Thoughts and Notes on EMC Solutions Enabler (with NetApp OCI)

From a NetApp OnCommand Insight administrators perspective, EMC Solutions Enabler seems like a right ball-ache. When most OCI datasources are simple IP/hostname, username, password, and you're off, affairs; getting EMC Solutions Enabler to work is a lot more effort. Why you cannot have a simple - IP/hostname, username, password - API access to EMC Symmetrix/VMAX/PMAX, I don't know.

Here are some useful notes/links on EMC Solutions Enabler and EMC Solutions Enabler with NetApp OCI:

Configuration

NetApp OnCommand Insight 7.3 Data Source Support Matrix
Check your Symmetrix / VMAX / PMAX is supported.

Dell Technologies: Solutions Enabler 9 Installation and Configuration Guide
Dell Technologies: Solutions Enabler 8 (8.3) Installation and Configuration Guide
For version X Google “solutions enabler X installation and configuration guide”.

NetApp OCI 7.3 Doc Center: EMC Solutions Enabler with SMI-S Performance data source
Mentions:

  • symcfg list
  • EMC Solutions Enabler on the RAU(AU) version must match or be earlier than version on the Solutions Enabler Server.
  • {installdir}\EMC\SYMAPI\config\netcnfg

NetApp OCI 7.2 Docs: EMC Solutions Enabler (CLI) with SMI-S Performance data source
Older documentation version, but still worth a look.

Troubleshooting

NetApp KB: Common EMC Solutions Enabler error messages logged by OnCommand Insight
Also worth doing a search in kb.netapp.com for the issue you are encountering.

NetApp Community: EMC symmetrix array discovery using Solutions Enabler
Mentions:
  • You must define symapi server in /var/symapi/config/netcnfg
  • SYMAPI_SECURE - TCPIP node001 WWW.XXX.YYY.ZZZ 2707 SECURE
  • Solutions Enabler 7.0 introduced SSL only communications (SECURE) by default.
  • SECURE has some annoyances - SE uses mutual certificate authentication, so both the SE host and server need to be able to resolve the other's hostname to an IP.
  • On the sanscreen server, in cmd prompt:
  • set SYMCLI_CONNECT_TYPE=REMOTE_CACHED
  • set SYMCLI_CONNECT=SYMAPI_SERVER
  • From symcli\bin:
  • symcfg list -v

Dell Community: Can't get Solutions Enabler client to connect to my SE appliance
Mentions:
  • nethosts file


Useful Additional Information: SMI-S for Performance

Default settings to configure SMI-S for performance monitoring:

  • IP address or hostname for the array's Solutions Enabler / Remote Solutions Enabler.
  • Provider username. Default = admin
  • Provider password. Default = #1Password
  • Protocol. The default it HTTPS.
  • HTTP port. The default is 5988.
  • HTTPS port. The default is 5989.
  • Interop namespace. The default is: /interop
  • Array namespace: The default is: /root/emc

To test the login you should be able to test the login at:

https://smi-provider-ip:5989/ecomconfig

Notes:

  1. The AU/RAU is not guaranteed to be the SMI-S server you are looking for.
  2. "EMC's SMI-S provider does not scale infinitely - historically it has had device/object limits that mean you can only have 1-3 arrays per SMI-S instance before the SMI-S functionality starts to get janky (their SMI-S implementation is a publishing approach from a statistical standpoint - it is supposed to meet an SLA to publish a new se of statistics every 15 minutes)." (This is why the performance interval is 1000 seconds, no point having less than 900 seconds.)

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