To our many VxRail customers, you know that our innovation train is a constant machine that keeps on delivering more value while keeping you on a continuously validated track. The next stop on your VxRail journey brings you to VxRail 7.0.450 which offers significant benefits to life cycle management and dynamic node clusters.

VxRail 7.0.450 provides support for VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 3l and VMware vCenter 7.0 Update 3l. All existing platforms that support VxRail 7.0 can update to 7.0.450.

This blog provides a deep dive into some of the life cycle management enhancements as well as PowerStore Life Cycle Management integration into VxRail Manager for VxRail dynamic node clusters. For a more comprehensive rundown of the features introduced in this release, see the release notes.

Life cycle management

The life cycle management features that I am covering can provide the most impact to our VxRail customers. The first set of features are designed to offer you actionable information at your fingertips. Imagine taking your first sip of coffee or tea as you log onto VxRail Manager at the start of your day, and you immediately have all the up-to-date information that you need to make decisions and plan out your work.

VxRail pre-update health check

The VxRail pre-update health check, or pre-check as the VxRail Manager UI refers to it, has been an important tool for you to determine the overall health of your clusters and assess the readiness for a cluster update. The output of this report brings helps you to be aware of troublesome areas and provides you with information, such as Knowledge Base articles, to resolve the issues. This tool relies on a script that can be automatically uploaded onto the VxRail Manager VM, if the cluster is securely connected to the Dell cloud, or manually uploaded as a bundle procured from the Dell Support website.

For the health check to stay reliable and improve over time, the development of the health check script needs to incorporate a continuous feedback loop so that the script can easily evolve. Feedback can come from our Dell Services and escalation engineering teams as they learn from support cases, and from the engineering team as new capabilities and additions are introduced to the VxRail offering.

To provide an even more accurate assessment of the cluster health and readiness for a cluster update, the VxRail team has increased the frequency of how often the health check script is updated. Starting with VxRail 7.0.450, clusters that are connected to the Dell cloud will automatically scan for new health check scripts multiple times per day. The health check will automatically run every 24 hours, with the latest script in hand, so that you will have an up-to-date report ready for your review whenever you log onto VxRail Manager. This enhancement has just made the pre-update health check even more reliable and convenient.

For clusters that are not connected to the Dell cloud, you can still benefit from the increased frequency of health script updates. However, you are responsible for checking for any updates on the Dell Support website, downloading them, and staging the script on VxRail Manager for the tool to utilize it.

VxRail cluster update planning

The next enhancement that I will delve into provides a simpler and more convenient cluster update planning experience. VxRail 7.0.450 introduces more automation into the cluster update planning operations, so that you have all the information that you need to plan for an update without manual intervention.

For a cluster connected to the Dell cloud, VxRail Manager will automatically scan for new update paths that are relevant to that particular cluster.  This scan happens multiple times a day. If a new update path is found, VxRail Manager will download the lightweight manifest file from that target LCM composite bundle. This file provides the metadata of the LCM composite bundle, including the manifest of the target VxRail Continuously Validated State.

The following figure shows the information of two update paths provided by their manifest files to populate the Internet Updates tab. That information includes the target VxRail software version, estimated cluster update time, link to the release notes, and whether reboots are required for the nodes to complete an update to this target version. (You can disregard the actual software version numbers: these are engineering test builds used to demonstrate the new functionality.)

VxRail Manager, by default, will recommend the next software version on the same software train. For the recommended path, VxRail Manager automatically generates an update advisor report which is the new feature for cluster update planning. An update advisor report is a singular exportable report that consolidates the output from existing planning tools:

• Same metadata of the update path, as provided on the Internet Updates tab:

• The update advisory report that provides component-by-component change analysis, which helps users build IT infrastructure change reports:

• The health check report that was discussed earlier:

• The user-managed component report that reminds users whether they need to update non-VxRail managed components for a cluster update:

This report is automatically generated every 24 hours so that you can log onto VxRail Manager and have all the up-to-date information at your disposal to make informed decisions. This feature will make your life easier because you no longer have to manually run all these jobs and wait for them to complete!

For a non-recommended update, you can manually generate an update advisor report using the Actions button for the listed update path. For clusters not connected to Dell cloud, you can still benefit from the update advisor report. However, instead of downloading a lightweight manifest file, you would have to download the full LCM bundle from the Dell Support website to generate the report.

Smart bundle

The last life cycle management feature that I want to focus on is about smart bundles. The term ‘smart bundle’ refers to a space-efficient LCM bundle that can be downloaded from the Dell cloud. For VxRail users who are using CloudIQ today to manage their VxRail clusters, this feature is familiar to you. A space-efficient bundle is created by first performing a change analysis of the VxRail Continuously Validated State currently running on a cluster versus the target VxRail Continuously Validated State that a user wants to download for their cluster. The change analysis determines the delta of install files in the full LCM bundle that is needed by the cluster to download and update to the target version.

In VxRail 7.0.450, you can now initiate smart bundle transfers from VxRail Manager. Smart bundles can greatly reduce the transfer size of an update bundle, which can be extremely beneficial for bandwidth-constrained environments. To use the smart bundle feature, the cluster has to be configured to connect to CloudIQ in the Dell cloud. If VxRail Manager is not properly configured to use the smart bundle feature or if the smart bundle operation fails, VxRail Manager defaults to using the traditional method of downloading the full LCM bundle from the Dell cloud.

VxRail dynamic nodes with PowerStore

VxRail 7.0.450 introduces the much-anticipated integration of PowerStore life cycle management into VxRail Manager for a configuration consisting of VxRail dynamic nodes using PowerStore as the primary storage (also referred to as Dynamic AppsON). This integration further centralizes PowerStore management onto the vCenter Server console for VMware environments. With the Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) plugin to vCenter, you have been able to provision PowerStore storage and manage data services. Now, you can use the VxRail Manager plugin to manage a PowerStore update and view the array’s software version.

To enable this functionality, VxRail leverages the VSI’s new API server to communicate with the PowerStore Manager and initiate lifecycle management operations and retrieve status information. The API server was developed exclusively for VxRail Manager in a Dynamic AppsON configuration. You start the LCM workflow by first uploading the update bundle to PowerStore Manager, then running an update pre-check, and lastly running the update. The operations are initiated from VxRail Manager but the actual operations are executed on the PowerStore Manager.

The following video shows the PowerStore LCM workflow that can be run from the VxRail Manager. You can update a PowerStore that is using any storage type, except NFS, as the primary storage for a VxRail dynamic node cluster.

Conclusion

Although VxRail 7.0.450 is a jam packed release with many new features and enhancements, the features I’ve described are the headliners and deserve a deeper dive to unpack the capability set. Overall, the set of LCM enhancements in this release provides immense value for your future cluster management and update experience. For the full list of features introduced in this release, see the release notes. And for more information about VxRail in general, check out the Dell VxRail Hyperconverged Infrastructure page on www.dell.com.

Author: Daniel Chiu

Dynamic AppsON overview

When two products come together with new and unique capabilities, customers benefit from the “better together” value that is created. That value is clearly visible with Dynamic AppsON, which is a configuration that provides an exclusive integration between compute-only Dell VxRail dynamic nodes and a Dell PowerStore storage system.

Dynamic AppsON enables independent scaling of compute and storage, providing flexibility of choice by increasing the extensibility of both platforms. It provides VxRail environments access to PowerStore enterprise efficiency, data protection, and resiliency features. Additionally, it helps PowerStore environments quickly expand compute for CPU-intensive workloads in a traditional three-tier architecture.

Another integration point that further enhances the Dynamic AppsON experience is the Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI). VSI brings storage provisioning, management, and monitoring capabilities directly into vCenter. It enables the ability to perform common storage tasks and provides additional visibility into the storage system without needing to launch PowerStore Manager.

With Dynamic AppsON, you have the flexibility to choose the type of datastore and connectivity that fits your environment. Dell Technologies recommends vVols and NVMe/TCP.

Leveraging the native vVol capabilities of PowerStore is the optimal way to provision VM datastores. This enables increased storage granularity at the VM level, offloading of data services to PowerStore, and storage policy-based management directly in vCenter. This further enables vCenter as the common operating environment for the administrator.

For connectivity, NVMe/TCP is recommended because it provides significant advantages. It enables performance that is comparable to direct-attach, while retaining the cost-effectiveness, scalability, and flexibility of traditional Ethernet.

Figure 1.  Dynamic AppsON overview

For more information about Dynamic AppsON, see the Dell VxRail and Dell PowerStore: Better Together Through Dynamic AppsON white paper.

Dynamic AppsON lifecycle management

Dell VxRail and Dell PowerStore have taken this integration a step further by introducing lifecycle management for Dynamic AppsON deployments. This enables an administrator to view the PowerStore details and initiate a code upgrade directly from VxRail Manager in vCenter. By leveraging the VxRail Manager user interface and workflows, an administrator does not need to switch between multiple interfaces for the lifecycle management operations.

The lifecycle management functionality from VxRail Manager is exclusively enabled through VSI. Dynamic AppsON lifecycle management is available starting with VxRail 7.0.450, PowerStoreOS 3.0, and Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) 10.2.

Dynamic AppsON lifecycle management provides the following capabilities in VxRail Manager in vCenter:

• View the attached storage system type and software version
• Upload a code bundle from the local client directly to PowerStore
• Run a Pre-Upgrade Health Check on PowerStore and report any warnings and failures
• Initiate a code upgrade and track the progress until completion

The following figures show these Dynamic AppsON lifecycle management tasks in VxRail Manager.

Figure 2.  PowerStore code reporting

Figure 3.  PowerStore code upload

Figure 4.  PowerStore Pre-Upgrade Health Check

Figure 5.  PowerStore upgrade in progress

Figure 6.  PowerStore upgrade completed successfully

Figure 7.  Updated PowerStore code version

To see all these lifecycle management tasks in action from start to finish, refer to this video:

Conclusion

With the addition of lifecycle management for Dynamic AppsON, the number of storage management tasks for which a virtualization and storage administrator has to leave vCenter is reduced. This functionality provides a consistent, common, and efficient management experience for both VxRail and PowerStore. The integration between VxRail, PowerStore, and the VSI plug-in enables consistent workflows and visibility between storage and compute. Better together through Dynamic AppsON, brought to you by Dell VxRail and Dell PowerStore.

Resources

• Dynamic AppsON Lifecycle Management video
• Dynamic AppsON Summary video
• Dynamic AppsON infographic
• Dynamic AppsON: A Better Together Story blog
• Dell VxRail and Dell PowerStore: Better Together Through Dynamic AppsON white paper
• Dell PowerStore: Virtualization Integration white paper

 
Author: Wei Chen, Technical Staff, Engineering Technologist

LinkedIn