Basic Management Course

Lab Guide
January, 2016
Contents
Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 3

Audience ...................................................................................................................................... 3

Pure Storage Introduction ............................................................................................................. 4

FlashArray//m Specifications ................................................................................................................................................. 6

Purity Operating Environment................................................................................................................................................ 6

Pure1................................................................................................................................................................................................ 7

Experience Evergreen Storage ............................................................................................................................................. 7

Basic Management Course Labs................................................................................................... 8

Exercise 1- Log into AFA using CLI and GUI ..................................................................................................................... 8

Exercise 1-2: Create a Host ..................................................................................................................................................... 8

Exercise 1-3: Create a Host Group for Clustered Systems .......................................................................................... 9

Exercise 1-4: Check Connectivity and Multi-pathing: ................................................................................................... 10

2) Storage Provisioning ............................................................................................................... 11

Exercise 2-2: Resize a Volume ............................................................................................................................................. 12

Exercise 2-4: Restore a Snapshot ....................................................................................................................................... 13

Exercise 2-5: Recovery from an Accidental Restore of a Snapshot ........................................................................ 13

Exercise 2-6: Copy a Snapshot ............................................................................................................................................ 14

Exercise 2-7: Mount a Snapshot .......................................................................................................................................... 14

Exercise 2-8: Destroy a Snapshot ....................................................................................................................................... 15

Exercise 2-9: Destroy and Recover a Volume ................................................................................................................ 15

Exercise 2-10: Permanently Destroy (Eradicate) a Volume.........................................................................................16

Pure CLI Commands Practice...................................................................................................... 17

References ................................................................................................................................. 18

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Summary
The purpose of this lab guide is to provide the user with some practise with the managent and
configuraton of an all FlashArray. Please use the guide as a starting point to investigate the options
available. Further dcoumentation can be found in the User Guide and on-line help.

Pure Storage recommends that you always have access to the latest information and guides via our
support portal at :-

www.purestorage.com/support

Audience
This guide is intended for storage administrators, IT professionals and other interested parties. It is
intended to be a complimetary document to the Pure Storage Basic Management Course.

© 2016 Pure Storage, Inc. All rights reserved. Pure Storage, the "P" Logo, and Pure1 are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Pure Storage, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. <INSERT VENDOR
SPECIFICS> are registered trademarks of <VENDOR NAME> in the U.S. and other countries. The Pure
Storage product described in this documentation is distributed under a license agreement and may be
used only in accordance with the terms of the agreement. The license agreement restricts its use,
copying, distribution, decompilation, and reverse engineering. No part of this documentation may be
reproduced in any form by any means without prior written authorization from Pure Storage, Inc. and its
licensors, if any.

THE DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED

CONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT ARE
DISCLAIMED, EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT THAT SUCH DISCLAIMERS ARE HELD TO BE LEGALLY INVALID.
PURE STORAGE SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES IN
CONNECTION WITH THE FURNISHING, PERFORMANCE, OR USE OF THIS DOCUMENTATION. THE
INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS DOCUMENTATION IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.

Pure Storage, Inc. 650 Castro Street, Mountain View, CA 94041

http://www.purestorage.com

© Pure Storage 2016 | 3

Pure Storage Introduction
Who knew that moving to all-flash storage could help reduce the cost of IT? FlashArray//m makes server
and workload investments more productive, while also lowering storage spend. With FlashArray//m,
organizations can dramatically reduce the complexity of storage
to make IT more agile and efficient, accelerating your journey to
the cloud.

FlashArray//m’s performance can also make your business

smarter by unleashing the power of real-time analytics, driving
customer loyalty, and creating new, innovative customer
experiences that simply weren’t possible with disk. All by
Transforming Your Storage with FlashArray//m.

FlashArray//m enables you to transform your data center, cloud,

or entire business with an affordable all-flash array capable of consolidating and accelerating all your key
applications.

Mini Size—Reduce power, space and complexity by 90%

• 3U base chassis with 15-120+ TBs usable

• ~1kW of power

• 6 cables

Mighty Performance—Transform your datacenter, cloud, or entire business

• Up to 300,000 32K IOPS

• Up to 9 GB/s bandwidth

• <1ms average latency

Modular Scale—Scale FlashArray//m inside and outside of the chassis for generations

• Expandable to ~½ PB usable via expansion shelves

• Upgrade controllers and drives to expand performance and/or capacity

Meaningful Simplicity—Appliance-like deployment with worry-free operations

• Plug-and-go deployment that takes minutes, not days

• Non-disruptive upgrades and hot-swap everything

• Fewer parts = more reliability

© Pure Storage 2016 | 4

The FlashArray//m expands upon the FlashArray’s modular, stateless architecture, designed to enable
expandability and upgradability for generations. The FlashArray//m leverages a chassis-based design with
customizable modules, enabling both capacity and performance to be independently improved over time
with advances in compute and flash, to meet your business’ needs today and tomorrow.

The Pure Storage FlashArray is ideal for:

Accelerating Databases and Applications Speed transactions by 10x with consistent low latency, enable
online data analytics across wide datasets, and mix production, analytics, dev/test, and backup workloads
without fear.

Virtualizing and Consolidating Workloads Easily accommodate the most IO-hungry Tier 1 workloads,
increase consolidation rates (thereby reducing servers), simplify VI administration, and accelerate
common administrative tasks.

Delivering the Ultimate Virtual Desktop Experience Support demanding users with better performance
than physical desktops, scale without disruption from pilot to >1000’s of users, and experience all-flash
performance for under $100/desktop.

Protecting and Recovering Vital Data Assets Provide an always-on protection for business-critical data,
maintain performance even under failure conditions, and recover instantly with FlashRecover.

Pure Storage FlashArray sets the benchmark for all-flash enterprise storage arrays. It delivers:

Consistent Performance FlashArray delivers consistent <1ms average latency. Performance is optimized
for the real-world applications workloads that are dominated by I/O sizes of 32K or larger vs. 4K/8K hero
performance benchmarks. Full performance is maintained even under failures/updates.

Less Cost than Disk Inline de-duplication and compression deliver 5 – 10x space savings across a broad
set of I/O workloads including Databases, Virtual Machines and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

Mission-Critical Resiliency FlashArray delivers >99.999% proven availability, as measured across the Pure
Storage installed base and does so with non-disruptive everything without performance impact.

Disaster Recovery Built-In FlashArray offers native, fully-integrated, data reduction-optimized backup and
disaster recovery at no additional cost. Setup disaster recovery with policy-based automation within
minutes. And, recover instantly from local, space-efficient snapshots or remote replicas.

Simplicity Built-In FlashArray offers game-changing management simplicity that makes storage
installation, configuration, provisioning and migration a snap. No more managing performance, RAID, tiers
or caching. Achieve optimal application performance without any tuning at any layer. Manage the
FlashArray the way you like it: Web-based GUI, CLI, VMware vCenter, Rest API, or OpenStack.

© Pure Storage 2016 | 5

Table 1. Pure Storage FlashArray//m Series.

FlashArray//m Specifications
//m20 //m50 //m70
Capacity • Up to 120+ TBs effective capacity* • Up to 250+ TBs effective capacity* • Up to 400+ TBs effective capacity*
• 5 – 40TBs raw capacity • 30 – 88TBs raw capacity (w/shelves) • 44 – 136TBs raw capacity
(base chassis) (w/shelves)

Performance • Up to 150,000 32K IOPS** • Up to 220,000 32K IOPS** • Up to 300,000 32K IOPS**
• <1ms average latency • <1ms average latency • <1ms average latency
• Up to 5 GB/s bandwidth • Up to 7 GB/s bandwidth • Up to 9 GB/s bandwidth

Connectivity • 8 Gb/s Fibre Channel • 16 Gb/s Fibre Channel • 16 Gb/s Fibre Channel
• 10 Gb/s Ethernet iSCSI • 10 Gb/s Ethernet iSCSI • 10 Gb/s Ethernet iSCSI
• Management and Replication ports • Management and Replication ports • Management and Replication ports

Physical • 3U • 3U – 7U • 5U – 11U
• 742 Watts (nominal draw) • 1007 - 1447 Watts (nominal draw) • 1439 – 2099 Watts (nominal draw)
• 110 lbs. (49.9 kg) fully loaded • 110 lbs. (49.9 kg) fully loaded + 44 • 110 lbs. (49.9 kg) fully loaded + 44
• 5.12” x 18.94” x 29.72” lbs. per expansion shelf lbs. per expansion shelf
FlashArray//m chassis • 5.12” x 18.94” x 29.72” • 5.12” x 18.94” x 29.72”
FlashArray//m chassis FlashArray//m chassis

* Effective capacity assumes HA, RAID, and metadata overhead, GB-to-GiB conversion, and includes the benefit of data
reduction with always-on inline deduplication, compression, and pattern removal. Average data reduction is calculated at 5-to-1,
below the global average of the FlashArray user base.

** Why does Pure Storage quote 32K, not 4K IOPS? The industry commonly markets 4K IOPS, but real-world environments are dominated by
IO sizes of 32K or larger. FlashArray//m adapts automatically to 512B-32KB IO for superior performance, scalability, and data reduction.

Purity Operating Environment

Purity implements advanced data reduction, storage management and flash management features, and
all features of Purity are included in the base cost of the FlashArray//m.

Storage Software Built for Flash—The FlashCare technology virtualizes the entire pool of flash within the
FlashArray, and allows Purity to both extend the life and ensure the maximum performance of consumer-
grade MLC flash.

Granular and Adaptive—Purity Core is based upon a 512-byte variable block size metadata layer. This
fine-grain metadata enables all of Purity’s data and flash management services to operate at the highest
efficiency.

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Best Data Reduction Available—FlashReduce implements five forms of inline and post-process data
reduction to offer the most complete data reduction in the industry. Data reduction operates at a 512-byte
aligned variable block size, to enable effective reduction across a wide range of mixed workloads without
tuning.

Highly Available and Resilient—FlashProtect implements high availability, dual-parity RAID-3D, non-
disruptive upgrades, and encryption, all of which are designed to deliver full performance to the
FlashArray during any failure or maintenance event.

Backup and Disaster Recovery Built In—FlashRecover combines space-saving snapshots, replication,
and protection policies into an end-to-end data protection and recovery solution that protects data
against loss locally and globally. All FlashProtect services are fully-integrated in the FlashArray and
leverage the native data reduction capabilities.

Pure1

Pure1 Manage—By combining local web-based management with cloud-based monitoring, Pure1 Manage
allows you to manage your FlashArray wherever you are – with just a web browser.

Pure1 Connect—A rich set of APIs, plugin-is, application connectors, and automation toolkits enable you
to connect FlashArray//m to all your data center and cloud monitoring, management, and orchestration
tools.

Pure1 Support—FlashArray//m is constantly cloud- connected, enabling Pure Storage to deliver the most
proactive support experience possible. Highly trained staff combined with big data analytics help resolve
problems before they start.

Pure1 Collaborate—Extend your development and support experience online, leveraging the Pure1
Collaborate community to get peer-based support, and to share tips, tricks, and scripts.

Experience Evergreen Storage

Tired of the 3-5 year array replacement merry-go-round? The move to FlashArray//m can be
your last data migration. Purchase and deploy storage once and once only – then expand
capacity and performance incrementally in conjunction with your business needs and without
downtime. Pure Storage’s vision for Evergreen Storage is delivered by a combination of the
FlashArray’s stateless, modular architecture and the ForeverFlash business model, enabling
you to extend the lifecycle of storage from 3-5 years to a decade or more.

© Pure Storage 2016 | 7

Basic Management Course Labs
Exercise 1- Log into AFA using CLI and GUI

Connect to http://<purestorageIP> or http://<hostname>

User: pureuser
Password: pureuser

In the system tab, check that all hardware elements are visible and in a healthy
state.

Using an SSH client (Putty for Windows, ssh for Unix based operating systems), log
in to the IP address of the Flash Array.
User: pureuser
Password: pureuser

Note: The Help link in the UI provides a full User Guide including CLI man pages.
Once in the CLI ‘purehelp’ can be used for a list of commands and subsequently
[command] [option] -h provides positional argument options.

1.1. What is the raw capacity of the array? _________________________

1.2. What is the total Capacity of the array? ________________________
1.3. Is there a difference between the raw and total capacity? _________
If so what is it and why? ____________________________________
Another name used for total capacity is ________________________
1.4. What guides are available from the GUI? _______________________

Exercise 1-2: Create a Host

Connect a host to the Pure Storage FlashArray.

For FCP connectivity the Pure Storage FlashArray supports both SAN attach and/or direct
connection. The host can therefore be connected either directly to the FlashArray Fibre Channel
ports or via a SAN with the relevant zoning.

For iSCSI connectivity the host and FlashArray must connect to an Ethernet switch.

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For redundant connections (HA systems), hosts should be connected to at least 1 target port of
each Pure Storage controller node (labelled CT0 and CT1).

Once the host or hosts have been connected to the Pure Storage FlashArray, create the host
object(s):

• In the STORAGE tab, select the Hosts list on the left

• Select the ‘+’ button
• Select Create Host
• Enter TeamX-Host1 as the host name and select Create (Please use unique names!)
• Select the Host Ports button, select the gear icon to the right of the button

(NB if no hosts are available, use your own WWNs for FC connectivity)

• Select either Configure Fibre Channel WWNs or Configure iSCSI IQNs

• Select the corresponding WWN(s) and select confirm or type the IQN(s).
• Repeat the above for three more Hosts. (TeamX-Host2,3 and 4 respectively)

Exercise 1-3: Create a Host Group for Clustered Systems

It is possible with the FlashArray to create host groups that represent clustered hosts, for
example, VSI/VDI/Database clustered servers. Once created any volume or volumes connected
to the host group will be connected with the same LUN ID to each server. This removes the
possibility for error and reduces the amount of I/O scans required for newly provisioned volumes.

• Select the Storage Tab and select Hosts

• Select the ‘+’ icon and select Create Host Group

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 • Name the host group TeamX-HG1 and select Create
• Select the Host Group you created under the Hosts column

• Select the Hosts button, the gear icon and then Add Hosts

• Select the Hosts TeamX-Host2, 3 and 4)

• Select Confirm
• Volumes will be connected to the host group in the ‘Storage Provisioning’ section

Exercise 1-4: Check Connectivity and Multi-pathing:

If your host or hosts have been connected via a SAN it is a best practice to ensure zoning is
used for host to storage connectivity. Pure Storage recommends single initiator zoning. Ensure
you have SAN connectivity using two redundant SAN fabrics.

To view the current status and connectivity of the zoning configuration from the FlashArray:

• In the SYSTEM tab, select Host Connections

• Locate the relevant host or hosts in the Host Port Connectivity window. It will display
which of the Pure Storage FlashArray ports are connected and to which initiator the host
or hosts:

Configure the multipathing for Pure Storage FlashArray per the Pure Storage best Practices document
provided by Pure Storage SE or Partner. (Note, in the case of no hosts being available, the above is FYI
and considered a Best Practice.)

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 Always ensure your hosts are highly availably connected and their multipathing is functioning.

(See our Best Practice document on the Pure Storage support site.)

2) Storage Provisioning
Exercise 2-1: Create a Volume

The most common tasks on any storage array is volume provisioning. Volume provisioning
should be instant, infinitely simplistic and efficient. It should be so simplistic there is no need to
perform any time consuming and expensive preplanning activities. There should be no delay
between the volume creation and the volume being connected and ready to use.

• Select the STORAGE tab

• Select the ‘+’ icon next to Volumes

• Create 2 100GB volumes TeamX-vol1, TeamX- vol2
• Select the Connected Hosts and Host Groups button, the gear icon and then either
Connect Hosts or Connect Hosts Groups

• Select the Host TeamX-Host1

• Select Confirm
• (If a physical host is connected, otherwise skip the next two steps)
• Go to the host confirm you can mount the volume
• Create a file system on the connected volume

NB You will need a workload on the array to complete the following. (Skip to 2-2 if not available)
• Export performance for these two volumes to csv with 5s interval, repeat 3 times
o What is the average block size? (B/op)
o What is the average write latency for the first interval? (us/op)
• Hint - Purevol monitor teamx-vol1 –interval 5 –repeat 3 –csv > stats1

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 • Hint - Purevol monitor teamx-vol1—historical 24h

Which command can you use to verify that io is seen on both controllers?

Exercise 2-2: Resize a Volume

Select a volume that is mounted and has a file system installed. Increase the size of the volume.
Remember most operating systems allow you to increase the size of a LUN/Volume without any
disruption to the data. Reducing a Volume or LUN’s size is or can be destructive to the data on
the LUN/Volume and thus should only be done when loss of the data on the LUN is acceptable.

• Select the STORAGE tab, Hosts and select the host or host group that Volume TeamX-
vol1 is connected to and then select the Connected
Volumes button.
• Select the Gear icon next to the volume and select Edit
Volume.
• Change the Provisioned Size to something larger.
(550GB?)
• Select Save
• Optionally rescan the volume on the host and check that the new volume size has been
detected.

• Optionally extend the partition / file system via the file system tools
• End of Exercise

Exercise 2-3: Create a Snapshot

• Select STORAGE, under Volumes select volume TeamX-vol4 to create a snapshot on.

• Select the Snapshots button, the Gear icon and then Create Snapshot

• Use snap1 as the suffix

• Note the size of the snapshot from the GUI display bar

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Exercise 2-4: Restore a Snapshot
• Select STORAGE, under Volumes select the volume with the snapshot you want to copy
• Select the Snapshots button/tab
• Select the Gear icon next to the snapshot name and select Restore Volume from
Snapshot

• Click the Confirm button

Exercise 2-5: Recovery from an Accidental Restore of a Snapshot

The ability to restore an existing volume from a snapshot is a feature nearly all enterprise arrays
have today. However, it opens up the possibility for an admin to accidentally restore the wrong
volume or restore the wrong snapshot. Fortunately any time a volume restore happens Purity
creates a snapshot right before the change which can be used as an emergency back out for up
to 24 hours.

• Note: Since these steps simulate a human error you should be sure to test them on a test
dataset realizing the test itself will cause the file system to become unavailable.
• Select the STORAGE tab, then Volumes. At the bottom right
select Destroyed Volumes.
• Select the check box in front of the snapshot for the volume you just restored. It will have
“copy” in its name. Note: Copy is used because a volume restore is really coping the
specific point in time snapshot onto the volume.
• Select the Gear icon on the far right and select the option to
Recover Selected Items.

• Click the Confirm button.

• The snapshot will now show up under the Snapshots tab for the volume. At this point you
can follow the snapshot recovery test steps to bring the volume back to the way it was
before the accident.
• If you check under Destroyed Volumes again you’ll see this restore created yet another
emergency snapshot. Don’t worry about how many of these get created because they all
get removed after 24 hours automatically.

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 • Note, there would be host procedures to adhere to as well as handling the array side of
things.

Exercise 2-6: Copy a Snapshot

The ability to copy a snapshot is one of Purity’s most impressive features. This is because any
snapshot (from any volume) can be copied to either a new volume or any other volume. To be
clear, you can take the snapshot of a production volume and copy it onto a separate production
or dev\test volume. This expands the use case for snapshot recovery far beyond the initial
volume where the snapshot was initially created.

• Select STORAGE, under Volumes select the volume with the snapshot you want to copy

• Select the Snapshots button

• Select the Gear icon next to the snapshot name and select Copy Snapshot

• Enter snap-copy-teamX as the volume name and select Create

Exercise 2-7: Mount a Snapshot

• Select the new “snap-copy” Volume that represented the Snapshot , select the
Connected Hosts and Host Groups button.

• Select the Gear icon and select Connect Host Groups

• Select TeamX-HG1 as the host group.

© Pure Storage 2016 | 14

Exercise 2-8: Destroy a Snapshot
• Select STORAGE, under Volumes select the Team1-Vol1 volume with the snapshot you
want to destroy

• Select the Snapshots button

• Select the Gear icon next to the snapshot name and select Destroy Snapshot

Exercise 2-9: Destroy and Recover a Volume

• Select the STORAGE tab, select Volumes and select the TeamX-Vol1 Volume from the list
• Select the Gear icon next to the volume
• Select Destroy Volume and then select Confirm

• In the Volume menu scroll to the bottom and select Destroyed Volumes

• Check the box in front of the volume you destroyed

• Select the Gear icon, select Recover Selected Items and select Confirm
• Mount the volume back on the original host and check the volume is good
• Note: You can recover destroyed snapshots from the exact same place as destroyed
volumes using the same steps above.

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On other storage systems, if the administrator had destroyed the wrong volume, they have likely
lost data permanently or have to revert to a time consuming restore. The longer it takes to
restore the volume the longer the application is down. This would be unacceptable for any
application today.

The Purity Operating Environment offers a get out of jail free card and any destroyed volume
and/or snapshot can be recovered and mounted back to its original host instantly.

Exercise 2-10: Permanently Destroy (Eradicate) a Volume

Most of the time volumes destruction is planned and the Administrator will want the volume
removed instantly and its space reclaimed for reuse.

• In the Volume menu scroll to the bottom and select Destroyed Volumes

• Check the box in front of the volume you destroyed

• Select the Gear icon, select Eradicate Selected Items, and select Confirm
• Note: You can eradicate destroyed snapshots from the exact same place as destroyed
volumes using the same steps above.

© Pure Storage 2016 | 16

Pure CLI Commands Practice
Run the following commands as pureuser from the cli and document the information you gain from them.
Use the FlashArray //m user-guide for any help required for the command output or use the “man” pages
from the CLI.

1 purehost list What information are you presented?

2 purehost list --all What information are you presented?

3 purehost monitor --balance

4 puremessage list

5 puremessage list --open

6 purealert test <email address>

7 purevol list

8 purevol list --all (What information is included not present in the previous command?)

9 purevol list --space --total

10 purearray list --controller

11 purearray remoteassist --status

12 purearray diagnose --email

13 pureport list --initiator

14 pureport list

15 purehw list --type FC

16 purehw list

17 purearray test phonehome

18 purevol monitor volname --interval 5 --repeat 5

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 End of Exercise and Lab

References
Pure Support site

http://support.purestorage.com/home

Online Demos Help Documents

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHxLLkxNwaI

Inline help

Man Pages

© Pure Storage 2016 | 18

 Pure Storage, Inc.
Twitter: @purestorage
www.purestorage.com

650 Castro Street, Suite #260

Mountain View, CA 94041

T: 650-290-6088
F: 650-625-9667

Sales: [email protected]
Support: [email protected]
Media: [email protected]
General: [email protected]

© Pure Storage 2016 | 19