Allocating vCloud Storage with UIM/P Part 2 - Provision Storage

By -
This is part 2 of the 5 part series Allocating vCloud Storage with UIM/P Guides. This one is the "big kahuna" where I will break down all the steps required to add new LUNs to an existing UIM/P Service. (In future posts, I will also talk about Provision Cisco UCS blades and how to build a new UIM/P Service Offering.)
Provision Storage using UIM/P
  • Point a Web browser at  the UIM/P URL (ex: https://uim-p.corp.com) and login with the default sysadmin account. (BTW, I recommend you change your password or integrating UIM/P with an identity source such as AD, OpenLDAP, TACACS+, RADIUS, etc. (There will be a future post about this as well.)

  • You will be presented with the UIM/P dashboard
  • Click Administration > Infrastructure Assets > VCE Vblock Systems, then select a Vblock from the list and click Discover. Discovery ensures that any recent Vblock hardware infrastructure additions, such as compute blades or storage, are present in UIM/P
  • Watch the status and wait for the discovery process to complete. The Status will say Discovering and once completed it will change to Discovery Succeeded. (If any part of the discovery process fails, you must resolve the issue before you proceed!)
  • Click on the Service Manager tab and select the Service you want to manage
  • Click Edit to start modifying the selected Service. This will open the Edit Service Window
  • Select the Storage tab and click Add under the Block Storage section

  • Enter the block storage information:
  • Select By Grade (should be preselected)
  • Name (should be prepopulated with the next sequential LUN number and the prefix should match the ESXi cluster name in vCenter. Do not change it!)
  • Capacity GB (add in increments of 1024GB)
  • Grade (select Pool #)
  • File Format (select VMFS)
  • Number to add (set to the number of LUNs you wish to create) Remember to consider the Storage Pool capacity and subscription rate before creating new LUNs!
  • Verify everything is correct and click Save
  • Read and click OK on the Warning message
  • You can now see new LUNs have been added to the service. Click Close to close the Edit Service dialog box
  • So far, we just modified the Service configuration and nothing has been provisioned yet. In order to actually carve out the LUNs on the storage array, we need to provision our Service
  • Select the modified Service from the list and click Provision to create the new LUNs. Provisioning creates the LUNs, assigns them to Storage Groups (Masking), and creates Zoning on the Fabric switches
  • Read the message and click Yes to start provisioning the service
  • Read the warning and click Yes to start provisioning the service
  • Click the Service History tab under Details to watch the progress. You may need to refresh to see updates
  • Once the provisioning is completed click Synchronize to sync the updated configuration with vCenter. This imitates the HBA rescans and creates the Datastores in vCenter. (Depending on the number of hosts in a cluster and number of added LUNs, this process may take an hour, so be patient.)
  • The vSync Status will change to Cluster Synchronization Initiated and then to Synchronization In Progress. See Service History to keep an eye on the progress
  • In vCenter, look at the Recent Tasks, there will be a whole lot of HBA Rescan activity
  • When vCenter Synchronization completes you should see your new LUNs in vCenter as new VMFS Datastores

 In part 3 we will look at setting the Tiering Policy in Unisphere for our new LUNs.

 Allocating vCloud Storage with UIM/P Guide:
Part 1 - Check Free Space and LUN Sizing
Part 2 - Provision Storage using UIM/P
Part 3 - Set Tiering Policies in Unisphere
Part 4 - Configure Storage in vSphere for vCloud
Part 5 - Verify new Storage in vCloud


For more information about UIM/P see the following resources

If you need help deploying UIM/P in your environment or in the lab, checkout a post by my friend Jonathan Stewart at www.virtuallyanadmin.com

If you're looking for more info regarding UIM/P, please checkout Mark Strong blog at www.vstrong.info. He has some awesome write-ups on the subject.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VMware vROps - vROps Policies Demystified

By -
Image
Most new vROps users are intimidated by vROps Policies as there are literally hundreds of settings that can be tweaked and customized. From Badge  Threshold sliders and a myriad of checkboxes, to radio buttons and dropdowns, there is an endless stream of what seems like redundant settings. The reality is that there are only a handful of settings that should be initially tweaked for most use cases. In this blog post, I will review the most common Policy settings that should be modified in order to get the most value out of the solution and save your sanity. This by no means will be a comprehensive guide to vROps Policies, but it should have enough to get you started on the path to successfully managing your environment, instill some confidence, and whet your appetite to do more.  When you edit vROps Policies, you are presented with a screen that has a ton of settings and expected to know exactly what to customize to meet your unique organization's needs. Not to worry, I
Read more

VMware vROps - Custom Dashboard Design Part 1

By -
Image
I think that Custom Dashboards are one of the most powerful features in vRealize Operations Manager (vROps). They enable you to commission and build compelling frames of view, almost like paintings, into your virtual or cloud environment. These dynamic paintings can tell the user a story and empower them to make educated decisions about many facets of a Software Defined Data Center. So, you want to start building your own Custom Dashboard in vROps but don't know where to start. Do custom dashboards seem a little overwhelming and a bit like black magic? Well, maybe a little, but with understanding of some basic concepts, I will try to demystify this artform and make you a dashboard ninja in no time. To get you started, we will begin with a very simple but somewhat powerful dashboard, build on it to add more functionality, and finally move on to some more complex use cases. Hopefully by the end of this series, you will be able to dream up your own dashboards and impress everyo
Read more

VMware vROps - VM Storage Consumption Dashboard

By -
Image
As mentioned in my Datastore Oversubscription Dashboard post, here is the VM Storage Consumption Dashboard. It appears very similar to the oversubscription one but it looks at storage use from another perspective. Mainly, it shows who/which VMs are the biggest consumers of storage resources. In addition, we can also see how much of the allocated storage space the VMs are actually utilizing, and if the Guest OS partitions are filling up, provided that VMware Tools are installed and running. Besides the visuals, we have some overall environment storage utilization stats, followed by cluster and VM.
Read more