Recent Enhancements for Dell Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)
Wed, 14 Aug 2024 12:08:31 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
The Dell Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) is a single storage plug-in that unifies the storage operations of Dell Technologies’ storage portfolio, encompassing PowerFlex, PowerStore, PowerMax and Unity. vAdmins are at the forefront of ensuring the virtual infrastructure runs smoothly, delivering high performance and availability. They often face the challenge of bridging the gap between storage and compute resources, necessitating tools that allow them to efficiently manage storage tasks without requiring deep expertise in the underlying storage technologies.
With VSI, vAdmins can perform tasks such as provisioning, monitoring, and snapshot management directly within vSphere, reducing the need for multiple interfaces and simplifying day-to-day operations. This integration not only enhances operational efficiency but also enables vAdmins to respond more quickly to the needs of the business, whether it's scaling storage resources, enhancing data protection, or optimizing performance.
In recent years, Dell Technologies has consistently evolved VSI, introducing new features that cater to the latest advancements in storage technology such as NVMe over TCP, enhanced snapshot management, and lifecycle management for advanced storage systems. These updates ensure that VSI remains a critical tool for organizations looking to maintain a competitive edge in the digital economy by streamlining their storage management processes and maximizing the value of their IT investments.
VSI 10.7
We are excited to announce the availability of the latest release— VSI 10.7—with the following new capabilities:
- PowerFlex File Support: Manage NAS Servers and NFS Datastores
- PowerFlex NVMe/TCP: For PowerFlex 4.6 or later, VSI provides options to set the number of paths/volume and number of system ports per Protection Domain
- Tech preview (Beta) of support for PowerMax Secure Snapshot
PowerFlex File Support
VSI 10.7 now allows you to discover and register the NAS Servers deployed on PowerFlex clusters across different storage pools:
You can specify user access during registration or in a more granular way post registration:
Once the NAS Servers are registered, you can start creating NFS (3 or 4.1) datastores by selecting the PowerFlex cluster and the NAS Server on the cluster:
You can also specify File-level Retention settings (supported for PowerFlex 4.6 and later) to enforce for the datastore:
PowerMax Secure Snapshot support (Tech preview)
Secure snapshots in PowerMax brings the data protection practice of immutability to operationally critical data. The VSI interface has been extended to create and modify secure snapshots as well as enforce the security to the expiration parameter. Note that this feature is currently in beta and will go through further testing before we release it as a standard feature.
Following is how you create a secure snapshot of a PowerMax volume by enabling the Secure Snapshot option and specifying the snapshot expiration:
You can see the Secure field as part of the snapshot list view:
You can modify the snapshot, but the secure snapshot best practice will not allow an expiration period less than the original value:
Since the original expiration period was set to 100 days, the value can only be increased from there:
Summary of recent releases
Following is a list of the capabilities added in the last few releases. Please note that only the new features are summarized here. For a complete list of all the quality improvements and security enhancements we have been making to VSI, refer to the release notes of each release.
VSI 10.0 (July 2022)
- General:
- Introduction of the VSI Health Checker
- PowerMax:
- Support for PowerMax File
- NVMe/TCP support (Note: PowerMax eNAS is not supported)
- PowerStore:
- Support for PowerStore Replication and Metro
- Management features for PowerStore Snapshot Rule, Replication Rule, Protection Policy, Volume Group, and associated operations
- Rename and Sync VMFS datastores
- SRM support for PowerStore
VSI 10.0.1 (November 2022)
- General:
- Product updated in response to a Dell Security Advisory (DSA-2022-311)
VSI 10.1 (November 2022)
- General:
- Added support for VMware High-Performance Plug-in (HPP) for NVMe and TCP devices
- PowerStore:
- Import PowerStore protection policies as VM policies
- Notifications during system expansion that active Metro replication sessions will be paused
- Monitoring of PowerStore volume group capacity, performance, alerts, etc., similar to PowerStore Manager
VSI 10.2 (March 2023)
- General:
- Support for PowerStore Lifecycle Management (LCM) as part of VSI with VxRail
VSI 10.3 (June 2023)
- PowerMax:
- Monitor system capacity and performance using metrics based on storage resource pools
- Display all unused mapped devices at the vSphere host level
- PowerStore:
- Map and unmap datastores, manage hosts at the vSphere host or cluster level
- Nondisruptive upgrades for PowerStore systems, check for available upgrades, and view upgrade details
VSI 10.4 (October 2023)
- PowerMax:
- Snapshot management (create, view, delete, edit, refresh) for PowerMax NFS datastores
- Restore and clone snapshots of PowerMax NFS datastores
- PowerStore:
- Access management for NAS servers, block storage, and vVols during system registration
- Snapshot and protection policy management for PowerStore NFS datastores
- Mounting and unmounting NFS datastores on additional hosts
- PowerFlex:
- Snapshot management (create, view, secure, delete) for PowerFlex VMFS datastores
- Assign and unassign snapshot policies to VMFS datastores
VSI 10.5 (January 2024)
- PowerMax:
- Monitor datastore performance
- Restore and terminate VMFS snapshot restore sessions
- PowerStore:
- Autodownload for software updates
- Management of NVMe vVol hosts and datastores including registration, viewing, modification, and deletion
- Enhanced metro volume replication management with pause/resume functionality and witness service operations
VSI 10.6 (April 2024)
- General:
- Digital signatures to verify the integrity of binaries
- PowerMax:
- Monitor NFS datastore capacity
- Register PowerMax system with a VASA provider and view vVol datastores
- PowerFlex:
- Management of NVMe/TCP hosts and VMFS datastores with NVMe/TCP backing volumes
Resources
You can find the various VSI resources on the Dell Support portal:
- Download any of the recent VSI versions.
- Documentation like release notes, product guide and knowledge base articles
Author: Parasar Kodati, Engineering Technologist, Dell ISG