Dell EMC UnityVSA
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Dell EMC UnityVSA

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Article ID: 324775

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
This article provides information about Dell EMC UnityVSA.

Disclaimer:  The partner solution referenced in this article is a solution that is developed and supported by a partner. Use of this product is also governed by the end user license agreement of the partner. You must obtain from the partner the application, support, and licensing for using this product. For more information, see www.dellemc.com.
The VMware Ready for vSAN File Services certification only verifies the partner solution’s ability to serve SMB and NFS shares using the vSAN datastore. To ensure optimal performance and functionality, VMware does not support hosting VMDK files via a vSAN file services solution.  Refer to the vSAN documentation for more details on how to use the vSAN datastore.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5

Resolution

Summary of target use cases for file services, solution architecture, solution components, and support information:

Use cases

Dell EMC UnityVSA is a unified Software Defined Storage (SDS) solution that runs atop the VMware ESXi platform. Dell EMC UnityVSA provides a flexible storage option for environments that do not require dedicated storage systems such as test/development or remote office/branch office (ROBO) environments. Users can quickly provision a Dell EMC UnityVSA on general purpose server hardware, which can result in reduced infrastructure costs and a quicker rate of deployment. Dell EMC UnityVSA can be leveraged in conjunction with vSAN to provide file services over SMB, NFS, FTP, and SFTP.

Solution Architecture

The Dell EMC UnityVSA solution is a VM that is deployed using an OVA in vSphere. After the VM is deployed and fully booted, VMDKs can be added to the Dell EMC UnityVSA VM to provide storage. These VMDKs can come from any supported datastores, such as vSAN. The Dell EMC UnityVSA VM consumes these VMDKs and provisions NAS Servers and file systems to provide file services. Other supported features include snapshots, replication, quotas, shrink/extend, multiprotocol, storage tiering, cloud tiering, migration, and more.

Solution Components

Dell EMC UnityVSA VM

Support Information

  • Troubleshooting
    • Capture screenshots of the issue
    • Gather data collects (Service > Service Tasks > Collect Service Information)
    • Gather VMware logs
    • Run svc_vp_hostcheck to check for possible defects in the environment
      • This script checks for the following issues:
        • CPU over-subscription
        • Network latency
        • Dropped network packets
        • Network errors
        • Disk latency
  • Administrator Password Reset
    1. Open the VMware console for Dell EMC UnityVSA.
    2. Log in as the service user.
    3. Run the svc_shutdown -r command to reboot Dell EMC UnityVSA.
    4. Wait a few minutes for Dell EMC UnityVSA to shut down.
    5. When EMC Boot is displayed, press Tab within three seconds to interrupt the boot process.
    6. After kernel parameters are displayed, append unityvsa_reset_admin_password to the end, and press Enter.
    7. Wait for Dell EMC UnityVSA to boot up.
    8. After the VM has fully booted, log in to Unisphere using the default credentials:
admin/Password123#.
  1. You will be prompted to change the password to something other than the default.
  • VMware Features - Supported
    • Storage vMotion - Storage vMotion can be used to migrate Dell EMC UnityVSA or its virtual disks as long as the VM is offline.
    • VMware High Availability (HA) - VMware HA is highly recommended to restart Dell EMC UnityVSA in case of host failure.
    • vMotion - vMotion can be used to migrate Dell EMC UnityVSA to another host as long as the VM is offline.
  • VMware Features - Not Recommended
    • Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) - Migrating Dell EMC UnityVSA while the VM is online may cause latency issues.
    • Nested Virtualization - Do not run Dell EMC UnityVSA inside a virtualized ESXi VM as this may cause degraded performance.
  • VMware Features - Not Supported
  • Fault Tolerance (FT) - Fault Tolerance should not be used due to the increased latency.
  • VM Replication - Dell EMC UnityVSA cannot be replicated and failed over.
  • VM Snapshots - Taking or reverting Dell EMC UnityVSA to snapshots is not supported.
  • VM Backup - Dell EMC UnityVSA cannot be backed up and restored.
  • VM Suspend - Dell EMC UnityVSA cannot be suspended and resumed but it can be powered off instead.
For more information on Dell EMC UnityVSA, see www.dellemc.com.

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