1. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
Mike Emard/Steven Goddard
February 22, 2016
Intro myself/mike
Review of presentation
This presentation will give you all the information you need around StorSimple 8000 Series product. This content was developed in Feb 2016 and is based on the StorSimple 8000 Series Update 2.0 version. We will cover planning and deployment and ongoing maintenance. At the end of this video, you should be ready deploy storsimple 8000 sucessfully.
This training is a great way to prepare for the <exam name/cert>.

2. Agenda Product Overview Deployment Planning
Registration & Initial Configuration
Volume Management
Device Admin Console (CLI)
Maintenance & Troubleshooting
StorSimple Cloud Array
Disaster Recovery & Data Mobility

3. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
StorSimple Overview

4. Agenda Storage challenges Consolidating Storage Functions
11/12/2017
Storage challenges
Consolidating Storage Functions
Moving Inactive Data to the Cloud Tier
Integrating with the Cloud Seamlessly
Backup & DR
Physical and Virtual Appliance Comparison
Workloads
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

5. Storage Today = Complex & Expensive
Storage challenges
11/12/2017
Rapid data growth - 40% YoY*
Storage cost and infrastructure sprawl
Complex data protection & recovery
Resource constraints
Storage Today = Complex & Expensive
* Source: EMC Digital Universe with Research and Analysis by IDC, 2014
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

6. StorSimple consolidates storage functions.
11/12/2017
Storage Today
Microsoft Azure StorSimple
Manage
data growth
Lower storage costs
Primary Storage
Archival Storage
StorSimple
Physical Appliance Or
Virtual Appliance
Disk-based Backup
Simplify data protection and disaster recovery
Increase business agility
Remote Replication
Tape backup and DR
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

7. StorSimple tiers inactive data to the cloud.
11/12/2017
Access
Unstructured data growing 40% YoY
Working data set stays fairly constant
Local
SSD & HDD
Cloud
Enterprise performance for working set
Inactive data is tiered to the cloud
Working set data
Inactive data
Time
StorSimple provides enterprise storage with cloud economics
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

8. StorSimple provides seamless cloud integration
Build 2015
StorSimple provides seamless cloud integration
11/12/2017
StorSimple connects enterprises, globally, to Azure Storage, seamlessly, with no application modification
Enterprise Data Center
Smaller Enterprise Environment
iSCSI and SMB
Local or tiered volumes
Hyper-V
Hyper-V
Linux
Linux
VMware
VMware
iSCSI
SMB
iSCSI
Virtual Array
Physical Array
Automated offsite data protection using cloud snapshots
Highly efficient, location independent disaster recovery
StorSimple
Manager
Azure-based
Applications
Cloud Deduplication, Compression, and
Encryption
Consolidated storage and data management
Blob Storage
for
Tiered Data
And
Cloud Snapshots
iSCSI
StorSimple Cloud Appliance
© 2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

9. Backup & DR with Cloud Snapshots
11/12/2017
Microsoft Azure
Cloud Snapshots
Production Data
Production Data
Datacenter-1
Datacenter-2
Periodic cloud snapshots of production data
Location independent recovery from cloud snapshot
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

10. Enable efficient disaster recovery
Storage Recovery Times from Offsite Backups in a Disaster
90 Days
Regular Cloud Backup with 100 Mbps WAN Link
30 Days
Recovery Time
7 Days
Tape
1 Day
StorSimple Cloud Snapshots with 50 Mbps WAN Link
1 Hour
Storage availability after DR is independent of volume sizes
Rapid recovery enables DR testing and validation
1 Min.
1 TB
5 TB
20 TB
50 TB
100 TB
Primary Data

11. Physical or Virtual – What is right for your scenario?
Both Physical and Virtual …
Seamless Integration with Azure Cloud Storage
Consolidated Storage Functions
Cloud Deduplication & Compression
Local Pinned & Tiered Volumes
Military Grade Encryption
Physical – 8000 Series
High Availability – 2 node cluster
TB Local and 500TB incl. cloud.
Single Protocol – iSCSI
Prepackaged Appliance
Requires up front Azure monetary commitment
Seamless Integration with Azure Storage – No application modification. No need to talk to Azure Blob APIs. StorSimple does it all for you.
Consolidated Storage Functions - Including Primary Data, Cloud Enabled Archive, Backup, and DR.
Cloud Deduplication and Compression - provides storage efficiency which reduces the amount of data on the wire and data at rest in Azure.
Local & Tiered Volumes - allows some volumes to remain fully on premises and not be subject to network connectivity issues while having other volumes tier into the cloud to take full advantage of cloud economics.
Virtual Array
Single Node
6.4TB Local and 64TB incl. cloud
Multi-Protocol - iSCSI or SMB
Install on existing HyperV or VMware infrastructure.
Pay as you go

12. Hardware Overview Hybrid Storage Array Model 8100 8600 Capacity
Usable Local Capacity
11TB
29TB
SSD
800GB
2TB
Effective Local Capacity
11-75TB
29-200TB
Maximum Provisioned Capacity (including cloud)
200TB
500TB
Hardware Footprint
Enclosure Form Factor
2U rack-mountable
4U rack-mountable
Enclosure Dimensions
24.8" x 19" x 3.46" 630mm X 483mm X 88mm
24.8” X 19” X 6.96” 630mm X 483mm X 177mm

13. Workloads Infrastructure on-demand Performance driven workloads
Cloud Appliance
Dev
Test
Research
Cloud
Apps DR
Performance driven workloads
Local Volumes
File Shares
Capacity driven
Tiered Volumes
Virtual Machines
SharePoint
SQL Server*
Collaboration
Archives

14. StorSimple 8100 Hardware Show & Tell

15. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
Planning Prerequisites
Planning for High Availability
Network Planning
These are the things you need to plan ahead of your deployment.

16. Planning Prerequisites
Sales
StorSimple is available via Enterprise Agreement
Azure subscription
Technical Knowledge
Networking
TCP/IP, DNS, NTP, Firewalls, Proxy Server
Storage
iSCSI Initiator and Target, Disk Management
There are a few things you need to know for planning your deployment.
Disk management – format a volume, online/offline volumes.

17. Firewall Requirements
Port No.
In or out
Port scope
Required
Notes
TCP 80 (HTTP)
Out
WAN
Yes
Outbound port is used for Internet access to retrieve updates.
The outbound web proxy is user configurable.
To allow system updates, this port must also be open for the controller fixed IPs.
TCP 443 (HTTPS)
Download updates, cloud storage traffic, management traffic.
UDP 53 (DNS)
see notes.
This port is required only if you are using an Internet-based DNS server.
UDP 123 (NTP)
This port is required only if you are using an Internet-based NTP server.
TCP 9354
The outbound port is used by the appliance to communicate with the StorSimple Manager
Note, you don’t have to open any inbound ports on the WAN.

18. Firewall Requirements
Port No.
In or out
Port scope
Required
Notes
5985/5986 In
LAN No
This port is also used when you remotely connect to Windows PowerShell for StorSimple over HTTP/HTTPS
Inbound port is used by StorSimple Snapshot Manager to communicate with the appliance.
3260 (iSCSI)
Yes
This port is used to access data over iSCSI.
In most cases, you probably won’t have internal firewall blocking traffic, but in case you do, these are the ports the appliance listens to on the lan,

19. Networking Best Practices
Ensure that your StorSimple device has a dedicated 40 Mbps bandwidth (or more) available at all times. This bandwidth should not be shared with any other applications.
Ensure network connectivity to the Internet is available at all times. StorSimple has a cloud dependencies in a lot of area:
Tiering data
Backups
Management
The appliance is resilient to short blips in the network. Several minutes of downtime serval times a day can cause problems.
Isolate the iSCSI and cloud traffic by having dedicated network interfaces.For more information, see how to modify network interfaces on your StorSimple device.
Do not use a Link Aggregation Protocol (LACP) configuration for your network interfaces. This is an unsupported configuration.

20. Networking Changes Routing Metric
User will be alerted if Virtual IP (VIP) resource fails
an alert is raised if duplicate and the user can fix it without a support call
If more than one NIC is enabled for Cloud then failover will happen only when all cloud enabled NIC’s VIP fail.
Routing Metric
For cloud enabled interfaces with gateway set, routing Priority is fixed in the following order:
DATA0 > DATA1 > DATA2 > DATA3  > DATA4 > DATA5
Use Get-HcsRoutingTable cmdlet to see as each deployment might be different depending on config. The lower the routing metric, the higher in preference it will be.

21. iSCSI Initiator (aka Host)
Software
Version
Notes
Windows Server
2008R2 SP1, 2012, 2012R2
StorSimple iSCSI volumes are supported for use on only the following Windows disk types:
•Simple volume on basic disk
•Simple and mirrored volume on dynamic disk
VMWare ESX
5.1 and 5.5
Supported with VMWare vSphere as iSCSI client. VAAI-block feature is supported with VMware vSphere on StorSimple devices
Linux RHEL/CentOS
5 and 6
Support for Linux iSCSI clients with open-iSCSI initiator versions 5 and 6.
Linux
SUSE Linux 11

22. Planning for High Availability
PCMs
StorSimple devices include redundant, hot-swappable power and cooling modules (PCMs). Each PCM has enough capacity to provide service for the entire chassis. To ensure high availability, both PCMs must be installed.
Connect your PCMs to different power sources to provide availability if a power source fails.
If a PCM fails, request a replacement immediately.
Remove a failed PCM only when you have the replacement and are ready to install it.
Do not remove both PCMs concurrently. The PCM module includes the backup battery module. Removing both of the PCMs will result in a shutdown without battery protection, and the device state will not be saved. For more information about the battery, go to Maintain the backup battery module.

23. Planning for High Availability
Network interfaces
Each controller has four 1 Gigabit and two 10 Gigabit Ethernet network interfaces.
Make sure that the network connections to both controller modules are identical, and the network interfaces that the controller module interfaces are connected to have an identical network configuration.
When possible, deploy network connections across different switches to ensure service availability in the event of a network device failure.
Connect at least two DATA interfaces to the network from each controller module.
If you have enabled the two 10 GbE interfaces, deploy those across different switches.
When possible, use MPIO on servers to ensure that the servers can tolerate a link, network, or interface failure.

24. Planning for High Availability
iSCSI Initiator
Configure the Initiator to run on two-node file server cluster configurations.
We just reviewed how to make the appliances/storage HA. To complete the picture, you should look at your applications as well and making them HA. For instance, if you have a file server that is a single node connecting to StorSimple, you won’t have an end to end HA setup. By making your file serve a cluster completes the HA picture.

25. Planning for High Availability

26. Planning for High Availability
SSDs and HDDs
StorSimple devices include solid state disks (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs) that are protected using mirrored spaces. Mirrored spaces ensures that the device is able to tolerate the failure of one or more SSDs or HDDs.
Make sure that all SSD and HDD modules are installed.
If an SSD or HDD fails, request a replacement immediately.
If an SSD or HDD fails or requires replacement, make sure that you remove only the SSD or HDD that requires replacement.
Do not remove more than one SSD or HDD from the system at any point in time. A failure of 2 or more disks of certain type (HDD, SSD) or consecutive failure within a short time frame may result in system malfunction and potential data loss.
During replacement, monitor the Hardware Status in the Maintenance page for the drives in the SSDs and HDDs. A green check status indicates that the disks are healthy or OK, whereas a red exclamation point indicates a failed SSD or HDD.
We recommend that you configure cloud snapshots for all volumes that you need to protect in case of a system failure.
If not a 100% sure, call support.

27. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
Registration & Initial Software Configuration
Security Best Practices

28. Registration & Setup Have the minimum network information ready.
Data 0 IP, Subnet, Gateway
Primary DNS
Time Server (if not using default)
Registration Key
Know what you will change the admin password to
8 – 15 Characters
Combination of upper, lower, numeric and special characters
Secure Transport & Storage for SDEK
Security
Physical serial connection is best. Many serial switches have zero or weak security
Consider enabling Remote PowerShell after registration & changing of the default password.
SDEK – Save it in a secure place
Registration Key – Rotate it after registration

29. Completing Setup Networking iSCSI Security Backup DNS
Fixed IP for each controller (share subnet and gateway with Data0)
Separate iSCSI from management and cloud traffic
iSCSI Security
CHAP

30. Registration & Initial Software Configuration

31. Security Best Practices
Secure Network for Data & Snapshot Manager traffic
Use Strong Passwords & Keys
Rotate passwords quarterly. We force annually.
Storage key quarterly. No enforcement.
Registration key after each use. No enforcement.
SDEK annually. No enforcement.
Be aware of the security considerations of using the cloud appliance
Create separate service instances

32. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
Storage Account Configuration
Volume Containers
Bandwidth Control
Volumes
Backup Policies

33. Service Level Configuration
Service level constructs can be used across and devices registered with that particular service instance.
Storage Accounts
Bandwidth Templates
Access Control Records

34. Device Level Configuration
Volume Container
Failover Unit
Deduplication Unit
Assign storage account
Assign encryption key
Assign bandwidth control
Volume
Local or Tiered
Archive Data?
Assign ACRs
Default Daily Backup Policy
Connect iSCSI Initiator

35. Backups Flexible Scheduling or Ad Hoc
Local Snapshots vs. Cloud Snapshot
Snapshot Type
Local Clone
Remote Clone
Restore
Failover
Local
Cloud
Crash Consistent Snapshots = Azure StorSimple Manager
Application Consistent Snapshots = StorSimple Snapshot Manager (SSM)

36. StorSimple Snapshot Manager
The StorSimple Snapshot Manager is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that simplifies data protection and backup management in a Microsoft Azure StorSimple environment.
StorSimple Snapshot Manager allows creation of application consistent snapshots.
Runs on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2012, or Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system. On servers running Windows 2008 R2, you must also install Windows Server 2008 SP1 and Windows Management Framework 3.0.
Hosted on Download Center here
Documentation is here

38. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
Device Command Line Interface

39. Device Admin Console Capabilities
Functionality only available in PowerShell.
Registration
Maintenance Mode Updates
Hotfix installation
Data0 Network Configuration
Troubleshooting when Azure Management Service connection is down
SDEK Key Change
Reset to Factory Defaults
Support Access
Functionality in PowerShell that is also available in Azure Management Service.
Data1-5 Network Configuration
Normal updates
Export Support Package
Change remote PowerShell setting
Change Device Admin password (PowerShell password) or Snapshot Manager Password
Stop/Restart Controllers

40. How to connect
Serial Console
Remote PowerShell

41. Serial Console Serial Port

42. Remote PowerShell

43. Enter Serial Console. Go over menu choices.
Enable Remote PowerShell from GUI and then enter PS Console.
Go over basic PowerShell commands
Get-Command
Get-Help
Review Key Cmdlets ( … )

44. Resources
PowerShell Guide:
Online Cmdlet Help:

45. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
Software & Firmware Updates
Job Monitoring
Alerts
Hardware Status
Support Package

46. Software and Firmware Updates
Cluster Aware Update (CAU) is used to install updates.
Passive node is fully upgraded
Fail over initiated
Previously active node is updated
StorSimple ensures both nodes are fully patched and up to date
Two types of updates
Non Disruptive updates – no down time
Disruptive updates – i.e. disk firmware. Down time is involved here.

47. Software and Firmware Updates
Portal
One click for updates
Non disruptive updates only
Prerequisite checks
Command Line Interface (start-HcsUpdate)
Smart enough to know what mode you are in:
If the device is in maintenance mode, the cmdlet installs only disruptive updates.
If the device is not in maintenance mode, the cmdlet installs only normal updates.
For updates that do not require maintenance mode, this cmdlet installs the update on both controllers.
For all updates that require maintenance mode, run this cmdlet on each controller. If you do not to run this cmdlet on each controller, data may become corrupted.
Hotfix method
Used when cloud is down on appliance.
package needs to be on a local SMB share.
Start-hcsHotfix –Path <UNCPathToTheInstallPackage> on each controller

48. Updates, Jobs, Alerts, & Maintenance GUI
maint page, show version where they are
controller, hardware health (note disk), support package
Top level
Dashboard/stats/alerts across all devices
Jobs
via job status across multiple devices in your manager by status, type, device, from and to dates
Alerts
Alerts in manager and per appliance
Clear alerts (Manu)
Can be ed as well (highly recommended).
Maintenance Page

49. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
StorSimple Cloud Appliance

50. Workloads Infrastructure on-demand Performance driven workloads
Cloud Appliance
Dev
Test
Research
Cloud
Apps DR
Performance driven workloads
Local Volumes
File Shares
Capacity driven
Tiered Volumes
Virtual Machines
SharePoint
SQL Server*
Collaboration
Archives

51. StorSimple Cloud Appliance
Premium (8020)
Standard (8010)
Maximum Capacity
64TB
30TB
Azure VM
Standard_DS3
(4 cores, 14GB memory)
Standard_A3
(4 cores, 7GB memory)
StorSimple Version Compatibility
Versions running Update 2.0 or later
All versions
Region Availability
Regions that support premium storage
All Azure Regions
SCA Internal Storage Type
Uses Azure premium storage
Uses Azure standard storage
Linear Sequential Reads
137 MB/s
80 MB/s
Linear Sequential Writes
91 MB/s
15 MB/s
iSCSI
CA runs as an IAAS VM.
Standard 8010 running Update 2.0 runs as the same VM model as the previous 1100.
Note : 8020 is only available in regoins support premium, see link. As more regions get premium, the 8020 will be offered in those regions.

52. StorSimple Cloud Array
Provision a cloud array in portal
Devices.Create Virtual Device
Complete Device Configuration

53. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
Disaster Recovery
Data Mobility
Volume Type Conversion
Deactivation & Deletion

54. Data Mobility and Recovery Options
Operation
Description
Scenarios
Clone
Create a copy a single volume onto the same appliance or another appliance.
Research, Item Level Restore, Workload Experiments, Dev/Test, Disaster Recovery Simulation
Failover
Move ownership of a Volume Container from one appliance to another.
Disaster Recovery
Load Balancing
Migration
Restore
Roll back an existing volume to how it was at the time of a backup. This is an overwrite of the existing data.
Data corruption due to user or application error.
Copy & Paste
Classic copy and paste.
Migrate subset of data from one VC to another.
Migrate data to/from 3rd party storage.
ASR + Failover
ASR can be combined with failover.
Application + Storage DR

55. Clone to Steven’s SVA & Host
Failover to Steven’s SVA & Host

56. Volume Type Conversion
All volumes are converted to tiered when moved or cloned to a StorSimple Cloud Appliance.
When converting to local, the appliance will automatically tier out data from other tiered volumes to make room for the converted local volume.
When converting to tiered, no immediate tiering action is taken. Upon conversation, data is then eligible to tier based on last access.

57. Deactivate & Delete Deactivation
Appliances must be deactivated before they can be deleted.
Deactivated state leaves backup data so it can be failed over to another device.
Deactivated devices cannot be reactivated. Only deleted.
Deletion
If you want to delete all the data for an appliance you should delete all the data and backups before deactivating the device.
Allow time for cloud data garbage collection to occur before removing the device. Storage Account or Container deletion is also an option.

58. StorSimple 8000 Series Training
Resources

59. How to contact us
StorSimple Forums Twitter -

60. Resources
StorSimple Product Info Main landing page on Azure Datasheets, Solutions overview Marketing blog

61. Resources
The topmost link to StorSimple doc site StorSimple 8000 series: A hybrid cloud solution – A high-level overview of the StorSimple 8000 series solution. StorSimple system requirements – This article contains all the software, networking and high availability requirements for your StorSimple device. The information here should be reviewed prior to deployment and as you are deploying your devices. Deploying your 8000 series on-premises device - This article contains detailed description of how to deploy an 8000 series physical device. Version-specific docs are available. Deploying your StorSimple virtual device in Azure – This article contains detailed description of how to deploy and manage a 8000 series virtual device in Azure. Version-specific docs are available. Use the StorSimple Manager service to administer your StorSimple device – This article links out to all the scenarios/tasks that you can perform using the StorSimple Manager service.