VxRail Software: How to Manage Your Storage Infrastructure in the Cloud

As hybrid and multi-cloud environments become more popular, IT operations teams spend more time managing software and services than they do managing hardware. As you move your storage infrastructure from on-premises to the cloud, it’s important to have a plan for managing your virtualized storage resources.

In this blog post, we’ll talk about the best ways to manage your VxRail software-defined storage infrastructure in the cloud, with a focus on how to set up the Azure Hybrid Service provider. To keep your hybrid cloud environment’s high availability and performance benchmarks, you need to know how to manage your storage infrastructure on VxRail.

Understanding VxRail storage architecture

Before we get into the specifics of managing storage on VxRail, let’s talk about how a VxRail appliance handles storage. If you’ve never managed storage in a hybrid or multi-cloud environment before, this will help you understand how to do it on VxRail. VxRail is a software-defined storage appliance that lets you separate your storage resources from the physical storage hardware that they are stored on (e.g. spinning discs or SSD).

This abstraction lets you set up storage pools that your computing resources can use (i.e. hosts or virtual machines). The storage resources are connected to the appliance through iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or Fiber Channel over Ethernet. VxRail also has a feature called “volume snapshot,” which lets you make a copy of your data at a certain point in time. The snapshot copies data from the primary storage to a secondary disc, which you can then store in a cloud storage location. This lets you move snapshots off of your main storage while keeping a record of your data from the past.

Know the Basics Before Managing Your Storage on VxRail

Before you can start managing your storage on VxRail, you need to know how storage is set up and how it is billed. Standard storage and premium storage are the two types of storage that can be set up on VxRail. Standard storage is given to you from the standard storage resources of your hybrid service provider, and you pay for it based on that. Premium storage is given to you from the premium storage resources of your hybrid service provider, and you pay more for it.

Make sure you have enough storage resource capacity for your environment when managing storage on VxRail. The amount of storage you have depends on how much storage space you’ve set aside for your hybrid service provider and how much premium storage you’ve set aside. On the Storage tab of the VxRail Appliance Management Console, you can see how much storage you have used and how much space is left.

Automatic Storage Management

You can also turn on Automatic Storage Management when you are managing storage on VxRail. Automatic Storage Management is a feature that takes care of your storage resources automatically based on rules you set up and turn on. Automatic Storage Management rules can be based on many different metrics, such as the amount of free space, the amount of provisioned space, I/O operations, and more.

When you use Automatic Storage Management to manage storage on VxRail, you make rules that tell VxRail how to give storage to your virtual machines. VxRail then uses these rules to re-allocate storage as needed or when the rules are triggered.

Managed disks and disk groups

Managed discs and disc groups let you group storage resources (like discs, volumes, snapshots, or disc pools) together to make them easier to manage. You can make as many managed disc groups as you need and then link them to VM hosts or virtual machine discs. You can use managed disc groups to turn on thin provisioning, make snapshots, and set up data retention policies.

When creating a disc, VxRail will only use as much storage space as a VM actually needs if thin provisioning is turned on. You can also do basic maintenance tasks with managed disc groups, like deleting snapshots or re-stripping storage volumes. Managed disc groups help make it easier to manage storage resources by grouping them together. If you click the Create button on the Disks tab of the VxRail Appliance Management Console, you can group storage resources together.

Configuring storage

When managing storage on VxRail, you can set up and make new volumes, as well as change volumes that are already there. To make a volume, use the VxRail Appliance Management Console and click the Create button at the bottom of the Disks tab. VxRail has a wizard that walks you through the process of setting up volumes. When you manage storage on VxRail, you can also change disc groups and add discs or snapshots to disc groups that are already there.

In the VxRail Appliance Management Console, click the Modify button at the bottom of the Disks tab to change a disc group. Here, you can add new discs or snapshots to a disc group that already exists. You can also make new RAID groups when you manage storage on VxRail. When you create a new volume and need to choose the RAID levels for it, you can use this feature.

Synchronous storage replication

With synchronous storage replication, you can copy data from your main storage to a second disc. This feature is helpful when you want to make a backup of your primary storage but don’t have enough space to store it in its entirety. For synchronous storage replication to work on VxRail, you need to make a disc group with two or more discs.

Then you can create a volume on the disc group, and VxRail will start copying your data to the second disc. Managed disc groups also let you make snapshots of volumes. VxRail makes a copy of your data, which you can then look at and take out as a copy of your data at a certain point in time.

Asynchronous storage replication

Asynchronous storage replication copies data from your primary storage resources to a secondary disc without stopping the VM host from accessing the data. This is a great way to make a backup of your primary storage without affecting how well your virtual machines work. For asynchronous storage replication to work on VxRail, you need to make a disc group with two or more discs.

Then you create a volume on the disc group, and VxRail will start copying your data to the second disc. Managed disc groups also let you make snapshots of volumes. VxRail makes a copy of your data, which you can then look at and take out as a copy of your data at a certain point in time.

VM monitoring and metrics

With VM monitoring and metrics, you can keep an eye on your virtual machines’ key performance indicators (KPIs). This feature lets you keep an eye on VMs and find performance problems before they happen. When you manage storage on VxRail and use VM monitoring and metrics, you can see metrics for your virtual machines like IOPS, throughput, and latency. With the VxRail Appliance Management Console, it’s easy to see metrics for your VMs and control them. You can look at the metrics for your virtual machines by clicking the Monitoring tab, and you can look at the metrics for your volumes by clicking the Metrics tab.

Monitor Your VxRail Environment

When managing your storage on VxRail, you should regularly check your infrastructure and environment to make sure that your performance, scalability, and resilience goals are being met. Monitoring your VxRail environment can help you make sure you don’t have too much or too little storage. When you manage storage on VxRail, you can see how healthy your hybrid service provider is, how much it is being used, and its performance metrics.

To do this, go to the VxRail Appliance Management Console and click on the Monitoring tab. This will let you keep an eye on the health of your hybrid service provider and find any problems that might be affecting your environment’s performance or ability to grow. Managing storage on VxRail also lets you keep an eye on how your managed disc groups and volumes use resources and how much space they take up. To do this, go to the VxRail Appliance Management Console and click on the Resources tab.

Manage Resource Usage on VxRail

When you manage storage on VxRail, you can see your hybrid service provider’s current capacity and usage and take care of it. This will let you find potential problems, like not enough capacity, that could affect how well your VxRail environment works. When you manage storage on VxRail, you can also see how much space your managed disc groups and volumes use. This can help you figure out when your VxRail environment needs more storage space.

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