HPE Primera I: Management and Connectivity

The HPE Primera I: Management and Connectivity course provides an overview of the HPE Primera portfolio. The session reviews how to perform common day-to-day management tasks with hands-on labs (HOL), including creating the right data efficient volumes on an all-flash HPE Primera array, and leveraging the power of HPE InfoSight. The course prepares learners for deeper follow-on training from HPE, including the 2-day, HM9Q6S: HPE Primera II: Monitoring and Replication course

Audience

Customers, administrators and channel partner sales or technical sales

Prerequisites

• An understanding of general storage concepts including fibre channel technology and RAID
• Operator level functionality in a Windows environment

Course objectives

After completing this course, the student should be able to:

• Discuss Primera hardware offerings
• Describe HPE Primera family features
• List management options
• Describe the HPE Primera Storage software portfolio
• Explain provisioning terminology
• Understand the concepts of chunklets and logical disks
• Explain the HPE Primera concepts of a common provisioning group (CPG)
• Explain thin provisioned virtual volumes (VV)
• Overview Primera data reduction technologies
• Prepare a host to access an HPE Primera storage array
• Create hosts in an HPE Primera storage array
• Explain how to add fibre channel (FC) ports to a host
• Explain the advantages of HPE Smart SAN for Primera
• Export virtual volumes (VV) to a host as VLUNs
• Unexport virtual volumes (VV) from a host
• Describe the advantages of host sets and volume sets
• Create and maintain host sets and volume sets
• Use SSMC and the CLI to create and manage host sets and volume sets
• Discuss the guidelines and rules regarding host sets and volume sets
• Describe app volume sets
• Describe the use of InfoSight to monitor Primera and its surroundings

Course Outline

Module 1: Solution Overview:

• Part 1—Hardware
  • Primera technical specifications
  • HPE Primera hardware building blocks
  • Data-in-place upgrade
  • Primera persistency and high availability features
• Part 2—Software and Features
  • Management options overview
  • Primera and 3PAR SSMC
  • HPE Primera storage management—HPE Primera UI
  • HPE Primera command line interface (CLI)
  • HPE Primera integration portfolio overview
  • Selected data protection and security features overview
  • HPE Primera leadership—replication
  • Peer Persistence
  • HPE Cluster Extension CLX
  • VMware vSphere® disaster recovery with Site Recovery Manager
  • Sources of information

Module 2: Storage Concepts and Terminology

• HPE Primera OS virtualization—logical view
• HPE Primera OS virtualization concepts
• HPE Primera OS virtualization advantages
• Chunklet concepts
• System wide sparing
• Logical disk concepts
• HPE Primera high availability
• CPG concepts
• Virtual volume overview
• Thin provisioning overview
• HPE Primera data reduction overview

Module 3: Host Connectivity and Storage Allocation

• Host to HPE Primera front-end configuration—FC example
• HPE Primera block I/O connectivity
• HPE Primera Persistent Ports
• HPE Primera WWN format
• HPE Primera OS 4.x host OS support
• HPE Primera implementation guide
• Host HBAs and WWNs—commands/utilities
• HPE Smart SAN for Primera
• HPE Primera zoning overview
• Adding hosts in SSMC—SMART SAN enabled
• Making VLUNs visible to hosts
• HPE Host Explorer
• HPE LunInfo

Module 4: Host, Volume, and App Volume Sets

• Host sets and virtual volume sets overview and advantage
• Virtual volume set—other use cases
• Host sets and virtual volume sets— SSMC and CLI examples
• App volume sets overview
• App volume sets— SSMC examples
• SSMC dashboard—top app vol sets

Module 5: HPE InfoSight Introduction

• HPE InfoSight sees and predicts behind the scene
• Get the full picture with HPE Primera and InfoSight
• The AI process for HPE self-healing storage
• HPE Primera—dashboard
• HPE Primera—systems view
• HPE Primera—detailed systems view
• HPE Primera—system performance view
• HPE Primera—performance insights view
• HPE Primera—PDF report
• HPE InfoSight Cross-Stack Analytics for VMware environments

Appendix 1: HPE Primera On-Node Management

• Discovering the HPE Primera array
• HPE Primera initial setup
• Checking hardware
• Creating user on the array and configuring the network
• Initializing the array
• Configuring date/time, Infosight and system support contact
• InfoSight
• Enabling remote support data scrubbing
• First time login
• Primera UI dashboard—overview, alerts, and tasks
• On-node management performance dashboard
• Customer self-update option
• Customer self-repair option

Detailed Lab Outline

Lab 0: vLabs Access

• Task 1: Accessing the vLab

Lab 1: Working with SSMC and CLI

• Exercise 1: Reviewing the SSMC GUI and online help
• Exercise 2: Reviewing the dashboard and changing output views
• Exercise 3: Accessing the SSMC settings screen
• Exercise 4: Adding a user
• Exercise 5: Working with the SSMC activity screen
• Exercise 6: SSMC hardware introduction
• Exercise 7: Launching the CLI

Lab 2: Storage Configuration

• Exercise 1: Log in to SSMC
• Exercise 2: Working with CPGs in SSMC
• Exercise 3: Working with virtual volumes (VV) in SSMC
  • Exercise 3-1: Creating thin provisioned virtual volumes
  • Exercise 3-2: Creating thin volumes (TPVV) with data reduction enabled
  • Exercise 3-3: Creating multiple virtual volumes using a count
  • Exercise 3-4: Displaying/editing/removing virtual volumes
• Exercise 4: Working with VVs using the CLI

Lab 3: Host Configuration and Storage Allocation

• Exercise 1: Identify the HBA type (Windows)
• Exercise 2: Determining host port WWNs
• Exercise 3: Adding a host using HBA WWNs in SSMC
  • Exercise 3-A: Adding a host using Host Explorer in SSMC
  • Exercise 3-B: Adding a host manually using HBA WWNs in SSMC
• Exercise 4: Export/unexport VLUNs in SSMC
• Exercise 5: Windows host configuration formatting and mounting VLUNs
• Exercise 6: Online virtual volume increase
• Exercise 7: Working with default reports
• Exercise 8: Working with HPE LUNInfo for HPE Primera and HPE 3PAR
• Exercise 9: Working with hosts and storage using the CLI

Lab 4: Host, Volume and App Volume Sets

• Exercise 1: Working with host sets and virtual volume sets
  • Exercise 1-1: Working with host sets in SSMC
  • Exercise 1-2: Working with virtual volume sets in SSMC
  • Exercise 1-3: Export virtual volume sets to hosts sets in SSMC
  • Exercise 1-4: Unexport virtual volume sets from hosts sets in SSMC
  • Exercise 1-5: Delete virtual volume sets and hosts sets in SSMC
• Exercise 2: Working with app volume sets using SSMC
• Exercise 3: Working with host sets and volume sets using CLI

Lab 5: Using InfoSight

• Exercise 1: Logging in and dashboard
• Exercise 2: Access InfoSight support
• Exercise 3: Array overview
• Exercise 4: Physical disk details
• Exercise 5: Reports
• Exercise 6: InfoSight scenarios (optional)
  • Exercise 6-1: Health check
  • Exercise 6-2: Planning for growth
  • Exercise 6-3: Using InfoSight to troubleshoot