HPE Storage Users Group

Now that 3PAR with 3.3.1 supports VMware VVOL's for iSCSI, I'd like to know from other who already implement VVOL's (probably on FC) on what their experience is with it? Did you run into any issues? Anything other to be aware of before jumping into it (once 3.3.1 is stable enough to use )

VVOLs are awesome when they work. When they don't, vmware & 3PAR support have no idea what went wrong. There's no documentation on VVOL problems, only the setup guides. I had a ticket open for well over a month with VMs down trying to sort out how to resolve my vvol issue. I think they're pretty resilient all things considered, but you want to stay on top of your certificates or all kinds of shenanigans will break out.

We had issues running vvols on our 7400 lab box, the copy space failed to clear off old data and ended up filling up on the array. We vmotioned back to normal luns and deleted them. We've had it running on a nimble array with great success for ~6 months now.

Last meeting we had with HPE they mentioned there were a lot of bug fixes in the latest 3.3.1 code for vvols but I have been unable to get ahold of it for testing purposes. We are quite interested in getting it tested and validated again.

That doesn't really sound encouraging
I think we'll stick to VMFS for now!

Please keep your stories coming, either good or bad!

vvols had a lot of issues initially, both on 3PAR and VMware side.
for us the lack of peer persistance support is an issue, we have quite a few metro clusters.
We are a VMware premier partner and got early notice on vvolsv2/VASA3 and decided to wait.
Still waiting.... 6.5U1 released, but 3.3.1 still in controlled release.
Think we'll wait until general availability for testing and wait for 3.3.1U1 before we even consider any production.

Been challenging HPE and VMware for references to customers on our scale and there are none...
Not sure if I want to be the first to break vvols on an array...

...aaaaaand 3.3.1MU1 was released yesterday!

Hi,

sorry for reanimating this older thread.

We are currently discussing possible setups for a shiny new Iaas etc. - setup, and VVols are a point that sounds interesting. We have no experience with VVols on our own.

Up to now, we use peer persistence on most of our arrays, and we know that we would have to switch to async replication with VVols. At least until sync replication is possible, implemented, certified by vmware, array vendort etc. and stable for production. Sounds like this can take some time...

Does anybody have experience with vvols in a bigger environment (100TB+) and is willing and allowed to share?

_________________
When all else fails, read the instructions.

I REALLY want to like VVOLs! I mean, on paper what is not to like?! In reality (on 3PAR V400 and 7450 in my experiences) I would stay away!

I have tried 3.2.2 with all MU's and 3.3.1 including up to MU1 and a few patches... and it has been nothing but a disaster.

We have tried several times from 6.0 to 6.5 and it works really well... until it doesn't. From certificate headaches, randomly invalid VM's, weird performance hits, etc... I would just shy away.

Not sure how other vendors may handle it, but in my experience very few people are using it and there is very little documentation/help out there. VMware and 3PAR support have been pathetic and it really feels like its all still in beta.

Now, are all my problems 3PAR 3.2.2/3.3.1 firmware mess? Probably a lot of it... but I have had a lot of issues on the VMWare side as well.

I would suggest staying away another year and revisiting it then.

We're running completely on vvols with our 7200 array's (3.2.2 MU6 now) and vsphere 6.5 over FC. We started using it since 6.0 and don't have any issues. Documentation from 3PAR is very good on how it works and how to configure it. You should understand how it works before taking into production. IP communication between the hosts/vcenter and the storage management service is very important.