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October 17th, 2016 22:00
Issues reported in Unisphere Diagnostic Report (LUN, Thin Pool )
Hi
I have a small VNX5200 with 6x 1TB Pool LUNs (Thick) used to host VMs (vSphere 5.5) and a RAID Group of 4 Drives for holding templates and ISOs etc. I'm running Block Code 05.33.008.5.119 and am looking to upgrade. When running a diagnostic report I am seeing the following issues and was hoping for some explanation -
(1) There is no Thin Pool configured so I'm confused as to this Critical Issue.
(2) Can someone also explain the Warning re: LUN bound on the system drives?
I had not seen this issue running a diagnostic pre-119.
(3) I also see the warning re: LUN bound on the system drives when running the pre-check for an offline block code update via USM. Am I safe to update this block code with this warning?
Thanks and Regards
gc77
umichklewis
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October 18th, 2016 06:00
(1) By it's nature, every Pool on VNX is "Thin", that is, Thin-Provisioned. You can choose to "Thick" provision LUNs on a Thin Pool, i.e., tell the VNX to allocate 100% of the space requested and reserve it for your LUNs. According to your statemen, this is what you've done. The warning itself is meaningless in your case, as your LUNs will be able to use 100% of their allocated capacity, with no fear of pool exhaustion.
(2) Every VNX uses its first four drives (often referred to as the "System Drives" or the "Vault Area" for us old-timers) to hold the VNX Operating Environment. Best practice recommends that you avoid putting high-I/O workloads on these drives, as it can adversely affect system performance. Think of it like putting a high-transaction Oracle workload on the same disks that hold the operating system.
(3) How many drives do you actually have in your VNX5200? Based on your statements, it makes me think you only have four drives in total. If that's the case, there's not much you can do about it (short of adding more disks), so I'd ignore these warnings. Basically, EMC is warning you that you run the risk of degraded performance during the upgrade (as the VNX will trespass LUNs between SPs for the upgrade).
Fortunately, the OS upgrade will not delete your LUNs or affect any of the space you've provisioned, but those messages are undoubtedly unnerving. As long as you have redundant paths to your ESX hosts, you should be just fine.
Let us know if that helps!
Karl
gc77
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October 18th, 2016 17:00
Thanks Karl.
I wonder why these issues have only been reported after the last block code update that was conducted as there has been no configuration change? New tests perhaps?
I didn't set this up, however looking at Unisphere -
* Bays 0-3 have 600GB SAS Drives, that have a RAID Group assigned of 800GB total (with 2x LUNs that are used for ISO's and Templates for VM). These are not high workload repositories. I assume then this is what the warning is referring to.
* Bays 4-5 have a couple of SAS Flash for Fast Cache
* Bays 6-20 have 600GB SAS Drives making up the General Storage Pool where 6x 1TB LUNs are assigned
* Bays 21-23 are empty
* Bay 24 has a hotspare 600GB SAS
In reply to -
(1) Thanks for the explanation on Thick provisioning over Thin Pool. This is what is done here (bays 6-20).
(2) Thanks again, as above the first 4 drives have some low use (I/O) storage repositories setup on them.
(3) There are 22 in total, 4 SAS + 2 SSD + 15 SAS + 1 SAS spare
Your explanations certainly did help.
Garry