Pure Storage and VVOLs

Without the plugin…

The plugin makes it easy to – among other things – register the VVOL vasa provider on the array. But here’s how you do without it. Reasons for not wanting to use the plugin are:

1. Keeps VCSA simple and clean. No additional plugins. Less to worry about
2. Separate Storage administration and control from VMware operations
3. Currently Pure plugin 3.1.1 is only for the flash/flex client. Which sucks

The process is documented on the Pure site, but that has all the options. This is the simple steps to getting the VASA provider and endpoint provider set up.

This doc has an interesting note:

Do not run vCenter Servers or AD servers on VVols.

But that’s all to do with the user access and setup. If you use a domain user to authenticate on the VASA provider, then if the AD goes away – you may not be able to register. These problems woudl never happen if you use a local vasa_admin account, or have multiple Domain Controllers.

Create local VVol/VASA Admin account on the FlashArray

VASA Registration with the HTML5 Client

In the Web Client inventory pane Host and Clusters view, select the target vCenter. Select the Configure tab and click Storage Providers in the menu. Click the ” + Add” button.

Then you need to add in both controllers mgmt IP addresses (not just the mgmt VIP or FQDN).

Check it. There should be 2 entries – active and standby.

The FlashArray automagically creates a Protocol Endpoint (PE) when the VASA provider is registered called pure-protocol-endpoint, but it is hidden until a sub-lun connection is made. Because of this you can’t see the endpoint in the UI, and VMware hosts can’t see the storage (yet). In this case I’m connecting the PE to a hostgroup called TEST.

pureadmin@flasharray> purevol list –protocol-endpoint
Name Source Created Serial
pure-protocol-endpoint – 2019-07-02 12:39:39 NZST C2C68ACCA59C4D610001A1CC

pureadmin@flasharray> purehgroup connect –vol pure-protocol-endpoint TEST
Name Vol Lun
TEST pure-protocol-endpoint 245

Check PE in vSphere and check the the round robin path policy is selected.

or check via the VMware cli on the host

[root@esxhost1:~] esxcli storage vvol vasaprovider listl
SANAKL1SAN3-CT0
VP Name: SANAKL1SAN3-CT0
URL: https://172.30.14.101:8084
Status: online
Arrays:
Array Id: com.purestorage:c2c68acc-a59c-4d61-bd42-53c9d5d79a02
Is Active: true
Priority: 200
[root@esxhost1:~] esxcli storage vvol protocolendpoint list
naa.624a9370c2c68acca59c4d610001a1cc
Host Id: naa.624a9370c2c68acca59c4d610001a1cc
Array Id: com.purestorage:c2c68acc-a59c-4d61-bd42-53c9d5d79a02
Type: SCSI
Accessible: true
Configured: true
Lun Id: naa.624a9370c2c68acca59c4d610001a1cc
Remote Host:
Remote Share:
NFS4x Transport IPs:
Server Scope:
Server Major:
Auth:
User:
Storage Containers: 6264b467-0138-3240-8c9d-30e9e234dc22