Folks – the very popular VMware Applied Tech Guide for CLARiiON has been updated – please download it here. The author (Sheetal Kochavara) does an excellent job. It’s not a light read, but highly, HIGHLY recommended for VMware customers using CLARiiON.
In particular, note the sections on configuring multipathing, includig round robin, and ALUA in vSphere.
While I’m at it – Scott Lowe prompted me to pull up the “essentials” on EMC documentation with his post here. I commented on his post, but will also post here….
The most important place for EMC info is EMC.com (public) and Powerlink (customers, partners, EMC folks). I'd of course also subscribe to http://virtualgeek.typepad.com
On EMC.com, the key place for tech documentation is the Resource Library here: http://www.emc.com/resource-library/resource-library.esp.
NOTE: the search is REALLY stupid (yes, yes, working on it) - single keyword only. If you use more than a single keyword you get no results. Best way is to single-keyword search, limit to technical documentation, whitepaper and tech book (a techbook is the EMC version of an IBM redbook). Then, you can filter the results using a second set of terms which can be free search. For example, search for "Celerra", then filter results with "VMware" or "Best Practice". If you use "Site Recovery Manager" or "SQL Server" or "Exchange" as the filter, you will get the associated docs.
Anyone can register for Powerlink here: http://www.emc.com/support-training/support/emc-powerlink.htm
Once you have your Powerlink login, you can access a fair amount of free EMC training, as well as the formal EMC certification program: EMC Proven Professional.
From a VMware centric point of view, the key docs (all public) are these:
CLARiiON: http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h1416-emc-clariion-intgtn-vmware-wp.pdf
Symmetrix: http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/solution-overview/h2529-vmware-esx-svr-w-symmetrix-wp-ldv.pdf
Celerra: http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h6337-introduction-using-celerra-vmware-vsphere-wp.pdf
From a general point of view, the key docs (including CLI guides) are the core product documentation, which you can find on powerlink under "Support"->"technical documentation"
Also, I would recommend reading a couple other public docs:
CLARiiON: http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h5773-clariion-perf-availability-release-28-firmware-wp.pdf
Celerra (dedupe/thin provisioning): http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h6265-achieving-storage-efficiency-celerra-wp.pdf
Celerra (autotiering): http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h6499-celerra-automated-storage-tiering-apb-wp.pdf
Chad,
I'm at a customer and they just updated to Flare 4.29 and it appears it broke their Site Recovery Adapter (1.3.0.4) such that it can no longer communicate with the arrays (discoverArrays fails). I read that Flare 4.29 removed support for some older APIs - did it remove the API support that the 1.3.0.4 SRA requires?
Sorry for posting this on your blog but we've had very little luck with support thru any avenue.
Posted by: JustinE | September 15, 2009 at 04:39 PM
Chad - the .pdf's are all locked down with security so you can't save the docs - only print...is this an EMC policy for their documentation?
Thanks,
Joe Sears
james.j.sears@saic.com
SAIC
Posted by: Joe Sears | September 22, 2009 at 11:55 AM