Branch Storage Consolidation with Riverbed and EMC VSPEX. · VSPEX IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE Branch Storage Consolidation with Riverbed and EMC VSPEX. Riverbed SteelFusion Solution This

VSPEX IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

Branch Storage Consolidation with Riverbed and EMC VSPEX.

Riverbed SteelFusion Solution

This Implementation Guide describes the implementation of Riverbed SteelFusion with EMC VSPEX. The purpose of this document is to show the functionality of SteelFusion branch converged infrastructure technology when deployed as part of a VSPEX private cloud solution.

May 2014

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Contents

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© 2014 Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. Riverbed®, Steelhead®, SteelFusion™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. in the United States and other countries. EMC2, EMC, the EMC logo, VSPEX are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries.

Contents

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Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction 4 Purpose of this guide .................................................................................... 4 Business value ............................................................................................. 4 Scope ......................................................................................................... 5 Audience ..................................................................................................... 5 Terminology ................................................................................................ 6 Solution tested ............................................................................................ 6

Chapter 2 Implementing the VSPEX and SteelFusion Solution 7 Solution architecture overview ....................................................................... 8 Network configuration ................................................................................. 13

Chapter 3 Solution Implementation Screenshots 17 Storage Array Configuration: ........................................................................ 18

Create Storage Group: ............................................................................ 18 Adding LUNS to Storage Group: ............................................................... 20

SteelFusion Core implementation. ................................................................. 23 Adding LUNs on SteelFusion using Setup Wizard ......................................... 23 Configuring Initiator Groups on SteelFusion. .............................................. 31 Granting Access on LUNs ......................................................................... 32

Configuring SteelFusion Edge ........................................................................ 34 Branch Converged Infrastructure Solution description ...................................... 35 Configuring VSP Vmware vSpshere 5.1 running on SteelFusion Edge .................. 39

Chapter 1: Introduction

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Chapter 1 Introduction

Purpose of this guide

This guide walks you through implementing the Riverbed SteelFusion solution within the context of a VSPEX private cloud solution using clear illustrations of the complete implementation and deployment process. The purpose of this solution is to build and demonstrate the functionality, performance, and scalability of branch office services enabled by SteelFusion branch converged infrastructure appliances and EMC storage systems as part of a VSPEX reference architecture. This reference architecture validates the performance of the solution and provides guidelines to build similar solutions. This document is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to every aspect of the solution. This VSPEX guide builds upon existing VSPEX Private Cloud reference architectures based on VMware vSphere 5.1. For more details reference:

• VMware vSphere 5.1 for 50 and 100 Virtual Machines (http://www.emc.com/collateral/technical-documentation/h11328-vspex-pi-pc-vmw-vnxe.pdf)

• VMware vSphere 5.1 for 300, 600, 1000 Virtual Machines (https://community.emc.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/27126-22-69889/h12076-vspex-pc-vsphere-vnx-pi.pdf)

Business value

Today’s companies must globalize to remain competitive. That means doing business in more locations, tapping into geographies and pools of talent to sustain growth. As a result, companies are increasing the number of branch offices they must operate. They do so to remain close to customers, partners, and key components of their supply chain. As the number of branches grows, companies find themselves deploying more and more infrastructure to deliver applications and data reliably and efficiently to keep the branches at an acceptable level of productivity. This proliferation results in islands of distributed branch infrastructure that are necessary to meet local performance and reliability needs, but that are costly, complex, and inefficient to manage. Moreover, companies rarely have the expertise in branches to maintain such distributed infrastructure. When branch offices go down because of natural disasters (storms), manmade disasters (a burst pipe), and human error (spilled cup of coffee), the costs are huge. And it can take days or weeks to recover.


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To overcome these challenges, organizations must commit to complete consolidation of branch data to ensure performance, scale, security, control, and availability for enterprise IT. The combination of VSPEX and SteelFusion reduces capital and operational costs and simplifies IT practices, giving organizations centralized control of applications and data while delivering high performance, instant provisioning, and rapid recovery to all business locations. Enterprises can now deliver local branch performance for servers, applications, and data over the WAN. The VSPEX and Riverbed SteelFusion solution is a branch converged infrastructure that eliminates the headache of branch office IT. SteelFusion converges servers and storage into a single branch appliance while centralizing data back to VSPEX Private Cloud architectures in the datacenter, all without sacrificing any of the benefits of having branch services running locally for users. This solution expedites branch office provisioning, backup, and recovery and ensures continuous operations when disasters occur such as inclement weather, fire, and human-induced outages. With VSPEX and SteelFusion, businesses can restore operations in a matter of minutes vs. days, centrally protect and secure data, and significantly lower the TCO of branch and remote offices. This solution balances performance requirements, cost, data availability, and WAN requirements by using the SteelFusion converged appliance features such as BlockStream (block-level storage delivery, pre-fetch and pinning), Steelhead WAN optimization, the Virtual Service Platform (VSP) featuring VMware vSphere integration, and EMC features such as LUNs and snapshot integration. The reference architecture outlined in this VSPEX document helps enterprises achieve:

• Enterprise-wide data consolidation • Centralization of backup operations • Branch office data security • Management centralization and simplification

Scope

This document covers all the requirements for implementing SteelFusion and EMC VNX storage systems solutions as part of a VSPEX Private Cloud proven infrastructure.

Audience

This is a technical implementation guide, primarily to be used by storage, server, and virtualization admins, as well as related IT staff that deploy and configure the Riverbed SteelFusion and EMC VSPEX solution. It will also be valuable as a reference document for any administrator managing the solution post-implementation.


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Terminology

This implementation guide includes the following terminology.

Table 1. Terminology

Term Description

LUN Logical Unit Numbers, used to identify logical unit on a storage subsystem.

SteelFusion Core SteelFusion Core is a physical or virtual storage delivery controller appliance in the datacenter that mounts datacenter storage LUNs provisioned for branch and remote office applications and servers.

SteelFusion Edge SteelFusion Edge is a converged appliance that integrates compute, virtualization, WAN optimization and storage delivery technology that presents LUNs projected from the datacenter as local iSCSI LUNs on the local branch network.

Snapshots Application consistent point-in-time copies of data for backup and recovery

Solution tested This solution has been tested with the following configurations:

• SteelFusion Core: 2.5

• SteelFusion Edge: 2.5

• Storage: EMC VNX

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

• VMware vSphere 5.1

Note: The SteelFusion solution was previously referred to as Granite. Not all product user interfaces (UI) and documentation have been updated to reflect this new name. Several images and references to Granite in this document are intentional and designed to reflect the current versions of these products. SteelFusion and Granite are the same product and the name does not impact the operations or performance of the solution. These terms are interchangeable.

Chapter 2: Implementing the VSPEX and SteelFusion Solution

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Chapter 2 Implementing the VSPEX and SteelFusion Solution

The solution comprises of the following parts:

• Two redundant SteelFusion Core appliances at the datacenter to enable

storage projection to the branch office and provide high availability and failover

• Two redundant SteelFusion Edge converged appliances at the branch office to host the virtual branch services, mount the remote storage and provide high availability and failover

• A Steelhead CX appliance at the datacenter to pair with the branch and provide WAN optimization

• An EMC VNX 5300 to provide storage for the branch virtual server data store and file serving needs


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Solution architecture overview

DATA CENTER

SteelFusion Core

VSPEX

BRANCH OFFICE

SteelFusion Edge

WAN

SteelFusion Core

SteelFusion Edge


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Key Components:

SteelFusion Core appliance SteelFusion has two logical components: SteelFusion Core and SteelFusion Edge. SteelFusion Core is a physical or virtual storage delivery controller appliance in the data center, and it mounts all the LUNs that are to be made available to applications and servers at a remote location from the back-end storage array. SteelFusion Core makes those LUNs available across the WAN in the branch via the SteelFusion Edge appliance. SteelFusion Edge appliance SteelFusion Edge combines compute, virtualization, WAN optimization and storage delivery technology to enable the consolidation of servers and applications to storage in the datacenter while running services such as file, print, DNS, and DHCP, as well as more resource intensive applications at local speed in the branch office. SteelFusion Edge presents the LUNs projected from the data center as local iSCSI LUNs to applications and servers on the local branch network and operates as a block cache to help ensure local performance.

• For writes – SteelFusion Edge acknowledges all writes locally to ensure high-speed (“local”) write performance. SteelFusion maintains a write block journal and preserves block-write order to keep data consistent in case of a power failure or WAN outages.

• For reads – The SteelFusion Edge cache is warmed with relevant data delivered by SteelFusion Core in the data center, which performs predictive prefetch to ensure required data is quickly delivered. Alternatively, a LUN can be “pinned” all data from the data center LUN can be prepopulated to the edge cache

BlockStream Prediction and Prefetch To deal with the random I/O and latency of reads, SteelFusion brings file system awareness to the block layer with Riverbed BlockStream technology, which is a storage delivery technology built into the solution. File system awareness enables intelligent block prefetch that addresses both high latency and the inherently random nature of I/O at the block layer, accelerating block storage access across distance. SteelFusion Core performs block-level prefetch from the back end storage array and actively pushes blocks to SteelFusion Edge to keep its cache warm with a working set of data. To accomplish this prefetch, SteelFusion first establishes file system context at the block layer. For Windows servers (physical or virtual) SteelFusion Core crawls the NTFS Master File Table (MFT) to build a two-way map of the file system – blocks to files, and files to blocks. This map is used to determine what to prefetch. By intelligently inspecting iSCSI block access requests from the application/host file system iSCSI initiator, SteelFusion algorithms predict the next logical file system block or a cluster of blocks to prefetch.


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BlockStream Blockstore cache To eliminate latency introduced by the WAN, the SteelFusion Edge appliance in the branch presents itself as a write-back block cache, called Blockstore, which is another essential component of our BlockStream storage delivery technology. Block writes by applications and hosts at the edge are acknowledged locally and then asynchronously flushed back to the data center. This enables application and file system initiator hosts in the branch to make forward progress without being impacted by WAN latency. As blocks are received, written to disk and acknowledged, the written blocks are also journaled in write order to a log. This log file is used to maintain the block-write order to ensure data consistency in case of a crash or WAN outage. When the connection is restored, SteelFusion Edge plays the blocks in logged write-order to SteelFusion Core, which commits the blocks to the physical LUN on the back-end storage array. The combination of block journaling and write-order preservation enables SteelFusion Edge to continue serving write functions in the branch during a WAN disconnection. Disconnected operations In some cases, the WAN connection may suffer an outage or may be unpredictable. SteelFusion enables disconnected operations by maintaining local access to centralized data even when the WAN link is down. Changed and newly-written blocks (dirty blocks) are preserved in a persistent log and flushed to the data center when WAN connectivity is restored, ensuring consolidation and protection of newly created data. The result is high performance for branch applications at all times – even during a WAN outage. For situations where the long-periods of WAN disruption are expected due to regional deficiencies SteelFusion LUN-pinning can be used to preposition the contents of an entire LUN in the branch to ensure a 100% hit rate for users requesting data in the branch (see LUN pinning below). Boot over the WAN VMware vSphere virtual server technology combined with SteelFusion now makes it possible to boot over the WAN to provide instant provisioning and fast recovery capabilities for edge locations. A bootable LUN in the data center is mapped to a host in a branch office. The host can either be a separate vSphere server or leverage the pre-integrated instance of vSphere in the SteelFusion Edge Virtual Services Platform (VSP). SteelFusion Core detects the LUN as a VMFS file system with an embedded NTFS file system virtual machine workload and learns the block sequence to enable a fast boot. Once the boot process in the branch starts, blocks for the Windows file server virtual machine are requested from across the WAN. SteelFusion Core recognizes the boot request and prefetches all of the required block clusters from the data center provisioned LUN and pushes them to the SteelFusion Edge appliance at the branch, ensuring local performance for the boot operation. This same file system aware prefetch also predicts operations like file access and large directory browsing thereby providing seamless access to LUNs which are across a WAN.


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LUN pinning A provisioned VNX storage LUN projected via SteelFusion can be deployed in two different modes, pinned and unpinned. Pinned mode caches 100% of the data blocks on the SteelFusion appliance at the branch. This enables the contents of specified storage LUNs to be maintained at the edge to support business operations in the event of long WAN outages. Unpinned mode maintains only a working set of the most frequently accessed blocks at the branch. Snapshot integration SteelFusion integrates with the EMC VNX snapshot framework to deliver application consistent point-in-time copies of branch data for backup and recovery. Steelhead CX appliance Riverbed Steelhead appliances deliver high performance WAN optimization that overcomes both bandwidth and latency problems to deliver LAN-like performance to branch offices and mobile workers. Steelhead products accelerate a broad set of applications important to business, combining application streamlining data streamlining and transport streamlining, with quality of service control to deliver up to 100 times performance increases across the WAN. File transfers that once took hours or minutes now take minutes or seconds, dramatically improving productivity and global collaboration. SteelFusion Edge appliances integrate Steelhead WAN optimization and pair with the Steelhead CX appliance in the datacenter to take advantage of network deduplication and TCP-based acceleration to make sure that storage data blocks are optimally transported between the branch and the data center storage system. EMC storage systems An EMC VNX storage system serves storage over the network using block-based protocols such as FC, FCoE and iSCSI. Block-based protocols are provided to support applications that can't write data to CIFS or NFS shares but instead need local block storage. Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server are two examples of these applications. When the storage is served using block-based protocols, the VNX storage system presents it as logical unit numbers (LUNs). File systems and databases can make normal SCSI commands against LUNs. The SCSI commands get encapsulated in iSCSI or Fibre Channel and are sent across the network to the VNX storage system. VMware vSphere 5.1 The Riverbed Virtual Services Platform (VSP) runs in a dedicated partition on the SteelFusion Edge appliance to give organizations the opportunity to consolidate services onto a single, high-performance branch converged platform. VSP is built with VMware® vSphere™ market leading virtualization technology. Using this approach, IT leaders can virtualize edge services at all of their branch offices without having to deploy and maintain standalone servers to run applications. vSphere delivers better application performance


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and availability for all business-critical applications while automating the management of an increasingly broad pool of datacenter resources. VMware vCenter Server 5.1 VMware vCenter Server provides a centralized and extensible platform for managing virtual infrastructure. VMware vCenter Server, formerly VMware VirtualCenter, manages VMware vSphere environments giving IT administrators simple and automated control over the virtual environment to deliver infrastructure with confidence. The combination of Riverbed Virtual Services Platform (VSP) featuring VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server provides centralized control and visibility for the remote branch office server infrastructure.


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Network configuration

SteelFusion Core network configuration Below figure shows the network connectivity between the two Riverbed SteelFusion Core appliances connected in active/active-failover configuration. In this solution, SteelFusion Core Eth2 and Eth3 data interfaces were used for heartbeat and Primary and Aux interfaces were used for management and traffic connectivity to the redundant WAN links. Eth0 and Eth1 data interfaces were used to connect to the EMC VNX iSCSI slot ports.

SteelFusion Core 2

Eth1

Eth0

Eth1

SteelFusion Core 1

Eth2

Eth2

Eth3

Eth3

Heartbeat over cross-‐over cable

Eth0

VSPEX


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Steelhead CX network configuration

Below figure shows the network connectivity between the Riverbed Steelhead CX appliance and the Riverbed SteelFusion Core appliances. The Steelhead CX appliance intercepts SteelFusion traffic going to the branch office via LAN0 and LAN1 network interfaces. Primary and Aux interfaces are used per management and are not shown in the picture.

To WAN 1

To WAN 2

Heartbeat over Crossover Cable

SteelFusion Core 1

SteelFusion Core 2


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EMC VNX network configuration

Below figure shows the network connectivity between the SteelFusion Core appliances and the EMC VNX storage system. In this solution, multipath IO was configured between the SteelFusion Core Eth0 and Eth1 data interfaces and the EMC VNX SPA-6 and SPB-6 iSCSI ports.

SteelFusion Core 2

Eth1

Eth0

Eth1

SteelFusion Core 1

Eth2

Eth2

Eth3

Eth3

Heartbeat over cross-‐over cable

Eth0

VSPEX


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SteelFusion network configuration

Below figure shows the network connectivity between the two SteelFusion Edge appliances configured in high availability and the branch router. In this solution, the aux interfaces were used for heartbeat and the primary interfaces for management and branch traffic.

SteelFusion Edge 2

SteelFusion Edge 1

Chapter 3: SteelFusion Solution Implementation Screenshots

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Chapter 3 Solution Implementation Screenshots

This chapter details the following implementation steps:

• Storage Array Configuration:

o Create Storage Group:

o Adding LUNS to Storage Group:

• SteelFusion Core implementation.

o Adding LUNs on SteelFusion using Setup Wizard

o Configuring Initiator Groups on SteelFusion.

o Granting Access on LUNs

• Configuring SteelFusion Edge

• Branch Converged Infrastructure Solution description

• Configuring VSP Vmware vSpshere 5.1 running on SteelFusion Edge


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Storage Array Configuration:

In order for the SteelFusion Core to access the LUNs, we need to create a storage group and map the appropriate LUN to it

From the VNX Navisphere, navigate to Storage groups and click Create.

Figure 1: Create Storage Group

Create Storage Group:


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Give the Storage group a suitable name and click OK.

Figure 2: Create Storage group

Click Yes on the confirmation window.

Figure 3: Confirm Storage Group


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Once the storage group is created, we need to map the desired LUN to this storage group. Open the properties of the storage group you just created and Select the appropriate LUN and click Add

Figure 4: Add available LUNs

Adding LUNS to Storage Group:


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Select the SteelFusion Core host and add it to the right side pane and click OK.

Figure 5: Add hosts to Storage Group


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Figure 6: Confirmation window


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SteelFusion Core implementation.

Open the Configure dropdown from the top menu of the SteelFusion Core 1 management console and select Setup Wizard to open the wizard.

Figure 7: SteelFusion setup wizard

Select LUN Mapping from the Wizard Dashboard

Figure 8: Welcome page

Adding LUNs on SteelFusion using Setup Wizard


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Specify the name of the VNX portal that we are connecting to.

Figure 9: Portal Configuration page


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From the list of known targets, select the target on which your LUN is connected to.

Figure 10: Target configuration page


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Select the LUN that you want to connect to the SteelFusion Core.

Figure 11: Select discovered LUN


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Note: Verify the EMC LUN serial number in LUN properties page.

Figure 12: Confirm LUN serial number


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In order for a SteelFusion Edge to connect to a SteelFusion Core, each Edge needs to be identified by a unique identifier.

Figure 13: SteelFusion Edge mapping

The Unique identifier configured in the above step can be confirmed by going to the SteelFusion Edge page.

Figure 14: SteelFusion Edge Identifier


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Specify the LUNs that you want to expose to this SteelFusion Edge.

Figure 15: Map LUNs


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And finally view the summary and click Exit.

Figure 16: Summary Confirmation

From the Steelfusion Edge appliance, confirm that you can see the LUN.

Figure 17: Confirm LUN on Edge


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Similar to the VNX storage system, SteelFusion appliances also implement the concepts of storage groups. In the SteelFusion Core appliance storage groups are called initiator groups, and by default all the servers/initiators are placed in the “None” initiator group that denies access to the exported LUNs to all servers. Below are the steps to expose the LUN to specific servers.

Figure 18: Adding an Initiator

Configuring Initiator Groups on SteelFusion.


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By default, initiators are not a part of any group but it is recommended that a new group be created for an initiator. Specify a name for the group and click Add.

Figure 19: Adding New Group

Once the initiator name and group are added, click Add initiator.

Figure 20: Confirming Initiator

Select the group that you want to grant access on this LUN and add it using the “Add” button.

Figure 21: Managing Access Lists

Granting Access on LUNs


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Confirm if the correct Group has been granted access.

Figure 22: Verify Initiator Groups


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Configuring SteelFusion Edge From SteelFusion Edge, go the SteelFusion Core Storage page, specify the unique edge identifier and the IP address of the SteelFusion Core appliance.

Figure 23: Connecting Edge to Core

Figure 24: Confirm Connection


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Branch Converged Infrastructure Solution description

DATA CENTERSteelFusion Core

VSPEX

Figure 25: Virtualize branch office apps on EMC SAN

SteelFusion Core


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DATA CENTER

SteelFusion Core

VSPEX

BRANCH OFFICE

SteelFusion Edge

WAN

Figure 26: Project Services to SteelFusion Edge

SteelFusion Core

SteelFusion Edge


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DATA CENTER

SteelFusion Core

VSPEX

BRANCH OFFICE

SteelFusion Edge

WANBranch Crashed

Figure 27: Branch Crashed due to a disaster

SteelFusion Core


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DATA CENTER

SteelFusion Core

VSPEX

WAN

Boot Services at Data center

Client get redirected to Data Center over vpn

Figure 28: You can boot services over WAN

SteelFusion Core

Client get redirected to data center over vpn


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Configuring VSP Vmware vSpshere 5.1 running on SteelFusion Edge

Figure 29: Adding VM to VSP

Figure 30: Adding Initiator


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Figure 31: Adding Target

Figure 32: Rescanning Adapter


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Figure 33: Adding Storage

Figure 34: Attaching Riverbed Disk


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Figure 35: Formatting options

Figure 37: Browse DataStore


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Figure 38: Adding VM to inventory

Documents

Branch Storage Consolidation with Riverbed and EMC VSPEX. · VSPEX IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE Branch Storage Consolidation with Riverbed and EMC VSPEX. Riverbed SteelFusion Solution This