New Celerra VSA (5.6.48.701) and Updated “SRM4 in a box” guide

UPDATE – SEPT 16th, 2010 – Nick has done it again, and there is now an Celerra VSA UBER v3 (based on DART 6.0) – find more here.   Keeping this post up for comments, and also for some of the other content, but STOP using the older VSA.

UPDATE – May 22nd, 2010:  Nick Weaver has produced an incredible optimization of the Celerra VSA – the “UBER Edition”.   It makes it installable in less than 2minutes, runs faster on less hardware, and makes adding additional storage is a snap.  

I **highly** recommend it.   This means that the “HOWTO video series that walked through the more complex parts of Celerra VSA setup are no longer needed, though the SRM setup guide for the VSAs is handy (just simply skip all the stuff in the doc that dealt with the setup/customization heavy lifting).  Download location for the UBER edition is shown in the post below.

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Ok – the latest Celerra VSA is available, along with the new SRM4 end-to-end guide!

Note: make sure that if you’re using VMware vSphere 4 (or Workstation 6.5 and later), and have a platform that supports Intel VT or AMD-V to enable hardware offload – this has a massive effect on Celerra VSA performance and responsiveness.   Details here.

What’s new:

• New OVA packaging, configuration for latest VMware tools and pvSCSI config – note this makes it vSphere 4 only (the VMware Workstation versions are also provided)
• New dedupe/compression code (faster, better, stronger)
• New VM-level hardware-accelerated fast clone (snapshot) and full clone (clone)
• Support for the new vSphere NFS Plugin shown here.   That link also has instructions on where to get it.
• Better performance with less CPU, memory constrained configs
• Fixed issue in the 5.6.47.11 version that made eth2 not work right.
• And much, much more!!!

Here’s another kick-a$$ demo of the VM-level compress in action on a thinly provisioned VM…

(download the high-rez WMV version here)

Wow.   a few seconds, ~50% storage reclaim (on top of effects of thin provisioning).   If only this function was more universal across EMC nudge, nudge wink wink :-)  Your mileage may vary, but hey, try it with the VSA :-)

I’ve tested it using the OVF/OVA import in vSphere 4, and added half a terabyte of storage to it – works like a charm. 

Also, there’s a new coffee-table book for all Celerra/vSphere use cases, the Celerra Techbook for vSphere, which you can find here

Read on for more……

Ok – some caveats are the same:

1. This is not supported in production - you cannot use this for anything beyond testing and development without violating the License Agreement. BTW - as usual - no conspiracy, it's not a matter of "extracting" $$ from people by forcing them to buy HW.   iSCSI you can do free (note how all freely available simulated arrays are iSCSI only), but any device that licenses CIFS from Microsoft (like the Celerra and Netapp FAS filers so they can integrate like Windows Servers can) as opposed to using Samba can't be given out without "non-production" caveats.
2. Use http://forums.emc.com for support. 
3. You can run it on VMware Workstation 6.5 and later, but I personally recommend ESX – it’s a bit faster, and you can get some hefty horsepower ridiculously cheaply now – homebrew instructions here
4. You need 1GB of RAM (3GB is better if replicating) for the VM, 40GB for storage (less – about 3GB - if you deploy it “thin”, and more storage if you want to add more)

This is functionally equivalent to a Celerra running DART 5.6.48.701– so you can use it with EMC’s Replication Manager for VMware integrated snapshots, use the vCenter plugins, configure VMware SRM, etc.   You can also add more physical storage so you can really play.

UPDATE: while the links to the “official” Celerra VSAs are still shown below – download the “UBER edition” – much simpler setup, and has been squeezed down to run super-fast with less hardware.

Find the Celerra VSA UBER Edition here

• Download the OVA (1 Datamover version only) for VMware ESX here (MD5 hash: 8e8615ea38cf3c898686fca23e833827)
• Download the 1 Datamover VMware Workstation version here (MD5 hash: 0855755bd94407a9ad1b7af981bcf514) 

Once you’ve downloaded, we’ve tested against the old HOWTO videos, and they’re still good – so follow along, and if you want a single document that captures all the steps, HOWTO 401 (updated as of April 2nd, 2010, and includes SRM4) does that. 

UPDATE: All the steps of 101, 201, 301 (and those steps in the full end-to-end document) are all automated with the Celerra VSA UBER edition – simpler, faster, easier – you have to love it!

1. HOWTO 101 (get it running, configure networking) guide here: Celerra Virtual Appliance HOWTO 101 - Basic Setup and Configuration
2. HOWTO 201 (add more storage) guide here: Celerra Virtual Appliance HOWTO 201 - Adding More Physical Storage
3. HOWTO 301 (get two Celerra VSAs replicating) guide here: Celerra Virtual Appliance HOWTO 301 - Replicating Between Two Celerra VSAs
4. HOWTO 302 (download and use EMC Replication Manager with the Celerra) here
5. **UPDATED**  HOWTO 401 (a full-end-to-end document for all of the above AND setup and configure VMware Site Recovery Manager 4- thank you Bernie!)

 

Most importantly, LEARN, AND HAVE FUN!

Comments

[Jason]

Awesome, going to try this one out after work. Thanks Chad.

[akops]

Hello, i think that something is broken on the provided celerra vsa ova file(5.6.48.701).
When i'm trying to deploy it on my vsphere4 installation i get the following error: Line 48: unsupported hardware device 'virtualscsi'

[akops]

Problem bypassed by using the workstation version of celerra vsa, and using the vmware converter to import it in vsphere4.

[Chad Sakac]

@Akops (and anyone) - the OVA works via direct import in the vSphere client's OVA/OVF import. But, your workaround with the Workstation build will work with Converter.

[Tom Miller]

Does the SRA work with this release? Great learning tool for SRM 4.01 and vSphere 4.01 update1 if we can get the SRA working.

Thanks for all the hard work!!

[Chad Sakac]

@Tom - the SRA works with this release, though a new Celerra Replicator SRA will finish it's VMware validation in days, and I would recommend that one (known issues fixed).

[John Grinwis]

Chad, any news about the 4.0.19 release of the SRA.
Just checked and latest available one is still the .17 release.

[Charles Hockenbarger]

Chad, any idea when a new VSA with Unisphere as the mgt interface might be released?

[Paul Aviles]

What is the difference between the Celerra VSA from EMC and the U ber version?

[David]

The ftp.documentum.com site seems to be down, is there an alternate download site ?

[Fred]

This file isn't available anymore

EMC_Celerra_VSA_and_VMware_SRM-Complete_Setup_and_Configuration_Guide-Version_3.0.0.pdf

[michel]

Hello,

Where wan I get the file : EMC_Celerra_VSA_and_VMware_SRM-Complete_Setup_and_Configuration_Guide-Version_3.0.0.pdf

it seems to be unavailable on ftp.documentum.com

Thank you :)