What is FAST? (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) at vBlock (by VMware, EMC, Cisco)

What is FAST? (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) at vBlock
Now available for 3 Flavors (Celera, CX4, Symmetrix)

FAST approach is the Brand new at EMC,
which will automatically move the the LUNs as below..

High I/O LUN’s to Flash Drives (SSD Hdd’s)
Modest I/O LUN’s to F.C Drives
Least I/O LUN’s to SATA Drives

Here are some features, highlights of FAST and how it operates.

• FAST will perform data movement based on IOPS, average I/O size and write percentage.
This is currently true for the Symmetrix V-Max, Clariion CX4 and Celerra NS.

• Three elements that define FAST: Storage Type, FAST policies and Storage Groups.

• FAST is based on user defined -- configuration policies.

• The configuration of FAST is typically done through FAST wizards FAST LUN Migrator for Clariion CX4,
(Symmetrix Management Console) on Symmetrix V-Max and Rainfinity File Management Appliance or VE for Celerra NS.

NOTE: Out of the box thinking by EMC, imagine the flexibility one would have
with a large infrastructure and FAST moving data based on policy.
It’s all about the big picture.

FAST – EMC Hands on Demo



Source : www.storagenerve.com (Full Article Link below)

http://storagenerve.com/tag/vblock/

How to Decode MCE from PSOD (ESX dump) to identify the H/w Errors

Next time you see a PSOD (Pink Screen on Death) for ESX Server..
Look for any MCE (Machine Check Error) in the PSOD screen to isolate H/w issues.

MCE errors are always indication of some H/w failure..

Decoding the MCE:
For AMD CPUs you can use MCAT utility to decode the MCE for you..
www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/mcatsetup.exe

For Intel CPUs you need to convert the MCE from
Hexadecimal to Binary and decode the error manually..

Watch the Video for how to decode the MCE for AMD Processors



Source : VMware KB - 1005184