Hypervisor cluster we use Access

Policy Groups to define access to multiple servers

6. First create a few more Access policies, in this example we’ve created 3 ESX hosts using IP’s

from the open range listed in the landing web page

7. Click New by the No access policy groups

8. Give the new Access Policy Group a understandable name and click New by Access Policies

panel, chose the Access Policies you created and click OK and OK again



9. Give the new Access Policy Group a understandable name and click New by Access Policies

panel, chose the Access Policies you created and click OK and OK again. Expand the Group

and Policies to review.

10. You now have the option to use the Access Policy Group during the Create volume wizard

by changing the radio button to Access Policy Groups



2 Demo session 2 – Data protection

Duration: 30 Minutes

2.0 - Introduction

In this demo, you will be introducing the customer to the data protection capabilities of the PS Series Storage Array. You will explain snapshots and replication concepts initially and then lead into the benefits of using Auto Snapshot Manager (ASM) to provide operating system and application-level interfaces that allow systems administrators to make use of these features without needing access to Group Manager or having significant SAN expertise.

Overview of topics:

1. Configuring and working with Snapshots

2. Create a volume collection and show how they are used

3. Configuring and working with replication.

4. Using Auto Snapshot Manager with Microsoft Windows (basic file protection)

5. Optional: Using Auto Snapshot Manager with Microsoft Exchange (advanced app integration)

Key talking point: Snapshots and Replication

You must be able to provide a brief whiteboard on the basic functionality of the PS Series snapshots, and emphasize the performance benefits of the re-allocate on write snapshot technology that the PS Series uses. You could use this as an opportunity to explain how snapshot reserves work with the PS Series if the audience is technical enough.

Similarly, you must be able to provide a whiteboard introduction to PS Series replication. Your primary focus should be on group-to-group asynchronous /point-in-time replication and the requirements (local and remote reserves, bandwidth and scheduling).

The key message to communicate here is the simplicity with which snapshots or replicas can be made using The PS Series. You should be sufficiently familiar with the interface to be able to configure replication reliably. Setting up both of these is straightforward but configuring replication between groups and enabling it for a volume involves approximately 12 steps that you must be able to complete without hesitating or without the need to consult a reference.



When you create a volume collection, you should talk about how these are used to ensure that snapshots/replicas of a group of interdependent volumes can be made at precisely the same time. This is a very important capability for ensuring consistent data protection of complex application stacks.

Demoing replication to technical staff must include showing how the replication partners are configured, explaining the need to take care with passwords, etc. At the preparation phase of this demo, you should ensure that you adequately explain what replica reserve space is, how it needs to be sized, and how it is different to snapshot reserve space. Once the initial partnership is validated and a volume is scheduled for replication, you should show how to monitor both the outbound and inbound replications screens on each Group Manager, reinforcing the point that this is a data exchange between two separate PS Series groups.

When carrying out a demo of an actual failover, you will be disconnecting the volume at the primary site, promoting the volume at the DR site, and then connecting the promoted volume back to the original server. At this point, you must draw attention to the fact that you are placing some new data on this volume – so we now have a failed-over replica with additional data added during the failover event.

As the final part of the replication demo, you will be failing back this replica volume, synching the new data back to the original that has come back online but is stale. Once failback has completed, you mount the volume back at the production site to show that the changes have failed back. Customers should be shown the expanded steps that the array does automatically during the failback process in the PS Series Group Manager. You must explain that failover and failback are not automatic.

Key talking point: Space Borrowing

Snapshots and replicas require available disk space to operate successfully. This disk space is referred to as snapshot reserve and replica reserve. Sometimes, it can be challenging to determine the optimal values to use for reserves. If reserves are set too high, then space is wasted. If reserves are set too low, then it is difficult to maintain the desired number of snapshots and replicas to keep.

In v7, unused delegated space is underutilized. If free reserve space is low, then creating new snapshot or replicas can potentially force older snapshots and replicas to be prematurely deleted.

From v8, Remote replicas can now can borrow space beyond their replica reserve. Snapshots and local replicas can now borrow from unused delegated space. Space is potentially available for borrowing from the following areas:

– Unused snapshot and replica reserves

– Unused delegated space

– Free space in the storage pool where the volume resides



It simplifies configuring reserve space by alleviating the pressure of predicting reserve usage accurately and improves space utilization by allowing older snapshots and replicas to borrow space from multiple unused sources so that older copies can remain vs. being deleted (without space borrowing)

Note: Space Borrowing is intended to help during peaks of activity when more space is needed temporarily. It does not take the place of carefully provisioning reserves.

Key talking point: Default Snapshot Schedule

Default Snapshot Schedule (DSS) is a global snapshot schedule that is automatically associated with all eligible volumes. Eligible volumes are all writeable volumes in which no snapshots, snapshot schedules, or replicas already exist. It provides a safety net for volumes that are not protected

Provides automatic protection for volumes that an Administrator may have forgotten to protect via traditional snapshot schedules or replication. It is not meant to replace other data protection strategies, including snapshot and replication schedules.

DSS minimizes its use of system resources, by giving higher-priority to other resources, and yielding control to the system when needed. It runs every 24 hours at Midnight and is on by default.

2.1 Gotchas

If you are going to demonstrate replication, make 100% certain that you have, or will have, access to two independent groups with full connectivity to your demo server(s). Also ensure that you have a clear map of all IP-addresses that you will be using and the volumes sizes and names. When configuring replication, it is very easy to get confused by which Group Manager or which version of a replicated volume you are working with. Make sure you use clearly distinct names for volumes.

You must be able to create the basic configurations needed on the PS Series array(s) quickly so that the maximum impact of using ASM to carry data protection tasks on Windows files can be demonstrated.

In the demos.dell.com environment, Windows Disk Management can take up to 90 seconds to show new disks when they are presented to the Windows 2008 host. You can explain to the customer that in a production environment, this process is quicker. It is a good idea to have a few key points at hand to present to the customer while this 90-second delay is occurring.




This is an excellent time to briefly discuss the PS Series’ all-in licensing, snapshots, replication and ASM are all available to all PS Series users at no extra cost.

It is also worth repeating that asynchronous replication works between virtually all physical PS series models. The only real technical limitation is the requirement that both source and replica groups have to be running compatible firmware versions. Consult the array documentation for more details about compatibility between firmware levels.

2.3 Technical objective handling

You must be able to explore the reasons why a customer needs (or believes they need) synchronous replication. Synchronous replication is a supported option if the customer requires it but it may be useful to engage the customer on what they actually need replication to achieve.

This is the right time to revisit customer requirements for RPO/RTO and discuss whether they need a Disaster Recovery (DR) or Business Continuity (BC) solution. Is it about protecting data or being able to carry on day-to-day business activity during a disaster recovery? Understand what other gaps there may be in the environment, making sure that the customer is aware that zero data loss is something of a nirvana that needs very robust business processes in place as well as infrastructure and technical solutions.

Key questions to work through in this conversation are: Have applications been categorized? Is there an SLA to the business from the IT infrastructure? Do you have a full understanding of the interdependencies between applications and infrastructure services?

PS Series synchronous replication is only an option for pool-to-pool replication within a single PS Series group which imposes additional design limitations, and should it be chosen in certain very specific scenarios (absolute guarantees of zero data loss in case of hardware failures, financial compliance scenarios where it is specified etc.). It imposes very stringent performance and replication range restrictions. A detailed discussion about the link capacity that will be used for replication traffic should be discussed.



2.4.1 - Creating a Snapshot of a Volume and Recovering data

In this section you will be creating a snapshot of an existing volume to recover deleted files from a snapshot. You will first verify that there are files on the base volume and then take a snapshot of that volume. You will then delete a file or two. You will bring the snapshot online and copy the files that were deleted from the base volume from the snapshot back to the base volume.

1. In the previous demo you created a volume and copied a file into in. Make two more copies

of that file within the volume.

2. Select Volumes in the lower left corner of the PS Series Group Manager.

3. Click on volume1.



4. Click Create snapshot from the Activities pane.

5. Type snap1 in the Description field. Leave the other options as default. Click OK.



6. Click on + symbol next to volume1 to expand the tree and show the snapshot. Explain to the customer that you just took an instantaneous snapshot of the data in volume1 as shown by the date and time shown next to the camera snapshot object.

7. Open Windows Explorer, browse the volume1 disk and delete one of the files from the M:\ volume. Explain to the customer that a file has been lost, but because you have taken a snapshot before the data was lost, you can easily recover the lost file.

Using Snapshots to restore data on a volume

1. In Group Manager: right-click on the snapshot and select Set snapshot online.



2. Click Yes to confirm setting the snapshot online.

3. In the iSCSI initiator: select the Targets tab, click Refresh.

Note: it may take a minute for the snapshot target to appear in the Discovered Targets list.



4. You will see the snapshot volume (which will have date and time at end of the IQN name) as Status Inactive. Select the snapshot target and click Connect. Click OK in the Connect to Target window.

5. Open Server Manager, Disk Management and click Action, Rescan Disks.

Note: It might take Disk Management up to 90 seconds to scan the new volume. This would be a good time to discuss one of the key talking points listed in section 5.2.1.



6. Right-click the Basic, Offline, 2GB disk, and select Online.

7. Right-click the volume1 (snapshot) partition to browse the files on the snapshot volume. Note: you can see all three files! Highlight this fact to the customer.

8. Right-click the file you deleted earlier and select Copy.

9. Browse to the M: volume1 disk. Right-click and select Paste. Discuss the ease and simplicity of this file recovery process with the customer.

10. Explain to the customer that after the file has been recovered, it is best to disconnect the

snapshot target so as to avoid confusion in the future. This housekeeping can be done easily in two steps:



11. Open iSCSI Initiator: Targets tab, select the snapshot target. Click Disconnect. Click Yes to confirm.

Note: if you want, you can rescan disks in Disk Management and confirm that the snapshot

disk is no longer visible. Furthermore, you can show the customer that it is no longer visible

in Windows Explorer.



12. Open Group Manager, right click the snapshot and select Set snapshot offline. Click Yes on the confirmation window. Notice how the snapshot is now greyed-out again.



Fill up reserve space to show Space Borrowing

1. Go back to volume1 M:\ drive in Windows explorer and copy the 3 files again.

2. Go to PS Group Manager and select volume1.



Notice how the snapshot space required is more than snapshot reserve and it borrowed

space.

3. Go back to Groups tab and click on Borrowed Space on left lane

Show how the space is borrowed from reserves first before going to the Free pool.


o Key talking point: Space Borrowing



Using Collections to perform Snapshots on multiple volumes

Creating collections of volumes for either snapshots or replicas is another task that may be required from time to time. This can be done from the Group Manager GUI or from the CLI.

1. Open Group Manager: click the + symbol next to Volume Collections.

2. Right-click Volume Collections and select Create volume collection.



3. Type collection1 in the Name field. Click Next.

4. Select volume1. Click Next. Leave all other settings as defaults.

5. Click Finish on the summary window.



6. Explain to the customer that you can add as many volumes as you want into a collection. You can right-click this collection and take a snapshot of all the volumes contained within the collection. Notice that when you create a snapshot collection, a new snapshot appears below volume1. In the same way you presented the snapshot to the server in the above example, you would follow the same process for the collection of snapshots. It is a great way to easily organize volumes on which you create snapshots.

Finish Snapshots section by talking about Default Snapshot Schedule for the volumes which doesn’t have snapshots created or scheduled.

o Key talking point: Default Snapshot Schedule



2.4.2 - Replicating a volume

Synchronous Replication between two Pools

Synchronous replication is easy to demonstrate. Remind the customer that initially the demo environment had demo-member1 as a RAID 10 in the storage pool called default. You added demo-member3 as a RAID 50 to a new Storage Pool called pool1. In this section you are going to synchronously replicate volume1 from the default storage pool to pool1.

1. Open Group Manager, and click on the Volumes bottom on the lower left. Right-click

volume1 and select Configure SyncRep.



2. Click Next.

Note: because you only have one other storage pool (pool1), the Wizard has automatically selected pool1.

3. Click Finish.



4. It will take around one minute to replicate the 2GB volume with 300MB of data on it. There are few things you can observe during this time:

Notice how the volume and snapshot space for volume1 is now divided in two in the GUI. On the left you see the original volume1 on the default storage pool (SyncActive). On the right you see the replicated volume1 on pool1 storage pool (SyncAlternate). The SyncActive status indicates the volume that is live while the SyncAlternate status indicates the replica volume.



5. After ~1.5 minutes, the replication will finish synchronizing.

6. In Windows Explorer: select all three 100MB files, Copy and Paste.This copy will complete in 30-45 seconds because it is only 300MB. Let the copy complete.

7. Select all six 100MB files and Copy and Paste them again. This copy will take several minutes during which you will demonstrate replication failover.



8. Click more details on the copy window and move the window to the bottom of the screen.

9. Size the Group Manager window so that you can see the GUI and the copy window on the screen at the same time. Right-click volume1 and select Switch to SyncAlternate. Observe both the status of the copy window and of the Group Manager GUI. Notice how the copy continues while volume1 moves from pool default to pool1.

10. Right-click volume1 and select Switch to SyncAlternate a second time and wait for the copy to finish.



2.4.3 - Using Auto-Snapshot Manager to perform a Smart Copy of a volume

Introduction to the Auto-Snapshot Manager GUI

1. In Group Manager: click Group.

2. Now click Group Configuration on the top left. Click the VDS/VSS tab. Ensure that vss is configured as CHAP user.

3. Click the Windows Start button, and select Auto-Snapshot Manager. Click Yes on the User

Access Control window.



4. Demonstrate the high-level overview of Auto-Snapshot Manger. For example, here you can see you have one group and two volumes. If you had any SQL databases, Exchange Mailstores or Hyper-V virtual machines, they would be displayed here. You can take application consistent snapshots of any of these using ASM. In ASM, snapshots are called Smart Copies.

Note: In this demo, you are going to use ASM to create a Schedule to automatically take Smart Copies of volume1 every day at 02:00 AM. You will also demonstrate file recovery.

Creating a Smart Copy

1. Click on the arrow next to Volumes to expand the tree. Right-click M:\ volume1 and select

Configure New Schedule.



2. Click Next on the Schedule Task Wizard. Leave all other settings as default.



3. Change Start time to 02:00. Click Next. Leave all other settings as default.

4. Click Next on the Advanced Schedule Settings window, leaving all other settings as default.



5. Click Next on the Smart Copy Options window, leaving all settings as default.

6. Click Run task as system user. Click Create to complete the Schedule Task Wizard.

7. Click the arrow next to Schedules to expand the hierarchy.



8. Right-click Volume-M_(volume1) and select Run Now.

9. A Running Schedule window will appear. Notice how it completes the Smart Copy instantaneously. Click Close to close this window.

10. Expand Smart Copies. Expand M:\ (volume1). Here you can see the Smart Copy and date

and time created by running the schedule now. At 02:00 AM every day, a Smart Copy will be



taken of volume1. Eight Smart Copies will be kept. This will allow plenty of time to react if any data is lost.

Using ASM Smart Copy to restore data on a volume

1. Open Windows Explorer and click on volume1 (M:). Select one or two data files on the

volume, right-click and select delete. Click Yes to confirm deletion.



2. Open Auto-Snapshot Manager. Right-click the Smart Copy, and select Mount.

3. Click Next on the window that appears.



4. Click the drop down menu under Mount To. Select S:\. You are going to mount the Smart Copy as a read-only S:\ drive. Click Mount to complete the process.

5. Open Windows Explorer. Notice there is a new S:\ disk listed. Click on the S:\ disk and note how all the data files are listed.

6. Select the data files that you deleted previously, right-click and select Copy.



7. Click on the M:\ disk. Right click at select Paste to copy to recover the missing files. Wait for the copy to complete.

8. Open Auto-Snapshot Manager. Right-click the Smart Copy and select Unmount and Logoff. You are doing this just to tidy up now that you have recovered the files.



9. Select the option to Delete this Smart Copy. Click Logoff and Delete.



2.4.4 - Asynchronous Replication between two Groups (Optional for this demo.)

If the customer asks about asynchronous replication, you can say that it is very simple to set up.

Basically, all you do is supply the local group the name and IP address of the remote group. Then

log on to the remote group and supply it with the name and IP address of the local group. The two

groups handshake, and then from then on, are configured for asynchronous replication. From

there, you simply right click the volume (or collection of volumes) and select Configure replication

and complete the steps of the wizard.

You might also introduce the Manual Transfer Utility (MTU) during the demo. MTU is free, and it is

used to copy the initial replication locally onto local media like a NAS box or a USB disk. Manual

transfer may be necessary if there is a speed link constraint between remote sites. This local media is

then physically taken to the remote site, and the initial replication is performed. From then on, any

deltas will be quickly asynchronously replicated.

The following is an overview of how asynchronous replication (if needed) can be demonstrated:

1. Create two groups and configure members, pools and volumes.

2. Present the volume to Windows server.

3. Use Windows Disk Management to initialize and format the volume. Copy some data on it.

4. Click Replication from the left hand pane.



5. Compare the Replication Status on both groups to ensure replication is properly enabled.

Group 2 information



6. Click on a volume1 on demo-group1 and select Configure replication.

7. Follow the wizard steps, keeping the settings as illustrated below.



8. Select Keep failback snapshot. This is important for volume failback.

Note: The failback snapshot may enable you to synchronize the groups upon failback by replicating only volume changes. Enabling the failback snapshot will increase the size of the local replica reserve that is needed. If you do not retain the failback snapshot (or if the failback snapshot no longer exists), you must replicate all the volume data in order to synchronize the primary and secondary groups.

9. When the wizard is finished, you are given the option to create replica now. Click Yes.



10. Click on the Replication tab to view the replication details and view progress.

Note: Asynchronous Replication depends on Schedules to set the time to transfer all changes made to the data since the last replication. In setting this window, a customer should balance an acceptable amount of data lost (15 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day etc) versus overhead on the replication link of frequent or large re-sync operations.

11. To create a Schedule, go to Volumes and select your replicated volume. Go to the Schedules tab and click Add



12. Enter a Name and chose the Replication Schedule radio button in Schedule Type and Hourly Schedule in Schedule options, leave the other options as default and click Next.

13. Enter a Start date that is a day later in the calendar, enter a Time of Day and Until Time of Day, this should reflect a normal working Day. Set a Maximum number of replicas to keep that reflects the data’s importance to the customer and click Next and OK to finish.



14. Review the Schedules Summary with the customer



3 Demo session 3 – SAN Headquarters

Duration: 5 Minutes

3.0 - Introduction

SAN HQ runs as a Windows service on a number of Windows operating system versions. (Please refer to the product documentation for the current list of supported Windows platforms.) Once installed, SAN HQ will use SNMP to poll the configured groups that have been defined for a wide variety of configuration and performance data that is stored on the SAN HQ server. A second application, the SAN HQ client, runs on one or more Windows systems in the customer environment, and is used to select and display the data stored on the server. On some circumstances, SAN HQ server may also run the SAN HQ client, if desired. The client application may also be used in a standalone fashion to review data in a SAN HQ archive file. This lab will use SAN HQ archive files with the SAN HQ application to demonstrate how to examine reports and views of PS Series SAN behavior on production environments. In this demo you will be performing the following tasks:

1. Explore the main parts of the SAN HQ GUI

2. Explain how SAN HQ can be used to provide an overview of the performance and capacity of one or more PS Series SAN groups.

3. Explore SAN HQ reports and views that can be used for diagnose performance issues on an PS Series SAN.

Key talking points

It is important to reinforce the point that SAN HQ can be downloaded and used on any PS Series group and that there are no limitations on the number of systems on which it can be installed. It can also be installed solely as a client application, which can be used to analyze archives, as you do here.

3.1 Gotchas

You may want to pre-load your own SAN HQ .grpx archive files into the demo initially. If you are planning to carry out this demo with your own data, you should upload these before the demo begins.




The functionality provided by SAN HQ is generally an expensive add-on on other systems and may

require a high level of expertise and resources to install and manage.

3.3.1 - Introduction to the SAN HQ GUI

Starting the SAN HQ client

1. Double-click the SAN Headquarters shortcut on the Desktop.

2. At the bottom of the GUI, notice the client connecting to the group.

After 15 seconds, the client will connect. You should see demo-group1 listed.

Navigating the SAN HQ GUI

1. Click on demo-group1 in the left pane of the GUI. If you had multiple groups, you would

select the group you are interested in analyzing.



2. Click on 1hr in the timeline section at the top of the GUI. The timeline is quick way of seeing data from the past hour, day, week, or month of data.

3. Drag and drop the slider to 14:00 (see below picture). This is how you can “zoom” into a specific date or time.

4. Click on Show Latest to return to showing the most recent data.

5. There are several tables of data below the graph area. Demonstrate each of these in turn. The Capacity Summary shows total group capacity and how much is free. (Best practice is to have more than 5% free.) The information in the table is also graphically shown in a pie chart on the bottom right.

6. The I/O Summary shows us Read/Write % which helps understand the array better.

7. The I/O Summary also shows Average Latency. (General rule of thumb is this should be less

than 25 ms.)

Note: the demo lab environment might have more than 25 ms latency.



8. The Network Summary shows us the Network Link Load.

3.3.2 - Demonstrating specific reports, graphs, and views

I/O specific reports

1. Click the + symbol next to I/O in the right hand pane to expand the hierarchy.

2. Notice how the tables and graphs are now I/O specific and more detailed. Pay specific

attention to the Average Latency table and graph. This tells the average latency of the Reads

and Writes. Both of these values should ideally be below 20 ms. You can mouse over

specific parts of the graphs to display more information.



RAID Evaluator

1. Click on RAID Evaluator.

2. Click Members. Select demo-member1.

3. Change Evaluated RAID Policy to RAID 50.



4. You see the graph shows that demo-member1 will perform better in the current

environment running as RAID 10 (black line) than RAID 50 (orange line). This is fine because

the member is already configured as RAID 10. However, if the RAID Evaluator showed

different results, it might help you make a decision to reconfigure the member to a different

RAID set.

Combined Graphs

1. Click on Combined Graphs in the left-hand pane.

2. A combined set of graphs is displayed. This can be helpful to identify performance issues.

An example might be if the graphs show a situation where IOPs fall, Latency increases, and



TCP Retransmits increase. All three of these graphs are shown in the Combined Graphs view,

so any issues will be quickly highlighted.

Alerts

1. Below the graphs click on the Alerts tab.

2. Notice how SAN HQ is also aware of the firmware mismatch in the Demo Lab environment.

Other errors such as TCP Retransmit percentages can be highlighted here in a production

environment.



Network view

1. Click on Network in the left-pane.

2. This is a great place to analyze the network performance. There are tables and graphs

showing information about iSCSI connections, Network Load %, TCP Retransmit % and

Network bandwidth. There is also a graphical display of the network throughput.



3.3.3 – Interpreting historical workloads using SANHQ

Opening the archive

Next we’ll look a SANHQ archive to show how a real world workload can be analysed.

1. On the desktop you’ll find the SANHQ Archive_VDI Load file below the SAN Headquarters

shortcut, double click it to start in in SANHQ.

2. You’ll find the historical workload against the entry for IXT-6220.

This archive is from our VDI testing of the PS6210XS Hybrid array, this testing supported the

creation of our 2000 user Reference Architecture which can be read here and shared with

your customers.

Understanding a VDI workload

A VDI workload is considered to be made up of 3 phases, a Boot Storm, where the day’s

desktops are pre-deployed in readiness for the day’s activity, a Login Storm where the user

base connects to their systems and prepare for the day’s work, finally we enter the Steady

State when the majority of production activity is carried out.

Each of these sections have considerably different performance profiles which is why vdi is

such a challenging solution to design for. However, for us we’ll be able to show the flexibility

and performance available from our PS Series hybrid technology.

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/m/white_papers/20438105/download.aspx



Phase 1: The Boot Storm

This operation is the creation of multiple OS instances from a gold copy and their starting up

in preparation to be used during the day. This generally happens a few hours before the start

time of the user base.

1. To view the Boot Storm in greater detail, click on the IO tree and expand its options. Click

and drag over the first spike on chart and hover over the peak value in the Avg IOPS.

The Boot storm is one of the main areas for sizing, we can see that in the General info pane,

we’ve a 65/35 Read/Write ratio, in Average IOPS we see 17.5k IOPS with Average Latency of

2.78 (which is considered low for this amount of activity) and an Average I/O Rate of

232mb/s.

Note: As this is the read heavy phase we will expect our replica volumes to show most

activity as user instances are cloned out from them. With SANHQ we have an ability to look

at the group, pool, member and volume level



2. Click on the Volumes drop down menu and chose open the ‘all volumes in group IXT-6220’

view

3. Reorder the Volume list by Average IOPS, this will show the busiest volumes on top

As expected we can see that one Replica Volume is doing 2000 read IOPS and another is

doing 1500 while the individual instance volumes are running just under 500 each. Latency is

quite low as these are being served out from SSD’s.



4. Also note the Average I/O size, it is common mistake in VDI to assume I/O size values will follow expected application or OS sizing guidelines, by the time the IO has traversed down to the storage the value may have increased or decreased from the original size.

With this load we see that what could be argued would be a 4kb I/O (Client OS idling) has arrived to the disk between 12k and 16k. A server image would have between a 24-32k block size.

5. Next we will look disk specific activity, expand the Hardware/Firmware view and select Disk

and click on the peak value in the Graph

On the PS6210XS we have 800GB SSD’s and we can see each are running over 3000 IOPS,

we can view the queue depth of just over 9 which means these flash drive are not

particularly stressed (queue depth of 32 would be considered favourable against a SSD).



Phase 2: The Login Storm

1. After all our user systems have been deployed we enter a period of low activity, Just the idle

activity will be seen until the user base begins to log on at the start of the working period

Over a 60 minute period we see 2000 windows 7 desktops log on and begin a series of

operations, i.e. running local applications, watching HD video, creating documents etc.

We see the activity change drastically, from a 65/35 R/W ratio we now see it flip to a 24/76

R/W ratio, we still it gradually climb to over 17k IO and latency increase slightly to 4.2.



Phase 3: The Steady State

1. Again expand the Hardware/Firmware view and select Disk and click on the peak Steady

State to compare the Disk activity to the Boot Storm Period

2. Here we see 5000 IOPS on the SSD’s with a much higher Queue depth of almost 27,

showing the intense activity that write heavy load introduces. Viewing the 10k disk we see an

average of 65 IO’s and the Queue Depth is under 4, this emphasises the value of the 800gb

SSD’s as even with the write intensive workload we’re still able to keep the majority of the

activity on the fastest part of the array with no spill over to the slower disks.

3. We see a considerable drop-off in values when viewing the spinning disks, the page

management between the flash and 10k ensure that cold or cooling data is kept on the

slower tier and hot data, (QD over 8 are cause for concern.). From these numbers we could

actually expect higher performance levels than we’re seeing with current load.



VDI Workload: Design choices

1. Our ‘Steady state’ we would expect to be an all-day level of load. In our example we saw continual workload of 16773IOPS and latency staying at 5ms.

When sizing a user workload against our Reference Architecture (RA), we can use customer’s

profiled IO values for their desktops to figure out how many virtual desktops we can host.

(Commonly we would consider 10-12 would be light, 20-25 would be medium and 40-50

would be high profile levels), we can divide the IO by that amount to get our expected image

density.

For most VDI solutions, latency is the measure of how good the user experience is. 25ms is

considered to be the value that a user will notice performance problems, again the PS6210XS

is shows its ability to soak up this workload with room to spare.

Documents

Dell PS Series vLAB guide - Amazon S3...demonstration of the Dell PS Series Storage array. You will illustrate its ease-of-use in handling basic storage management tasks, demonstrate