Category Archives: Storage

A little bit about Gigabyte (GB) and Gibibyte (GiB) in computer storage

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I am going to write a little bit about this basic concept in storage: Gigabyte (GB) and Gibibyte (GiB). This is all because of the annoyance between standard and reality.

I can still remember 15 years ago, when I first got in touch with enterprise storage system, the first concept introduced is about the differences between physical disk labelled size and reported size in storage system. No need to calculate, even today, I can still clearly remember a 73GB SAS disk will report 66GB usable capacity in EMC CLARiiON, a large part of this difference is contributed by the difference between GB and GiB.

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HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Store

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HPE StoreOnce is a deduplication storage system providing efficient data compression and deduplication capability and suitable for data backup and long-term retention. HPE StoreOnce can be also be integrated with major backup vendors as the backup target storage.

This post is a quick introduction and demonstration of the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Store for quick reference.

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Deploy HPE StoreOnce VSA in Azure

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HPE StoreOnce is a deduplication storage system providing efficient data compression and deduplication capability and suitable for data backup and long-term retention. HPE StoreOnce can be integrated with major backup vendors as the backup target storage.

In Azure, there is virtual edition of HPE StoreOnce in Azure Marketplace.  Deploying and initializing the HPE StoreOnce VSA is a very pleasant process with a straightforward outcome.

Since the HPE StoreOnce supports the data replication between appliances, the Azure based StoreOne VSA could be a good candidate of remote DR data copy by replicating the data from on-premise StoreOnce system.

It is noted that the VSA deployed in Azure will come with a trail license: “One time instant-on license for up to 90 days with a maximum 500TB capacity. No support provided by HPE.”

This post is to outline the deploying steps for quick reference.

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NetApp AFF Storage Efficiency Field Tips

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This is a post to provide some field tips for user who would like to maximum the storage utilization of NetApp AFF storage. All the recommendation is based the field experience and for reference only.

There are a few aspects to consider about the storage efficient in NetApp AFF storage

  • In-line Deduplication
  • Background Deduplication
  • Aggregate Planning
  • Thin Disk
  • Snapshot
  • Space Reclamation

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NetApp SolidFire mNode and ActiveIQ Monitoring

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StorageReview-NetApp-SolidFire

This post is to outline the key steps to configure mNode and how to connect SolidFire storage to ActiveIQ site. This post is not intended to cover all the details in the NetApp SolidFire deploy guide, user guide documents or other NetApp official documents.

What is SolidFire mNode?

The NetApp SolidFire management node (mNode) is a virtual machine deployed in customer environment to provide below functions:

  • SolidFire Element OS software upgrades;
  • Remote alerting and historical data collection through Active IQ;
  • Remote support tunneling for NetApp Support hands-on access; and
  • Ancillary functions for NetApp SolidFire Plug-in for VMware® vCenter™ functionality and syslog aggregation.

managementnode

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Cisco UCS Jumbo Frame Configuration – The CoS Value Matters

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I recently participated a technical trouble shooting regarding UCS jumbo frame setting to support NetApp SolidFire iSCSI storage. When the UCS MTU value in QoS setting is changed to 9216, the connection between UCS and NetApp SolidFire is lost. However, the new UCS QoS setting could be supported by the NetApp FAS iSCSI system in the same environment. A diagram as below illustrates the situation.

UCS_Jumbo_Frame_Issue

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Unity File Replication – 3 things you need to know as a VNX/Celerra user

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Although Unity has been in the market for more than a year, until recently, I got a chance to configure a pair of Unity with file replication.  If you were a VNX/Celerra user, there are 3 points you need to be aware to configure the file system replication on Unity.

  1. File System replication is bundled with NAS server replication

When replicating existing File Systems or VMware NFS Datastores with asynchronous replication, you must first configure replication for the NAS Server it is mounted on. It is not supported to replicate file system to a different Unity NAS server at the remote site.

When deleting a NAS server, the related file system must be deleted as well.

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