00:00
Pure storage flash ray is known for its simplicity to manage, robust feature set, and blazing fast performance. But what if you could make things even easier when it comes to storage management in a VMware vSphere environment? Well, we have done just that when using the Pure Storage vSphere client plug-in.
00:17
So let's dive in and see how we can streamline your workloads in vSphere today. Here we are in the Pure Storage vSphere test drive lab, and if I go in and look at vSphere, I've already done a little bit of pre-work just to speed things along. I've already got the Pure Storage vSphere client plugin already installed, and if I click on it,
00:41
I've already configured it to be aware of Flash array one or the Flash array that's deployed in this lab environment. So let's actually start working with our ESXi host. So if I go into the inventory, you'll notice that I've got two ESXi hosts in this lab environment. I got ESXI1 and ESXI2.
01:00
And notice ESXI1 currently resides in the TD cluster, and ESXI2 is outside of that cluster. And we're just gonna work like this is a brand new environment or a net new cluster that you're going to be building. So if I look at ESXI1 and I go to configure, if I look at storage adapters, you'll notice that there are no fiber channel or I because the adapters installed on this
01:22
machine. I just have the local adapters for the local disks. And in this lab environment, we are working with ISUSI. So one of the first things we would want to do is configure ISUI to be aware or be able to talk to the flash array, and that's one thing that we've simplified with our plug-in.
01:40
So if I go to the cluster level and right click on it, Go down to pure storage. I have this option to configure ISEI, so I'll click on that. It's aware of Flash array one. I grant, if I had you know, for your production environment, if you had multi flash arrays, you'd have more than one option here, but for lab we have,
01:56
we have a single array. So we'll click that, and this will just take a second for our plug-in to go ahead and tell ESXi to enable or add the software ISA adapter as well as it's going to configure the IUI target. So it was done just that quick. If I go to ESXI1.
02:15
Going to configure storage adapters, you'll see that I've got the ISUSI adapter with its IQN name here. If I select it and I go down to Dynamic Discovery, you see I've got the IP address for the flash array and for Static Discovery, the Flash array as well, as well as its IQN. So we've got the ISUI ready to go, so we could potentially start presenting storage to it.
02:39
But in Flashary speak, the next thing we want to create is what's called a host group, and a host group is a way of it's a logical grouping of ESXi hosts in this example that we would provision storage to for simplified management and operations. So that's the next thing that we want to create. So if I right click on TD cluster.
02:59
Go down to pure storage. I'm going to click on this add or update host group option, and it's basically going to give us a little menu here and it's going to say which array flash array one since we only have one, protocol will be icecuzzy because that's what we're working with in the lab, but you know, if we had MV Media or fabric or fiber channel, those options would be here as well.
03:20
Um, and you'll notice that the host group is going to be called TD cluster. And it's letting you know the action is it's going to be created, and then it's going to add ESXI one. Uh, which will be created to as a host on the flash array. So we'll click create, again, that will take just a matter of seconds,
03:37
if even that, and we've got this host group construct built. And what that's going to look like or what that really means is if you go over to the flash array side. In our in the storage menu, you notice we'll have one host and we have one host group which is the TD cluster host group and the ESXI one. And to prove that out, I'll click into the host group.
03:57
You see TD cluster here, you see ESXI one. By click into that, you will actually see the host port or the IQN for the ESXi host. So again, just a way that that's streamlined for doing it from the vSphere client as opposed to creating these objects within the flash array. But with those items done, we can now start presenting storage to this cluster or to the
04:20
CSXIO. So again, I'll right click on TD cluster, go down to pure storage, and then I'm going to do create data store, shocking, right? And you notice you can create VMFS data stors this way, you can create virtual volumes or even NFS but for to keep things simple for this demo we'll do VMFS, so we'll leave that selected.
04:40
We'll say next, we'll use VMFS 6, click next again. Uh, we'll name this Langer demo VMFS 01, and let's make it 1 terabyte in size. We'll click next. We're going to assign it to the cluster resource as opposed to just an individual host, so we'll leave that, we'll say next.
05:01
We're gonna select flash array one cause that's the only array in the lab. Uh, protection groups, we're gonna leave as the default, but this is something that's relevant to our snapshotting schedule or our replication schedule on the flash array side, which we'll get into in a later demo, but for now we'll just leave this as default. Uh, we won't be working with quality of service or bandwidth,
05:22
you know, IPSs limits, but just know that you can throttle these things at the array level, but we'll just say none for here and we get the ready to complete screen, everything looks good. We'll just click finish and this will just take a second, rescanning the HPAs, create the volume on the array, so on and so forth. And now you notice we do have Langer demo
05:42
VMFS01 at the cluster level under data stores. And if I go to flash array on the flash array, I see the connected volumes to the ESXI one host, and we can actually click into the volume and get some other details when it was created, number of hosts connected to it, so on and so forth. So we've, you've seen how quickly now we can create and mount the volume to the vSphere host
06:06
from the vSphere client. So we've got an ESXi host with IEZ. we've presented a data store to it, that looks good. But what if we were going to add ESXI2 or this net new host to the cluster? So I'm just gonna go ahead and drag the host into the cluster.
06:24
Wait for that to happen and we know that ESX or I'm sorry, ISA is not configured on this ESX box. I'll go to the adapters, you'll see that it's not there. We know we need to add it to that host group, right, to get the data store presented, so there's a couple things we still need to do for this host to be operational.
06:42
So I'll right click on the cluster and do pure storage and then say add or update host group because that's the work we want to do. And this time I'm going to show a little shortcut. So we're going to show flash array one again is the array we want to connect to. We're going to use ISUSI, but now I'm just going to go ahead with this interface.
07:00
I'm going to say configure IAS initiators on the host. I'm gonna bypass that configure IUI option I showed before again, just to show you how quickly we can get things done. So we'll leave that checked. We already know the TD cluster is configured, that's why it says that,
07:15
and we know ESXI1 is already in that host group, hence it's saying already configured, and now we know ESXI 2 will be created. So we'll click create. That'll take a second. It's gonna again uh configure the adapter, present the storage, so on and so forth.
07:31
If we go back to Flash array one, if we go to the volumes. We should now see the TD clusters there, and we see ESXI 1 and 2, now both have access to this data store or the volume from the array that's formatted as the data store. So that's how quickly and easy we can configure Icuy, get the host groups done, and get a data store presented.
07:57
The next thing I want to show you some is some data store operations that we do as well. So this Linux VM actually lives on the local data store on the install files for uh ESXI one. So let's just go ahead and migrate this guy over to Our demo data store. So click that. Do a storage of emotion here,
08:19
click finish. Let's bring up. Our tasks, it's running at 94%, it's almost done, and now it's complete. And you know, we'll just go and power it on. I don't think it ultimately matters, but let's power it on for giggles.
08:35
So what I want to do now is show what we can do at the data store level, but also that the context menu for the options change based off where you're at in the inventory screen on the vSphere client. So I moved over to data stores. I'm going to right click on the Langer demo VMFS 01,
08:54
go down to pure storage, and you're going to see that we have additional options. We have edit data store, we have some options around space reclamation, creating snapshots, recover VMs, so on and so forth. So again, more streamlined operations. So let's say this data store was configured at 1 terabyte, but you're like, you know what, it needs to be bigger.
09:13
It's filling up, but I got the space. So let's just do edit data store. Um, we know it's a 1 terabyte now, but we want to take it to 2 terabytes, let's say. So we're just gonna change, change the size here, again, we're not gonna worry about the QOS and the IOP stuff,
09:29
so we'll just click submit. And basically you see here it says it's resizing the data store, you see in the tasks down here, expand data store, and it's just that easy again to expand the data store from within the vSphere client. Now let's go to the array itself and we will see that the volume Laer VMFS 01 is now at
09:50
2 terabytes. If I click into it, you'll see it's up here, so we can see that we've easily expanded the data store. Next, let's talk about taking data store snapshots through the vSphere client. So again, within the data store inventory screen if I right click on our demo VMFS1 data store, go down to Pure Storage, and then I can say create snapshot.
10:12
And we'll use this live demo suffix. We'll click create. I'll just take not even a second, um, to create the snapshot, but we'll need to see that obviously on the array side, right? So we're initiating the action from vSphere,
10:26
but it's going to be done on the array. So let's refresh our volume here. So we're in Lang Langer demo VMFS01 and then over here on the right, you'll see that we've got our snapshot this live dash demo that we've taken. OK, so we've got our quickly, easily done snapshots, but how can we actually put some of
10:45
these snapshots to use? So let's go back to the host and clusters view. And let's just go ahead and let's power off this VM. And let's say for some crazy reason somebody powered it off and then they deleted it for some reason. So we'll just go and right click and say yes we deleted it. And then we find out, hey, that's a very
11:09
important VM we need that back. It was running, you know, some sort of production workload. If I go back to the data store menu or the inventory, right click on our Langger demo VFS data store, go down to pure storage. Then I can say recover VM from a snapshot.
11:30
So if I had a whole tree of snapshots, you would see those options here, but we've only got the one in the lab environment, the one that we just took. So I'm gonna go ahead and select that. I'll click next, and what it's gonna do is it's going to temporarily mount that volume is that snapshot as a volume is a data store, and then it's gonna start like scanning it for basically
11:48
for VMX files to find all the VMs that you. Might want to recover or restore from that data store. Now, we know we only have one VM on there, so it's only gonna list the one for the Linux VM. So we'll go ahead and select the snap or select that option. Click next. We're going to put it back on ESX one,
12:08
that's fine. We're going to leave it the same name. We're not going to change any of that. Click next and click finish. This will just take again a couple of seconds. We see it down here that it's unmounting cause it's reloc it's recovered the VM now it's going to unmount this snap data store you see here, and now it is gone.
12:29
And if I go back to hosting clusters view, I see our Linux VM and we're good to go, and then I could just go ahead and power back on. Like nothing ever happened. And there you have it, a few examples on how the Pure Storage vSphere client plug-in can simplify storage tasks in your vSphere environment, but we've only scratched the surface on what the plug-in has
12:53
to offer. Be sure to check out Pier 360 for additional videos to see what else is possible. Thank you for watching and I hope you have a great day.
