Unisphere - What's New
Unisphere enables the user to configure and manage PowerMax, VMAX All Flash, and VMAX storage systems.
Unisphere is a HTML5 web-based application that allows you to configure and manage PowerMax, VMAX All Flash, and VMAX storage systems. See Overview of Unisphere for an overview of the applications and functionality of Unisphere.
The following table describes the user interface impacting features that are introduced in Unisphere for PowerMax in release 10.0. For information about all the new features in this release, see the Unisphere for PowerMax Release Notes.
| Feature name | Feature Description |
|---|---|
| CKD Compression | For storage groups associated with a storage system running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079), Unisphere supports the enabling of data reduction on CKD storage group creation ( Provision Storage wizard for mainframe), the enabling or disabling of data reduction when modifying a CKD storage group ( View storage groups), and the viewing of the data reduction state for a CKD storage group ( Modify storage groups). |
| LREP Feature Deprecations | TimeFinder SNAP and VP SNAP is not supported on storage systems running HYPERMAX OS 5977, PowerMaxOS 5978, and PowerMaxOS 10 (6079). TimeFinder/Mirror are not supported on storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079). TimeFinder SnapVX provides the equivalent support. |
| 2K SRDF groups | For storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079), 2,000 SRDF groups are supported. |
| Illuminated Bezels | The system bay LED state can be configured on selected bays, in order to aid in locating them (see Configure system bay LED state ). |
| FlexRAID – Flexible Drive Protection Scheme | The storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079) support the use of a flexible RAID protection scheme that supports capacity expansion in increments of a single drive. New properties have been added for the Disk Group, SRP, and System and a new alert policy has also been added. |
| 32Gb FICON Support | For storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079), a new OR emulation has been added to replace all previous Open System Front End and SRDF emulations. The system hardware view displays an OR directors tab, a BE directors tab, an EF directors tab, and an EM directors tab. See View EF directors. |
| Platform Support Deprecation | This feature supports the removal of Unisphere management support for storage systems running Enginuity OS 5876. The feature also supports the removal of Unisphere management support for storage systems running HYPERMAX OS 5977 at a version earlier than HYPERMAX OS 5977.1131.1131. |
| Customer driven Software Staging, Install, and Upgrade | This feature provides customers with the capability to update applications on embedded management guests. The feature allows them to stage the management guest software and install it at their own convenience, without the involvement of remote services. See View embedded application updates. |
| Deprecate Write pacing | Write-pacing is not supported for storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079). |
| Backend Emulation | On storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079), spindles are not associated with a specific DA (Director), Interface, or SCSI ID (TID). They are, instead, uniquely identified by the Spindle ID and grouped according to Disk Group. There is no relationship between DA directors and disks for storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079). |
| Embedded Management Serviceability -vApp Manager Deprecation | The vApp Manager has been deprecated and its functionality has been added to Unisphere and SymmWin (see View embedded application updates). |
| Integrate Open Replicator into NDM | This feature provides migration support for migrations from storage systems running Enginuity OS 5876, XtremeIO, VNX, Unity, DMX, and other array vendors to a storage system running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079). See View the migration SAN WWNs and related topics. |
| Support for 25 GbE NVMeoF over TCP on V4 | Unisphere supports both iSCSI and NVMe/TCP protocols for storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079). See View the NVMe dashboard and related topics. |
| Converged Emulation | For storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079), a new OR emulation has been added to replace all previous Open System Front End and SRDF emulations (see View OR directors and related topics). |
| eLicensing Updates | For storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079), XML format is required when loading a license file. |
| SAN Health Reporting and Troubleshooting | For storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079), a new SAN Health Report view is added to aid the user to determine the current health of their storage network ( View and filter SAN health report). |
| Array Metrics Review, Reduction, Deprecation | This feature supports the removal of Unisphere management support for Performance Management (PM) metrics that are associated with storage systems running Enginuity OS 5876. |
| TDev Creation With User Specified Start Number | User specified numbering allows a user during TDEV volume creation to input a custom starting device number from which they would like volume numbers to start. |
| Future proofing U4P Infrastructure | Upgrading of Java to Version 11 and JBoss to version 24.0 ensures that Unisphere is at pace with the latest releases from Oracle. |
| PowerMax Multi System Provisioning and Migration Workload Suitability Validation | The Unisphere Multi-Array Provisioning Wizard and the Multi-Array Migration Wizard have been enhanced to support remote arrays, if data is being collected for the remote array on one or more U4P instances. |
| PowerMax Software System Profiles and Compliance | This feature allows customers to setup and configure their software settings on one or more arrays in a scalable manner. In addition, compliance can be monitored against a PowerMax Profile configuration to ensure a consistent setup of arrays and allow notifications to be sent when settings are changed which deviate from the PowerMax Profiles (see View system profiles and related topics). |
| ACL Deprecation | Symmetrix ACLs are not supported for storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079). |
| SRS Gen4 API for Unisphere | Unisphere uses SRS services to send and receive data to and from CloudIQ. The Secure Remote Services API has updated to a new generation (Gen 4), and Unisphere has been updated to use the Gen4 version. See Manage CloudIQ settings and Manage CyberSecIQ settings. |
| Unisphere Angular 7 (includes DSA removal) | Unisphere is keeping up to date with the latest version of Angular. As part of this, Database Storage Analyzer (DSA) functionality has been removed from Unisphere for PowerMax. |
| Multi-Factor Authentication | This feature provides support for Multi-Factor Authentication (RSA token keys) for Unisphere for PowerMax. Unisphere enforces certificate validation of the LDAP server, if LDAP authentication is enabled. |
| SRDF Feature Usage Collection | This feature supports the collection of activity based SRDF feature usage statistics from the field. |
| ORS Usage Stat Collection | This feature supports the collection of activity based Open Replicator (OR) feature usage statistics from the field. |
| Resource Usage Monitoring and Reporting | This feature provides an intuitive view of capacity utilization on the array throughout its life cycle. Alerting on and monitoring of resources is focused on assisting the customer decision making around remaining capacity (see Understanding resource usage and related topics). |
| Audit Log Enhancements | This feature supports audit log enhancements in the areas of filtering, additions to audit log message catalog, and combination of records that were written as part of a single sequence (see View the audit log and related topics). |
| Support for 25 GbE over SRDF on V4 | This feature supports 25 GbE over SRDF on storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079). |
| Show real-time performance capacity for directors | Unisphere supports the display of real-time performance capacity for directors. |
| Support for Dell Service Tags | Dell Service Tags are displayed in the system properties page for each array. |
| Optimization Number of Gatekeepers – Control Host | This feature allows a customer to add a new control host in one step and also supports the reduction in the number of gatekeepers (see Create control host masking view). |
| Recover cloud snapshots to another PowerMax | This feature supports the restore of cloud snapshots to another PowerMax. |
| Unisphere ISG Telemetry Notice Update for CloudIQ Secure Remote Services connection setup | The text in the Unisphere settings for Secure Remote Services dialog has been replaced with the new ISG Telemetry Notice text. |
| StFS Integration with NVMe-oFTCP |
This feature provides support for Storage Fabric Services (StFS), that can automate the establishment of connectivity, between NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) hosts and PowerMax front-end ports running the NVMe-oF TCP protocol on storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079) (see View IP interfaces and related topics). |
| U4P Add Drive Capacity Support | For storage systems running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079), additional reporting has been added to allow monitoring of the add drive capacity process. Changes have been added to report the state of adding drive capacity, the target capacities and the estimated remaining time to completion. |
| SG support for Clones | Support for TimeFinder/Clone has been added for reporting and management at the Storage Group level. |
| Inclusive Language Initiative | Unisphere for PowerMax has added preferred substitutes for any non-inclusive terminology based on inclusive language terminology. |
| PowerMax File | Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level storage architecture that makes stored data more accessible to networked devices. A storage system running PowerMaxOS 10 (6079) with embedded Unisphere supports software-defined NAS (also known as PowerMax File). PowerMax File provides a reliable, highly available, scale-out, high performance, and 64-bit file system. PowerMax File runs as a container instance inside each file guest offering based on the customer configuration.Unisphere in the Embedded Element Manger (EEM) manages a single instance of file that is present locally. The Unisphere installed on an external host does not manage any file instances. See Understanding PowerMax File for storage systems and related topics. |
| Day 1 support of PowerPath | This feature is supported in this release. |
| CloudIQ AIOPs Remediation | CloudIQ analyzes performance, capacity, and configuration data from the PowerMax and sends recommendations to the Unisphere instance managing the array. The root causes of SRP effective capacity breaches, FE Port % busy thresholds breaches, and Storage Group compliance are analyzed in CloudIQ and steps to alleviate issues are sent to the recommendations panels or in context of the object being impacted. |