E20-526 XtremIO Solutions and Design Specialist Exam for Technology Architects Questions and Answers

XtremIO with VPLEX provides for both synchronous and asynchronous replication.

Note: The engine of RecoverPoint is the RecoverPoint Appliance (RPA).

XtremIO inline data deduplication and inline data compression services are inline, all the time.

References: https://www.emc.com/collateral/faq/faq-million-dollar-guarantee-rp-2016.pdf

All XtremIO's enterprise features (including Inline Data Reduction, snapshots, XDP, HA, etc.) have been developed as part of the scale-out architecture. All data and metadata are evenly distributed across the entire cluster. I/Os are admitted to the array via all the host ports, utilizing SAN zones and multi-pathing.

References: Introduction to the EMC XtremIO STORAGE ARRAY (April 2015), page 39

EMC ViPR Controller is a software-defined storage platform that abstracts, pools and automates a data center's underlying physical storage infrastructure. It provides data center administrators with a single control plane for heterogeneous storage systems.

ViPR enables software-defined data centers by providing features including:

* Comprehensive and customizable platform reporting capabilities that include capacity metering, chargeback, and performance monitoring through the included ViPR SolutionPack

References: Introduction to the EMC XtremIO STORAGE ARRAY (April 2015), page 60

EMC estimates that 150 IOPS per desktop is required in a boot storm. As per table the recommended number of VDIs then is 243,831/ 150, which equals 1625.

References: https://www.emc.com/collateral/white-papers/h14279-wp-vmware-horizon-xtremio-design-considerations.pdf , page 32

Disable Encryption and Non-Encrypted Models

This version [ Ver. 4.0.2-65 ] allows disabling the Data at Rest Encryption (DARE), if desired. Disabling and Enabling is done when the cluster is stopped.

References: https://samshouseblog.com/2015/12/29/new-features-and-changes-in-xtremio-ver-4-0-2-65/

References: https://www.emc.com/techpubs/vipr/understanding_solutionpacks-3.htm

The first step is to re-install the XMS image, in the event it is a physical XMS then you may install an image via a USB flash drive or for a virtual XMS simply deploy the provided VMware OVA image.

The following step is to upload the XMS software to the images directory of the XMS and login with install mode ……..

Once logged into the XMS console with xinstall then perform the following sequence of steps:

1. Configuration

5. Perform XMS installation only

11. Run XMS Recovery

Options to choose when running the “XMS Recovery”:

References: https://davidring.ie/2015/02/20/emc-xtremio-redeploying-xms-xtremio-management-server/

The volume size must be specified in MB, GB, TB, and not in KB.

When a copy is created, the volume's existing metadata becomes an "ancestor" entity (parent object) that is shared between the production volume and the copy. New empty containers are created for subsequent changes to both the production volume and the virtual copy volume. Therefore, the act of creating a copy is instantaneous and involves no data or metadata copies.

References: https://www.emc.com/collateral/white-paper/h13035-wp-introduction-to-xtremio-snapshots.pdf, pages 18

In order to use the XtremIO VSS provider it must be installed on the server where we want to do an application consistent snapshot.

References: http://muegge.com/blog/tag/xtremio/

Configuring vSphere Native Multipathing.

For best performance, it is recommended to do the following:

Set the native round robin path selection policy on XtremIO volumes presented to the ESX host.

References: https://itzikr.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/host-configuration-for-vmware-vsphere-on-emc-xtremio/

Best practice is to use four LUNs for the DATA disk group to allow the host to use simultaneous threads. The REDO and FRA disk groups should use two LUNs each.

References: https://community.emc.com/community/connect/everything_oracle/blog/2016/03/31/best-practises-of-vblock-on-xtremio-with-oracle-databases-part-i

The XtremIO's RESTful API allows HTTPS-based interface for automation, orchestration, query and provisioning of the system. With the API, third party applications can be used to control and fully administer the array.

Normally you would access the API using some form of programming/scripting language, such as Python or Perl. However for the purposes of learning or testing concepts there are a number of tools that work better, such as HTTPRrequester and curl.

* Curl is a command-line tool that exists in all Linux distributions, and is available for most other Unix OSes as well as Windows.

To use curl to access XtremIO you’ll need to pass it a few options, such as the username/password to access the array (any valid account on the XtremIO XMS will work), the URL of the API, and potentially a few options such as -k to tell curl not to validate the SSL certificate (presuming you don’t have a valid certificate installed), and -s (silent) to stop curl displaying it’s progress as it downloads the response.

* HTTPRequester is a browser extension that is available for both Chrome and Firefox.

As with for curl, you’ll need to provide a username/password, which is done by clicking on the “Authentication…” box, which adds two boxes below the URL for the username and the password.

References: https://blog.docbert.org/using-the-xtremio-rest-api-part-1/

The queue depth is per‐LUN, and not per‐initiator. Here there are 64 LUNs, each visible through 4 paths, which would indicate that 256 is a good choice for the queue depth setting.

Note: As a general advice, for optimal operation with XtremIO storage, consider the following: Set the queue depth to 256.

References: https://www.emc.com/collateral/white-paper/h14583-wp-best-practice-sql-server-xtremio.pdf