Reference Architecture

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9.5 Dell EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) for VMware
Within Active System 800v, the Dell EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) for VMware is deployed
as a virtual appliance within the management cluster and is attached to the VMware vCenter Server
within the Active System 800v stack. VSM communicates with the dedicated management interfaces of
the EqualLogic storage enclosures over the out-of-band network. VSM enables customers to preform
many storage administrative tasks from vSphere client including:
 Create Smart Copy snapshots, replicas, and clones of various types of VMware Infrastructure
(VI) objects.
 Restore the state of virtual machines using saved Smart Copy snapshots and replicas.
 Setup replication of data stores and sets of data stores stored on one PS Series group to a
secondary PS Series group (potentially at a remote location) for disaster tolerance.
 Recover from replicas on the secondary site, including failover and failback of virtual machines
and their data.
 Create Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) manual desktop pools.
 Provision of data stores on EqualLogic iSCSI volumes.
9.6 Dell EqualLogic SAN HQ
Within the Active System 800, Dell EqualLogic SAN HQ is installed on the same Windows 2008 R2 VM as
OpenManage Essentials. SAN HQ communicates with the dedicated management interface of the
EqualLogic storage enclosure to gather performance and event logs.
Dell EqualLogic SAN HQ provides consolidated performance and robust event monitoring across multiple
groups. The key benefits of EqualLogic SAN HQ include:
 Multi-Group Management: EqualLogic SAN HQ enables centralized monitoring of multiple
EqualLogic PS Series groups from a single graphical interface.
 Comprehensive information about the EqualLogic PS Series arrays: EqualLogic SAN HQ
provides comprehensive information on configuration, capacity, I/O performance and network
performance for EqualLogic PS Series groups, pools, members, disks, volumes and volume
collections. These in depth analytical tools, enable flexible, granular views of SAN resources
and provide quick notification of hardware, capacity, and performance-related problems.
 Experimental analysis: EqualLogic SAN HQ collects information on current hardware
configuration and distribution of reads and writes and provides information about PS Series
group performance, relative to a specific workload. Customers can perform experimental
analysis to determine if a group has reached its full capabilities, or whether they can increase
the group workload with no impact on performance. This helps in identifying requirements for
storage growth and future planning.
 Events and alerts: EqualLogic SAN HQ provides performance related and email alerts and
hardware alarms on multiple parameters. This feature ensures users take timely action to make
data more available and more secure.