Pre-Production Testing

• Use tools like VDbench
• Understand the limits
• Populate the data first then run your workload
• Document your testing with timestamps, changes, etc
• Mimic your production environment as much as possible
• Don’t run defaults. They are not use case scenario’s
• Validate processes before testing. Unmap for Fast Cache, zeroing when reusing disk and turn on encryption out the gate

Considerations for Production

• Pools
  • All flash vs Hybrid
  • Hybrid can’t have more than 50% flash
  • Think of Metadata for snaps
• I/O Modules
  • PCIe 8 & 16
  • 12Gb SAS
  • 16GB FC
  • 1GbE front end
  • 10GB iSCSI
  • Can’t change CNA ports from iSCSI or FC
  • I/O modules are persistent once put in
• Port utilization
  • Multicore
  • CAN offloads for iSCSI
  • Recommend to do as many FE ports as possible
• NAS
  • LACP for 1GB
  • Split NAS across SPs
• Advanced Data Services
  • FAST VP
  • FAST CACHE
  • Unified Snapshots
  • Asynchronous Replication
  • Synchronous Replication
• Analysis
  • Storage Analytics
  • Viper SRM
  • Mitrends
  • Unisphere Central
  • CloudIQ