NetApp Virtual Storage Console (VSC) for ESX ready for Download

The VSC plugin, previewed here, provides NetApp storage visibility to the VMware administrator, displaying:

• The amount of storage available / used in the datastore / LUN / Volume / Aggregate that the datastore is contained in
• The amount of savings recognized by NetApp’s Deduplication technology
• The overall health and status of the controller
• The ability to optimize VMware hosts for connectivity to NetApp storage (Host timeouts, path settings, etc..)

Summary of supported functionality in the 1.0 release includes:

• Support for ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0 hosts.
• Limited support for ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 hosts (listed and details provided, but setting not set – requires using EHU for host settings)
• Viewing the status of storage controllers from a SAN (FC, iSCSI) perspective.
• Viewing the status of storage controllers from a NAS (NFS) perspective.
• Viewing the status of ESX hosts, including ESX version and overall status.
• Checking at a glance whether the following are configured correctly, and if not, automatically setting the correct values without needing to access the ESX console. You can select multiple ESX hosts and update settings for all hosts with a single command.
• Storage adapter timeouts
• Multipathing settings
• NFS settings
• Collecting diagnostic information from the ESX hosts, storage controllers, and Fibre Channel switches.
• Tools to identify and correct misaligned disk partitions (MBR Tools)
• Tools to set proper guest operating system disk timeout values

NetApp FAS series customers can download the VSC from the NOW site today.

For IBM N-Series customers, the IBM branded version will be distributed directly from IBM. I do not know, whether IBM has published it yet.

 

Technorati Tags: NetApp Virtual Storage Console,ESX ServerHost Utilities

Comments

[Tim H - ePlus]

Thanks Nick!

[Adrian James]

Looks like some debugging was left on. My tomcat stdout.log went to 8GB in 2 days and filled my HD.

[Nick Triantos]

Adrian,

If the VMware vSphere Client is closed while a discovery action is being performed,
the stdout_yyyymmdd.log found in the logs folder of the installation directory
can grow rapidly. This file continues to grow until the local disk is full.

Looking inside the file, the following exceptions are repeated:

com.vmware.vim25.RequestCanceled
com.vmware.vim25.NotAuthenticated

This is due to VSC repeatedly trying to communicate with vCenter, however
the client session was terminated.

WORKAROUND:
Ensure VSC discoveries have completed before closing the vSphere client.

For systems affected by this issue:
1. Close all vSphere Client windows
2. In Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services, select the
"NetApp Virtual Storage Console Webservices" service.
3. Right click and select "Stop"
4. Once the service stops, delete the stdout_yyyymmdd.log file located in the
logs folder of the installation directory (C:\Program Files\NetApp\Virtual
Storage Console by default).
5. In the Services window, right click the VSC service and select "Start"

[Adrian James]

Thanks!