Tag: raw devices

VMware Migration of VMs and RDMs from VNX to XtremIO – Part 2

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sancopy-xtremio

In continuing with part 2 of this series, I’m going to discuss zoning requirements for SANcopy on the XtremIO. To recap before we begin, I have a VMware environment that I am migrating from VNX to XtremIO. Most of this environment can be migrated via storage vMotion to the XtremIO. However, there are quite a few of VMs that have physical mode RDMs that need to be migrated via SANcopy. We chose SANcopy over Open Migrator because these following reasons:

  • SANcopy enabler is installed on the source VNX
  • SANcopy will require one outage to shutdown the server on time of cutover
  • SANcopy is array-based and would not impact the host CPU
  • Open Migrator is only supported for Microsoft Windows Server
  • Open Migrator requires three reboots to migrate (one to attach filter driver to source and target drives, two to actually cutover one drives are in sync, and three to uninstall the software)

First things first; we need to zone our target XtremIO to the source VNX. With following EMC Best Practices, we will create 1-to-1 zones on each Fabric for SP A and SP B ports to two controllers.

Fabric A

Zones Source VNX Target XtremIO
Zone 1 SP A-port 5 X1-SC1-FC1
Zone 2 SP A-port 5 X1-SC2-FC1
Zone 3 SP B-port 5 X1-SC1-FC1
Zone 4 SP B-port 5 X1-SC2-FC1
* SP A-port 5 and SP B-port 5 are connected to Fabric A in my environment*

Fabric B

Zones Source VNX Target XtremIO
Zone 1 SP A-port 4 X1-SC1-FC2
Zone 2 SP A-port 4 X1-SC2-FC2
Zone 3 SP B-port 4 X1-SC1-FC2
Zone 4 SP B-port 4 X1-SC2-FC2
* SP A-port 4 and SP B-port 4 are connected to Fabric B in my environment*

You should end up with zones that look something like this:

zone name XIO3136_X1_SC1_FC2_VNX5500_SPA_P4 vsan 200
member fcalias XIO3136_X1_SC1_FC2
member fcalias VNX_SPA_P4
exit
zone name XIO3136_X1_SC2_FC2_VNX5500_SPA_P4 vsan 200
member fcalias XIO3136_X1_SC2_FC2
member fcalias VNX_SPA_P4
exit
zone name XIO3136_X1_SC1_FC2_VNX5500_SPB_P4 vsan 200
member fcalias XIO3136_X1_SC1_FC2
member fcalias VNX_SPB_P4
exit
zone name XIO3136_X1_SC2_FC2_VNX5500_SPB_P4 vsan 200
member fcalias XIO3136_X1_SC2_FC2
member fcalias VNX_SPB_P4
exit

Yes… yes… I know I used the acronym XIO (XIO is not XtremIO) for my fcalias and zone names. Sorry! 🙂

You can choose to split this across multiple bricks if you have more than one brick in your XtremIO cluster. Even though, you really only need to zone one storage controller at a minimum, we are choosing to zone two controllers and will split the SANcopy sessions across the two controllers to balance out the load.

Once we have our zoning in place, we should now see the VNX visible from the XtremIO. You can view this in the CLI by issuing the show-discovered-initiators-connectivity command or in the GUI by creating a new initiator group for the VNX and selecting the drop down to show the SP A and SP B WWPNs. Create a new initiator group on the XtremIO for the VNX and map the target volumes for the SANcopy session to this initiator group. Take note of the HLU you assigned to the volume mapping and also the target FC ports on the XtremIO you zoned to the VNX.

xmcli (admin)> show-discovered-initiators-connectivity
Discovered Initiator List:
Cluster-Name Index Port-Type Port-Address Num-Of-Conn-Targets
ATLNNASPXTREMIO01 1 fc 50:06:01:61:08:60:10:60 2
ATLNNASPXTREMIO01 1 fc 50:06:01:62:08:60:10:60 2
ATLNNASPXTREMIO01 1 fc 50:06:01:64:3e:a0:5a:ed 2
ATLNNASPXTREMIO01 1 fc 50:06:01:65:3e:a0:5a:ed 2
ATLNNASPXTREMIO01 1 fc 50:06:01:69:08:60:10:60 2
ATLNNASPXTREMIO01 1 fc 50:06:01:6a:08:60:10:60 2
ATLNNASPXTREMIO01 1 fc 50:06:01:6c:3e:a0:5a:ed 2
ATLNNASPXTREMIO01 1 fc 50:06:01:6d:3e:a0:5a:ed 2

sancopy-xtremio-2.jpg

The next part of this guide will discuss what is needed on the VNX source before SANcopy sessions can be created. We are going to talk about reserved LUN pool, requirements around that, and creating the SANcopy session itself. Stay tuned!

 

VMware Migration of VMs and RDMs From VNX to XtremIO – Part 1

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In today’s digital age with virtualization leading the way, you will often find yourself in a situation dealing with VMs and RDMs. RDMs are Raw Device Mappings and it is a way to present a physical LUN to a VM directly as if it was accessing direct-attached storage. Often what proves to be a daunting task is the ability to migration these RDMs that are attached to VMs. I’m going to discuss how to identify which VMs have RDMs, which storage array they belong to, and map it back to the physical LUN on that storage array.

  • The first thing you will want to do is to scan vCenter for VMs with RDMs
    • You will need read access to vCenter and you should have VMware powerCLI installed on your desktop
    • Connect to vCenter through powerCLI
      • Connect-VIServer yourvcenterhostname.domain.local
    • Run a get-VM script selecting the VM hostname, raw device, NAA ID, and hard disk number
      • Get-VM | Get-HardDisk -DiskType “RawPhysical”,”RawVirtual” | Select Parent,Name,DiskType,ScsiCanonicalName,DeviceName | format-table | Out-File –FilePath “out-file-location-on-your-terminal”
  • Once the script completes, you should have a text file that can be imported into excel as text data delimted or fixed width
  • Use the data filter and sort by NAA or SCSIcanonicalname
  • Use this and the source array collects or logs to compare and identify which pertain to your migration
    • In my example, I am migrating from a VNX to XtremIO. I will be using the SCSI Canonical Name and comparing that to the LUN UID/WWN from the SP collect

Example:

RDMs-list.jpg

Once you have identified the VMs in the list that pertain to your migration, you are now ready to begin planning next steps. In my scenario, I am migrating VMs residing on a VNX to a XtremIO. There is a mixture of Virtual and Physical RDMs which means that along with Storage vMotion, I will be using SANcopy to create incremental sessions and pushing the physical RDMs to the XtremIO.

Other tools such as Open Migrator and PPME (if PowerPath is present) can be used as an alternative host-based migration approach, but each tool as its caveats and may still require a reboot to cut over. I will discuss SANcopy from VNX to XtremIO in a future post.