Despite repeated incidences of being called a “storage expert,” I remain firmly convinced that I am far from being a storage expert. Case in point: I really don’t know that much about EMC storage, how to configure it, the caveats/gotchas/pitfalls when you’re setting it up, etc. Fortunately, I’ve recently been given the opportunity to spend some hands-on time with an EMC Celerra. Due to the Celerra’s architecture, this also means that I get some hands-on time with the EMC CLARiiON CX4 that sits behind the Celerra.
So far, my hands-on time has been fairly limited, but I expect that will all be changing very soon. I can tell you that I’m no fan of the web-based Celerra management interface. The web-based Navisphere 6 interface for the CX4 is better, but I haven’t tried it on a non-Windows system yet. I suspect I won’t be quite so happy when I try it on some other system. (Will it even run on a non-Windows platform?) I guess I’ll be learning the command-line interface (CLI)…
So, here’s a request to my readers: what resources have you found useful in learning how to work with EMC storage products? I’d welcome any and all feedback on useful white papers, blogs, free training, etc. Thanks in advance!
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Scott,
let me know what you’re trying to do and I can get you hooked up with material, content, etc.
cheers,
dave
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Hi Scott,
I found the Video Led Training (VLT) from EMC incredibly useful. They have a wide variety of VLTs starting from the very foundation of storage concepts, all the way to the advanced and specialized topics like the TimeFinder course, or the Symmetrix business continuity course! To give you an example related to the topic you mentioned above, I’m currently using a 4 CDs VLT to learn about Celerra, it’s very well organized, and rich in its contents.
I don’t know how much these stuff costs because I get them through my employer (we are an EMC customer), but I can tell you that it’s worth every penny.
Here is a link on EMC website: http://middle-east.emc.com/support-training/index.htm you can go through the courses catalog to see what might interest you, and then you can find in the details whether this course is available in VLT or ILT only.
Hope this helps.
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Lucky you, I’m stuck with a CX3-80 that makes Navisphere painfully slow as it scales to 480 disks with only 2 Xeon procs : )
We had the Celerra 704G’s and ditched them for something scalable and way more powerful, aka Isilon!
I hope to never work with EMC equipment again as it is inflexible, arhaic, overpriced/overhyped and requires babysitting…
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Navisphere GUI is cross-platform – if you have a good browser and working Java, you’ll be all right on any system.
The most useful resource is EMC Powerlink. White papers galore, Primus KB, decent forum activity. Powerlink’s only problem is its quirky search engine, you’ll need some time to get used to it.
Outside of Powerlink, there seems to be very little useful information about Clariions, especially if your question is “How do I do X?”. I found only one good blog on the subject: http://clariionblogs.blogspot.com/
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Thanks, Scott!
(disclosure – Chad Sakac, from EMC 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 – 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.pdfFrom 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.pdfYou’ll find that EMC’s current management model is that the GUI interfaces are java-based, and so long as you use a supported browswer (which includes IE but also recent Firefox/Mozilla revs), you’ll be good – no dependence on windows. All platforms also have extensive CLIs. The GUIs aren’t perfect, and always an area for improvement. Would love to get feedback on the Celerra GUI – and will immediately connect you up with the product folks. One ask – remember that every GUI looks “foreign” the first time you use it. To me, Filerview was weird at first, and I struggled when I couldn’t find stuff – if you are used to one thing, anything new is… well… new. Give it a chance, but also get us the feedback before you “adapt” – the fresh input is always the best
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Ditto on using Powerlink – it is where I go for many of my questions and support needs (we have a CX3-80 and Celerra NS40G). Being an EMC customer, I also have utilized my sales team and CE to get questions answered.
The suggestion about http://clariionblogs.blogspot.com/ is a good one as well. I believe that blog is done by one of the EMC certified trainers (took a class once that he did – was very good)
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Hi Scott I have a Celerra waiting for me at work, to configure too (will be our demo/develop/training Celerra). And a EMC NAS certification to achieve till the end of September. Once again I have to agree with Hany Michael, the VILT are very good for training, I’m using it.
Chad, leave you a great comment… but if I could help you in something, just ask!
Bless you! -
Hi Scott,
I am also trying to learn more about EMC and in
particular Celerra and RecoverPoint. I found at VMworld a book called VMware ESX Using EMC Celerra Storage Systems (v3.2) that seems a good start.Michael
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Hey Scott,
(btw – I’m also a specialist TC for Celerra working at EMC)
Sorry to hear that your experience was not so favorable on the Celerra GUI. Not sure what version you were working with, but we’ve come a long way from where we were even a couple of years agos (ok, so I’m a little biased, but that’s the feedback I’m getting from customers also)… We’re listening and are continually improving the GUI’s every release (current DART release is 5.6.46).
Chad highlights some of the best ways to get information on EMC products. Another way to get some canned demo’s is to look on youtube. There are several video posts out there that demo a certain feature or function and what it looks like going through the GUI, white board sessions, etc. If you execute a search on EMC Celerra, Clariion, etc, you should get quite a few hits.
If you want to also get a feel for how the Celerra GUI works today, we have a free “DART-in-a-VM” (aka Celerra Simulator) that can run on VMWorkstation, ESX host, etc. In fact, I have a customer using this to demo a VMWare failover script for his Senior Management on two ESX servers at different sites. I also use it at home – can’t beat free. I believe Chad has a link to it posted on his website.
Just note that it is a simulator and is running several various physical pieces of hardware in a single VM Instance, so it will not be nearly as fast as the actual platform, but will give you a good hands-on approach in applying any information you might find out there on options, configurations, etc. I would suggest downloading the Single Data Mover version for best performance.
And per Chad’s post, let us know what you think about the interface, etc. Always appreciate the feedback.
Good luck!
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The VILT are decent, but make sure you have lots of coffee, as they’re not very good presenters, some are so tedious that you find yourself nodding off within minutes. (I’ve literally got nearly every single VLT they made, because when they dropped off the symmetrix and left, they never got around to providing us the 30 day on site resident—so a year later, they offered the education stuff in lieu of the trainer they never sent…by then I knew how to operate the system though).
I have EMC, Hitachi, and IBM storage…Personally I like the HDS best, but the symmetrix was a decent platform that I imagine has not changed (certainly I like it better than the IBM). They are pricey, and their sales practices lead one to wonder if they have just sold off their souls (there’s a saying in the industry, “How do you know when an EMC rep is lying?”….drumroll….”His lips are moving”. Bada bing! ))
Make sure, everyone, please to ask up front about the 5 year cost of maiteance, and years 6 and 7 as well. They will often provide 3 years as part of the purchase, but year 4 you get one hell of a surprise. By year 5, you could buy another array for the annual support in some cases.
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Hi Scott
I recently sat my exam for the Clariion an one of the resources I found most useful was the navisphere simulator. This gives you two CX4-240′s to play with till your hearts content.
I’m on my iPhone so don’t have the exact link for the download but if you head to http://www.virtualpro.co.uk it’s the 3rd article on the front page.
Recieved my copy of your vSphere book from amazon the other day. Ploughing through it, it’s all good so far
regards
Craig
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EMC Rant comming from a Storage / Server Engineer in the trenches ….
The Celerra, AKA “Franken SAN”. What a botched attempt that was at unified storage. I run a technology user group and when ever I meet someone who has purchased a Celerra the conversation usually includes a bad story.
Don’t get me wrong I have been a 5 plus year generally content (always over charged) EMC clariion (lab) and DMX (prod) customer but I passed on the NS when looking at a 2nd Tier production storage platform, too many moving parts. Who really wants to manage and get charged for 2 replication technologies in 1 platform, one for iscsi and file and another for FC?
In my opinion EMC gets an A+ for FC Array reliability and Cs and Ds everywhere else. Fortunatly for EMC the people that sign the checks are mostly concerned with relability thing (I guess can appreciate it as well as I don’t lie awake at night worrying that my array will will crash )
One more thing… EMC “PowerStink” has got to be one of the worst online customer resourses I have ever used in my 9 years in IT. ( Better in the last year but still horrible ).
Message to EMC: There is a company named Google that has mastered search…. Please partner with them for your support site! -
Thanks for the post! The links in the comments are excellent. I will be refenencing them in future classes.
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Don’t forget about youtube. There is an incredible amount of data there about EMC products.
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Scott, I appreciate your honesty about not being an EMC storage expert. The truth is, is there such a creature?
With virtualization constantly evolving, how can we keep up? I’ve managed VMware on HP, NetApp and HDS storage and I must say the hardest thing about storage is getting the storage admins to understand why carving storage for VMware is different. Thus, the role of storage expert is forced upon us to convince the storage admin – why!
Over the last year I’ve had to learned more about storage than I ever wanted to. That said, I will agree with you that I am still no expert. We are all just students trying to keep up with today’s top buzz … bzzzz!
Joe
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Scott,
Glad to see you are getting around to kicking the tires on the Celerra and CLARiiON.
As you are renowned for getting to the heart of how technologies actually work would you consider publishing your thoughts on how these arrays operate within vSphere environments and compare them to what is available with arrays from E-Plus (which I believe are HP & NetApp)?
Maybe your readers could suggest items they would like to see compared? I believe an unbiased and honest review would be really appreciated by the VMware community.
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I’m about to become quite familiar with EMC Celerra storage. May have to collaborate with you a bit
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That would be fine with me! Let me know if you don’t have my contact information and I’ll get it to you.
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The best is to view the whole Clariion storage world the way EMC views it. EMC Celerra/Clariion is super complex, esp the Celerra.
Read EMC’s Best Practices for Fibre Channel Flare 28 (or 29), to get an idea on how things are done EMC style.
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I’d echo the comments (for Clariion at least) that it’s a very reliable product burdened with very poor management tools. Navisphere is OK, it’s just very slow once you start scaling up your environment (we’re currently up to 4 Clariions across 4 sites).
We’ve recently invested in ControlCenter but I’ve not had time to get familiar with it, it seems clunky though.
As for learning about EMC stuff, I’d rate Powerlink very highly, I’ve not been on any training courses or bought any books yet.
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hi everybody how to play the vedio EMC of CELERRA 5.6 & EMC CLARiiON Training it is giving me the error when opening the vedio.
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Hi,
I am planning to do Storage course but in that storage lot of divisions are there. I don’t know which one i have to choose. Please guide me
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Thiru, I can’t really guide you—determining which storage track to follow or which storage technology to focus on is strictly something you need to decide. Good luck!
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