Questions[emc-vnx](server)

"Screenshots in EMC and Windows GUIs"

Server 2012 R2 cluster. Storage for cluster is EMC VNXe 3200 (SMB3 shares, not ISCSI). Veeam used for backups.

There are VSS snapshots on the EMC that were created by Veeam, using the 'VNX2e VSS Provider'.

There are five of these snapshots, going back several months.

I've opened a case with Veeam and EMC. Neither have come up with an answer.

Daily backups continue to work, creating snapshots, using them, then destroying them as expected. When the backups run, the snapshots are exposed to "vssadmin" or "diskshadow" commands on the Hyper-V hosts.

These orphaned snapshots do not show in "vssadmin" or "diskshadow".

I'm hoping there is a command that can be run from the HyperV host that can access and delete the orphaned snaphots (shadows).

Here are commands run on one of the HyperV hosts. Results are similar on the other host.

C:\vssadmin list shadows
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

No items found that satisfy the query.

=================================================================
C:>vssadmin list providers

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

Provider name: 'Microsoft CSV Shadow Copy Helper Provider'
   Provider type: Software
   Provider Id: {26d02d81-6aac-4275-8504-b9c6edc5261d}
   Version: 1.0.0.1

Provider name: 'Microsoft CSV Shadow Copy Provider'
   Provider type: Software
   Provider Id: {400a2ff4-5eb1-44b0-8a05-1fcac0bcf9ff}
   Version: 1.0.0.1

Provider name: 'VNX2e VSS Provider'
   Provider type: Hardware
   Provider Id: {58c4151c-7bfa-4fb9-aca3-e8afcde763a9}
   Version: 6.2.9200.20557

Provider name: 'Microsoft File Share Shadow Copy provider'
   Provider type: Fileshare
   Provider Id: {89300202-3cec-4981-9171-19f59559e0f2}
   Version: 1.0.0.1

Provider name: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
   Provider type: System
   Provider Id: {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}       Version: 1.0.0.7
   Version: 1.0.0.7

=================================================================
C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin delete shadows /all

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
No items found that satisfy the query.

I just added a few LUN's to our new EMC VNX, and the LUN ID's are not consistent..

Screenshot from EMC Unisphere

Screenshot from VMWare vSphere

If you study the two screenshots carefully, you'll notice that the Unique ID is identical, yet the LUN ID's differ. I'm a bit at a halt here, and I'm not sure if I should call EMC and blame them, or start searching the net for potential vSphere bugs..

We have a new VNX5300 waiting to get configured, and I need to plan out the network infrastructure before the EMC tech arrives. It has 4x1gbit iSCSI per SP (8 ports in total), and I'd like to get the most out of the performance until we jump over to 10gig iSCSI.

From what I can read from the docs - the recommendation is to use only two ports per SP, with 1 active and 1 passive. Why is this? It seems kind of pointless to have quad-port i/o-modules and then recommend to not use more than two of them?

Also - I'm a bit unsure about the zoning. The best practices guide state that you should separate each port on each SP from each other on different logical networks. Does this mean that I have to create 4 logical networks to be able to use all 8 ports?

It also gives the following example:

Does this mean that A0 and B0 should sit on the same physical switch aswell? Won't this make all traffic go on one switch (if both A1 and B1 are passive)?

Edit: Another brainpuzzle

I don't get it - each host (as in server) should not have more iSCSI bandwidth available than the storage processor. What on earth does this matter? If serverA have 1gbit and serverB have 100mbit, then the resulting bandwith between them is 100mbit. How can this result in some kind of oversubscription?

Edit4: Wait, what. Active and passive ports? The VNX runs in a ALUA configuration with asymmetrical active/active.. there shouldn't be any passive ports, only preferred ones..