UPDATED (old VSA is retired!!) Get Yer Celerra Virtual Machine here!

UPDATED (2:30pm 4/1/2009) – there is a new Celerra VSA here.   I’m keeping this old post for the threads.

Comments

[David]

Hi

Thanks for putting up the links to the celerra simulator, however the links to the ovf zip and the documentation don't seem to work :(

Are they active yet?

Cheers
David

[Robert]

Thanks for posting but the links seem to be broken :-(

[Chad Sakac]

Sorry to all that tried to download - I fat-fingered the links, they are fixed now!

[Christopher]

License agreement is still wrong - You list it as:
ftp://ftp.documentum.com/vmwarechampion/Celerra/Celerra_Simulator_-_Eval_Edition_Software_License_Agreement__2_.pdf

Whereas it actually is:
ftp://ftp.documentum.com/vmwarechampion/Virtual_Machine_Library/Celerra/Celerra_Simulator_-_Eval_Edition_Software_License_Agreement__2_.pdf

[Chad Sakac]

Thanks Christopher - I must be groggy this morning, but have fixed that link also.

[Robert]

Thanks, downloading now :-)

[Arne Fokkema]

Thanks for putting the Celerra online. Thumbs up for the great posts!

[Drew]

Thanks for posting the Virtual Celerra! Just an FYI for anyone looking for this on Powerlink: the link with the download was named "Celerra Simulator Lite" on the Powerlink search results.

[Drew]

Forgot to mention that the "Lite" version is the workstation format version.

[Stuart Mycock]

Thanks for this Chad! Hopefully the remaining parts for my lab will arrive Mon, am eager to get cracking on this. :)

[Chad Sakac]

All - in creating the "howto" videos - I've found what I think is a regression bug. Hold off spending too much time until I check into this and see if I can fix it.

[bk]

I've been playing with the sim a bit - how do i get the datamovers to be seen on the regular network so that i can access cifs via the same test box that is running vmware workstation?

make sense?

thanks

[bk]

perhaps i should practice what i preach - RTFM and things are running smoothly.
Celerra sim is nice.

ps i'm digging your blog! keep up the good work.

[Paul]

Hi Chad,

I'm having some real problems with this. I get an error on boot up that eth0 is unavailable. doing an ifconfig gives me no IP info for eth0 even though I've ran netconfig -b eth0 command. i'm using the workstation version and have tried it on a few different machines. any ideas?

[Chad Sakac]

Paul - and any others having problems - please check out the post with step-by-step instructions here:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2008/08/celerra-virtual.html

Paul, in your case, I think it's just a case of the command syntax - it's "netconfig -d ethX" (where X is 0,1,2 or so on)

[Paul]

Hi Chad, sorry my mistake, i was using netconfig -d eth0. But still, once I've configured eth0 and run service network restart I get a whole raft of errors ending with failed to bring up eth0. Even after I've downloaded the appliance on first boot I get the same error. I was doing some reading on the error and found it could be to do with the vmware tools and this version of the kernel? If i change the driver type for eth0 in the .vmx file to e1000 and start the appliance i don't get any errors for eth0. I'm using the full workstation version of the appliance not the OVF with workstation 6.0.0, I've tried re-installing the tools but I get more errors am I completely missing something?

[sirben]

Hi could you please give me the username and the passwd ?
or where can i get them

[mlabiche]

Thanks a lot for those very usefull tips and infos ... Unfortunatly the link to the Wmware link seems to be not operationnal ? Has it been removed ?
Cheers

Marin

[Chad Sakac]

Marin - sorry, I busted the link, should be fixed now.

[Joe Nelson]

Chad, Thanks for all your hard work, the instructions are great. I have the OVF version installed on ESX following your 101 instructions. At the step of creating an iSCSI LUN with the Wizard, the file system creation fails with the error “Create File System with name t1fs1 Storage Capacity (MB) ‘2’ Storage Pool ‘4’ Storage System ‘SINGLE’ R/W Data Mover ‘server_2_ File-level Retention Compatibility Enabled ‘off’ ” There are no other details available. I retried the operation several times and noticed that the capacity of the pool has been reduced by the capacities I have specified previously. I have tried using both pools. When clicking on Filesystems in the tool bar the filesystems are not listed. I tried adding a filesystem through the Filesystem toolbar menu and get the same failure. When drilling into a Pool the filesystems I have added to that Pool are listed. I have screen shots if anyone would like to review. Any thoughts? I’m about to start over but hate to waste the time already invested.

[Chad Sakac]

A quick response to something someone posted to forums.emc.com (which is great, I would highly recommend checking it out!)

Re: my "Tens of GB" comment - Datamovers (depending on model) have between 4GB and 8GB of RAM each. My comment is that a physical Celerra configuration is a integrated package of one or more Control Stations, Datamovers and back-end storage. Each of these has RAM and CPU resources, and are things the Celerra VM needs to emulate.

Suggestions for the best possible performance while running as a VM:

1) Run the ONE datamover version. There's generally no need for a two datamover simulator unless you're testing datamover failover and clustering behavior. While even in the OneDM VM it shows server_3 as "configured", it doesn't use significant resources like it does in the TwoDM config.

2) The GUI is a java-based GUI. While my personal opinion is that we (as EMC) need to make this GUI faster, there are advantages of having a GUI that assumes little state info - it tends to be accurate of the current state, but there a lot of state queries that happen. You'll find that the first time you access a page in the GUI it will be by far the slowest. Keep the VM and your management workstation running, and the over time, the Java client code caching gets better.

3) I don't know if it's just me - but running the VM on ESX seems much faster than running it on Workstation. This makes some sense, as the memory management model of ESX is different.

[Chad Sakac]

Joe - I can't say exactly what happened but my guess is that something is borked with the backend configuration. did you try the steps on adding storage? If you make a mistake there, it could result in what you're seeing.

I stongly suggest posting to the forums.emc.com if you haven't already.

[Marin]

Thanks a lot
The link is working now
Best regards
Marin

[marin]

Hi (again)
Just one question : is the celerra in a VM is supposed to work with other iSCSI initiator than the ESX one ? The installation goes without a glitsh following the very efficient vids... But a the very last moment using the MS initiator as "quick test" it fails.
No matter the the config (bridget, host only.. ) when I try to connect to the portal (step one of the MS client) I get the message : "Add Target : Target Error".One more thing : so far i don't have any problem with other ISCSI Target Ie : Free NAS, Open filer....)
The strange thing is the ISCSI IP port is reachable from the iscsi initiator so there is no firewall problem there. I Just did the very precise installation a iscsi target creation, ie no chap or ip sec (nothing more, nothing less). Any thought or did this already happen to someone ?
Net step i will try on the ESXi server.. .and keep you informed

Best regards

[marin]

Well

I Just did it again from the very start.. Just the same. The only slight difference is that I don't have to delete the interfaces int the GUI management in step 6 "Datamover IP..." : The interface cge0 and cge1 do not show up. But i can create then exactly the same way you did in the vid with no problem at all. Of course and again i can ping, open port 3260 on those ... but connection to the portal failed, even thought from linux openiscsi client.

Desperatly seeking an answer... I am still have to test from ESX and 'll see

Bad Santa :-)

Any way thanks again the work

Marin

[Chad Sakac]

Marin - thanks for the question. The Celerra iSCSI target works with any initiator that meets the iSCSI standard and the MS iSCSI initiator absolutely fits that description (and is IMHO one of the most mature, solid iSCSI initiators).

Ok - so, troubleshooting experience suggests that this is usually something straight forward.

Hmm - if you can ping the interface on 3260, my first guess is that you didn't enable the iSCSI service. look at the iSCSI setup video, and notice the little tickbox to "enable the iSCSI service".

Let me know if that works - if not, I will try some other stuff.

Marin - can I also suggest posting to forums.emc.com if that doesn't do it?

Happy Holidays!

[Thomas]

root / nasadmin is not working for me...anyone else having this problem (fresh celerra_56_vsa on esx 3.5)?

[Thomas]

Sorry..disregard that - i must just have typed it wrong, a million times, now it suddenly just worked..

[Chad Sakac]

Thank Thomas - glad it worked, because if it didn't, I would have been puzzled!

Chad

[Jon Cooper]

have downloaded the OVF version of celerra sim, then i unzipped and tried to import into ESXI but get a checksume error about halfway into the import. Could you post the checksum value for the zip file - so I can confirm that my initial download was good.

[Doug]

Been playing with the simulator - it would be nice if EMC released an update that was Celerra Network Server version 5.6.39 or later for persistent reservation support.

No playing around with Win2k8 failover clustering until that happens :(.

-Doug

[groveone]

Is it possible to perform a similar service for the netapp ontap simulator? It would be a way to get familiar with the netapp appliance and I am not currently employed by either a customer or a partner (but would like to be).

[Chad Sakac]

@Jon - there is a new Celerra VSA:
http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/04/new-celerra-vsa.html

(learning - I posted the MD5 checksums :-)

@Doug - the new Celerra VSA is 5.6.43.18 - your wish is our command :-)

@ Groveone - I'm sorry, I can't do it for the NetApp simulator. You need to have a NetApp NOW login. Let me know what I can do to help you be an EMC partner!!!

[gil]

Greetings!
I downloaded the new celerra lite and tested VMware SRM.I had an issue with the datamover interface. create new datamover interface doesnt show up when configuring replication with the recovery site celerra.

[William]

Why am I not able to see any of the links?

[Dave]

Having had a Celerra a while back, this simulator is great. Has there been any issues with CIFS slowness? We are arguing new Celerras vs Windows 2008 file share. Right now Windows is screaming 10x performance over the VSA. I think it is a config issue, but I can't pin point it. Any thoughts?

[Linux Addict]

Chad, Great job doing the VSA... Could you please list the instructions on how to add a standby DM. I am looking to test how the failover works. thank you.

~LA

[Chad Sakac]

@LA - all you need to do is provision the VM with 4GB or more on first boot, and it will automatically come up with 2 virtual datamovers.

[Ganesh]

Where is the link to download the VSA???

[Angel]

Hi Chad,

Where is the link to download the VSA and also HOWTO 401 documentation can't seem to find it.