How to map a Linux device to a vVOL FlashArray Volume

Background

I have recently seen an increase in the adoption of VMware Virtual Volumes (vVOLS), and a question which is frequently asked is: How I can identify the FlashArray volume from my Linux server ?

Identify Linux Device

In this example my Oracle database is using a Pure Storage FlashArray and has been migrated to use vVOLS, one of the mount points it uses is /u02, so let’s start by identifying the Linux device for that.

[root@z-oracle8 ~]# df -h /u02
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdd       1008G  836G  122G  88% /u02

Identify Linux UUID

Now we know the Linux device we can use udevadm or scsi_id to get the Unix Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID). I will need the UUID when I come to automating this process with Ansible.

[root@z-oracle8 ~]# udevadm info -q all -n /dev/sdd|grep SERIAL_SHORT
E: ID_SERIAL_SHORT=6000c2929a68f7a35c718056f17b091f

[root@z-oracle8 ~]# /usr/lib/udev/scsi_id –verbose -g -u -d /dev/sdd
36000c2929a68f7a35c718056f17b091f

From vSphere

Logging on to vSphere and navigating to my VM I can see my 4th Hard Disk (/dev/sdd) where 1st = sda, 2nd=sdb, 3rd=sdc etc.. and the vVOL and the Disk File name.

/dev/sdd

Pure REST APIs

Purity 6.0 made Tags generally available and in a previous blog post I showed how we can create our own Tags, namespace and key value pairs to store additional information and filter results, you can check that out here.

Pure Storage’s vVOLS implementation utilises Purity ‘Tags’ to store additional meta data in a dedicated namespace called ‘vasa-integration.purestorage.com

Using the VM Disk File name obtained above and the vVOL namespace I can now identify the Pure Flash Array volume using a REST call.

Postman REST API Call

Pure FlashArray Volume

We now know our Linux /dev/sdd is using a Pure Storage FlashArray volume called vvol-z-oracle8-1a4cbf5c-vg/Data-150b9725.

With this knowledge we can now inspect our FlashArray volume details, data reduction ratios, monitor performance etc.. using our preferred interface e.g. WebUI, CMD, REST.

Pure Storage FlashArray Volume

Summary

In this Blog I have showed how you can map a Linux mount point to a Linux device, to a VMware Virtual, Virtual Volume (vVOL) and finally to a FlashArray Volume.

In my next vVOL post I will share an Ansible Playbook to automate the above tasks.

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