NetApp VSC 2.0 vCenter Plug-in Announced

In support of the release of VMware vSphere 4.1, NetApp has announced version 2.0 of the Virtual Storage Console. Obviously, with today’s release, VMware has delivered on a large number of new capabilities in the many areas such as…

vCompute: Memory Compression & DRS Host Affinity

vNetwork: Network I/O Control

vStorage: Storage I/O Control, performance reporting, and Array Integration

… and many, many more. For all of the details on the full capabilities in vSphere 4.1 please head over to VMware.com. I will devote a fair amount of time diving into the vStorage enhancements in 4.1 in my next post. Trust me, engineering the VSC was tough with all of the work netApp and Vmware already had going on in support of VAAI.

Many of you may be familiar with version 1.0 of the VSC, as it has been highlighted as one of our key enablers to simplifying operations thru integration in many formats including:

• Technical Report 3749 – vSphere on NetApp: Storage Best Practices v2.0
• Blog Series: VMware Admins are Storage Admins part 1, part 2, & part 3
• Now Available: The Virtual Storage Console vSphere Plug-in

Internally we refer to version 2.0 of TR-3749 as “the picture book.” This moniker is actually high praise for the engineering efforts that enabled us to replace almost every manual process associated around storage management with a vCenter Integration.

Unifying SMVI, RCU, and the VSC into a Single Plug-in

The journey to the cloud is one of expanding roles and areas of responsibility for VI administrators. As such, simplification is a key to driving down operational expenses and enabling massive scaling with solutions. Too many moving parts leads to misery.

The VSC 2.0 is our extensible plug-in framework co-developed along with VMware engineering that simplifies storage management thru integration. It combines several of our industry leading storage plug-in capabilities for both SAN & NAS deployments.

From within vCenter, the VSC enables VI administrators to centrally monitor, provision, clone, back up, recover, and replicate storage operations for virtual server and desktop environments without requiring coordinated support from storage administrators. In addition, the plug-in includes real-time discovery, health monitoring, and capacity management for a more efficient environment.

This combination of unique capabilities provides VMware administrators with the necessary tools to improve server and storage visibility and efficiencies while still enabling storage administrators to own and control storage policies.

The VSC 2.0 includes enhancements and fixes over version 1.0 including:

• VAAI Integration
• Support for vFilers (Multistore)
• Expanded Inventory & capacity reporting details
• Updated version of MBRTools (MBRScan and MBRAlign)
• New SCSI settings scripts for Solaris VMs
• Enhanced log management & much more…
  
  

I believe it is fair to say that even with all of these enhancements none are as prominent as the inclusion of SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure (SMVI) & the Rapid Cloning Utility (RCU) as a part of the VSC! Both of these tools are now VSC plug-ins, which can be upgraded independently, and I can share that we working very hard to expand the number of plug-ins for the VSC framework.

The release of the RCU included in the VSC is version 3.1. In this version engineering has expanded the existing capabilities to provision datastores to hosts, clusters, & data centers and provide zero cost clones of VMs now includes support for:

• Provisioning vApps
• Support for vFilers
• Prevents cloning of VMs with misaligned GOS partitions
  
  

The release of the SMVI included in the VSC is very interesting as SMVI is now a plug-in and no longer a stand-alone application. Now VI admins have direct access to enable policy driven, snapshot base backups within vCenter (without installing a client in VMs – big win for the enterprise).

I’ll dig into each of these sub-plug-ins more in future posts.

"The integration between VMware vCenter™ Server and Virtual Storage Console further demonstrates how the VMware and NetApp partnership benefits our customers by providing enhanced visibility and management for greater productivity, response time, and overall return on investment.”

-- Gary Green, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware.

Support

The VSC 2.0 (with all sub-plug-ins) supports ESX/ESXi 4.0 and subsequent releases including 4.1 with Data ONTAP releases 7.3.1 or later.

Unified Architectures are Simplified Architectures

NetApp works very hard to deliver simplicity and nowhere is it more apparent than in our storage arrays. NetApp is only unified storage platform in the industry. Every controller runs Data Ontap whether it is the largest or smallest system or if one is virtualizing arrays from other vendors.

VMware shares this vision where it is on display with vCenter being the primary means of managing a virtual infrastructure and ESX and ESXi merging into a single code line (vSphere is the end of the line for ESX).

We have demonstrated unification within VMware solutions such as our somewhat recent release of our Unified SRM Adapter. This was another example of NetApp simplicity, single SRA for SAN & NAS that supports sync, semi-sync, and a-sync replication with every NetApp and 3rd party array virtualized by NetApp.

With the Virtual Storage Console 2.0 we believe we have made another refinement in the simplicity of our joint VMware solutions.

We have many engineering efforts underway which can all be summarized to provide the same goal: Unprecedented operational simplicity. With VMworld only weeks away you won’t have to wait long to receive more of this level of integration for both VI and cloud deployments.

Congratulations to VMware engineering on the release of vSphere 4.1 & NetApp engineering on the VSC 2.0. Stop by the NetApp communities, there’s more to discuss and share around the VSC 2.0 announcement.

Comments

[Francesco Duranti]

This is a fantastic news for us that have all our infrastructure on NetApp Storage :)

Just curious about the release date of VSC 2.0 and also of SRA for SRM 4.1... any known date when they'll be available for download?

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=658313066]

Great news on VSC 2.0 - when can we download it?

I only see 1.0 on the NOW site:

http://now.netapp.com/NOW/cgi-bin/software?product=Virtual+Storage+Console+for+VMware+vSphere&platform=Windows

We are especially keen to make sure we are using the latest mbrscan and mbralign utilities (updated in VSC 2.0)

thanks!

[Vaughn Stewart]

Re: [NetApp - The Virtual Storage Guy] Francesco Duranti submitted a comment to NetApp VSC 2.0 vCenter Plug-in Announced

Unified SR is available from VMware.com the VSC 2.0 is scheduled for release on July 22nd, 2010.

[smccl]

New customer here... is the VSC free of charge or a licensed product. I did purchase SMVI but I'd much prefer the tighter integration in the same UI and I'd prefer it not be another SKU. Thanks.

[Vaughn Stewart]

Re: [NetApp - The Virtual Storage Guy] smccl submitted a comment to NetApp VSC 2.0 vCenter Plug-in Announced

@SMCCL Great question. The NetApp VSC, including SMVI the RCU is a free download to all customers. There are some capability restrictions if one does not have SnapRestore (with SMVI) and FlexClone (with RCU) licensed on the array, but both of these licenses are pretty popular and rather inexpensive.

[Dejan Ilic]

Nice. I realy hope that you have enabled mbrtools to work in ESXi (and the anoying certificate handling in the plugin) or even better if it is done in the GUI instead from CLI where mbrtools doesn't work in ESXi.

Also, could you clarify the license prerequisites for the software to function, partialy or fully?

[Francesco Duranti]

@Vaughn: Regarding the Unified SRA 1.4.3 it seems only certified with SRM 4.0 and not 4.1. It's not in the compatibility matrix and not on the vmware download page for SRM 4.1... there's no netapp srm in that download page. So will 1.4.3 be certified with SRM 4.1 or there will be a new release soon?

So SMVI will become a free of charge feature of the complete adapter (excluded for the SnapRestore storage license)?
Nice to hear for a release date of 19th :)

[Andrew Storrs]

Any information you can share on the updates to mbrscan/mbralign?

- Linux alignment without the need to hack GRUB afterwards? ;)
- Support for aligning Windows Server 2008 (and R2) boot disks (again without editing things) that have been X2V'd with a tool other than PlateSpin (e.g. VMware Converter)?
- The holy grail - ESXi support?

[Darren Hedges]

is there any possibility of getting a download of it sooner as i have need of using the rcu and smvi on the systems im in the middle of building and have a lot of work still to do for monday and would prefer to give the flexclone a try before then incase i decided to revert to normal way of deploying from templates. would also like to use smvi for backups as at present it just doesnt work reliably enough for me.

[Chris Waltham]

@Vaughn: Right now, I can't download SMVI from NOW -- is that a change that will be happening soon? I thought it required a license in the past, but I could be wrong. FYI, we don't have SnapRestore or FlexClone right now.

[Jason Jensen]

Nice job on getting this released so soon after the release of 4.1! I saw the vSphere 4.1 release announcement, read the release notes and then my next thought was "hmm, I wonder which of my plugins are going to break with this". Quick google search brought me here and showed that there was a new version of VSC! Woohoo!

[Vaughn Stewart]

All - Thank you for the comments, I love the dialog...

@Dejan - We are working hard on an update to MBRTools which will support ESXi. Soon we wont have a choice to run in the service console. If you have ESXi today and run with NFS datastores I would suggest you run MBRTools from a LINUX VM. While this config is currently unsupported many have shared with me that it works well and is incredibly fast (up to 900% performance improvement).

@Francesco - We are certifying version 1.4.3 of the SRA with SRM 4.1 . It will be available in a few weeks time. As for SMVI, the functionality is a part of the VSC, but I have learned that I need to clarify my post. While the feature is there for all to use, there is still a modestly priced license required to be legal.

@Andrew - I'll have to check on the GRUB issue. It may be a part of our MBRTols update, but I will need to verify.

@Darren - I wish it was available today. Patience my friend, patience. :)

@Chris - The VSC will be available to download from NOW under the Virtual Storage Console and not SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure on July 22nd.

@Jason - Thanks for the compliments and for being a customer!

Cheers all!

[Kyle]

Until now I've been told IBM N Series customers can't use the VSC (or RCU) due to open license issues. At least they can't get it from IBM's download site. Do you know if these issues have been worked out or if not will NetApp be able to post the VSC on the IBM N Series community’s page it hosts?

While we have many NetApp customers we also have quite a few very large IBM N Series accounts that would very much like to use VSC.

[Vaughn Stewart]

@Kyle - NetApp is working with IBM to address this issue and we believe we might have figured out a way to put this issue to bed. I commit to you that once I know everything is a go, I will share via the blog.

[Francesco Duranti]

A few week is much time considering that without the SRA adapter disaster recovery with SRM on vSphere 4.1 will not be possible. Also because SRM 4.0 is not compatible with vSphere 4.1 and SRM 4.1 is solving a big problem with dvs. Also I see that almost all vendor that had adapter on 4.0.1 already have them certified for 4.1 (only SUN, NetApp and 2 IBM storage adapter are missing)....

Well I hope it will be out soon ... we're forced to wait for it before starting any kind of upgrade and we would like to upgrade to 4.1 also because all our infrastructure is on NFS and finally we will be able to see some performance data related to this on this version...

[Dave]

I agree with Francesco, as any upgrade effort I have is depending on the SRA for the exact same reason... I cant have SRM break on me. I have to build out my environment using the old 4.0 to meet a deadline, and then go through the upgrade effort when it is released. Kind of hassle, but thanks for announcement. At least I know its coming.

[VitaRedux]

A few issues installing this on my VC. (Might be my VC build). First 2 times I installed it, the VC plugin couldn't find the webpage, and I confirmed it wasnt running properly on the VC. The webservice would respond on localhost, but not by IP or servername.
Ended up editing etc/network-interface.properties changing this to my servername, restarting the service and re-registering the plugin. Working now but I don't understand what went wrong.

[Iben Rodriguez]

Very sad to find out the NetApp SRA for SRM 4.1 is not ready yet. Customers have been planning for vSphere 4.1 upgrade and new SRM fixes for a long time.

Can we get a better date estimate please?

[Jerome Hains]

VSC 2.0 is ready for download!

https://now.netapp.com/NOW/cgi-bin/software/?product=Virtual+Storage+Console+for+VMware+vSphere&platform=Windows

[Kyle]

I would like to echo the post on 7/22 asking about the release date for an SRA that is certified to work with SRM 4.1. Do you have any more details?

[Dave]

I was just reading through the release notes for VSC 2.0, and on the known issues (page 28) it says:

"NIC teaming causes ESX Server to reboot when creating a VM. When NIC teaming is enabled on the ESX Server, the ESX server might unexpectedly reboot while trying creating a Virtual Machine. Make sure you disable NIC teaming until you are finished creating Virtual Machines. For more information, see bug ID 207474 at Bugs Online."

Am I reading this correctly? If so, I think this is a pretty significant bug, and I dont think I'll be installing the VSC2 until it is fixed. In a production environment, most everyone I know teams their NICs for better throughput and redundancy. If this causes ESX to reboot then I'll incur a production outage.

[Ryan Uy]

Does VSC 2.0 support provisioning datastore wizard on esx4.1i? Getting error *Note: ESX host does not support the following: NFS,FCP,iSCSI. using enterprise plus license on esx4.1i... provisioning wizard works on esx4.0

[Vaughn Stewart]

@Ryan - the VSC 2.0 is a bit out of date and not supported with vSphere 4.1. Try downloading the VSC 2.0 which includes the provisioning and cloning capabilities (which is the RCU 3.2 sub-plug-in).

[Jason Jensen]

@Dave I looked up bug 207474 and found this:

This issue is seen with ESX 3.0 using the native software iSCSI initiator.

Honestly don't even see what this has to do with VSC specifically other than that it now includes RCU. Seems to be more of an issue with ESX 3.0, iSCSI, and teaming and just happens to apply to VSC because you could be creating VMs with the RCU.

[Dave]

looks like the NetApp SRA for SRM 4.1 is now available once you login to VMware's site :) Released 9/1/2010.