The Managing HPE Primera course provides an overview of the HPE Primera portfolio. The course reviews how to perform common day-to-day management tasks with handson labs, including creating the right data efficient volumes on an all-flash HPE Primera array, and leveraging the power of HPE InfoSight.

This course also provides knowledge of the advanced capabilities of HPE Primera storage arrays, including lower level data reduction features, reporting, monitoring and alerting, QOS, and local and remote replication options. You gain practical understanding of HPE Primera array capabilities using extensive hands-on lab exercises.

This course is the combination of:
• HM9Q5S: HPE Primera I: Management and Connectivity
• HM9Q6S: HPE Primera II: Monitoring and Replication

Course objectives
After completing this course, the student should be able to:
• Describe the objectives and purpose of this course
• Discuss the topics addressed in this course 
• Discuss the HPE Primera family
• Discuss HPE Primera hardware building blocks
• Discuss the data-in-place upgrade
• Describe controller enclosures, nodes, and HBA’s
• Describe controller node architecture and port numbering

• Describe high availability features of HPE Primera
• Discuss HPE Primera software and management options
• Describe data protection and security features
• Explain provisioning terminology
• Understand the concepts of chunklets and logical disks
• Explain the HPE Primera concept of common provisioning groups (CPGs)
• Explain thin provisioned virtual volumes (VVs)
• Overview HPE Primera data reduction technologies
• State HPE Primera management options
• Describe Data Services Cloud Console and steps to onboard HPE Primera
• Describe HPE Primera initial setup, HPE Primera UI, and customer self-update/repair options
• Describe on-premises administration tools, features and the thirdparty integration portfolio
• Prepare a host to access an HPE Primera storage array
• Create hosts in an HPE Primera storage array
• Explain how to add fibre channel (FC) ports to a host
• Describe iSCSI configuration
• Explain the advantages of HPE Smart SAN for HPE Primera
• Export virtual volumes (VVs) to a host as VLUNs
• Unexport virtual volumes (VVs) from a host
• Use SSMC and the CLI to work with hosts and storage
• Describe the advantages of host sets and volume sets
• Create and maintain host sets and volume sets using Data Services
Cloud Console, SSMC and CLI
• Discuss the guidelines and rules regarding host sets and volume sets
• Describe application volume sets
• Describe advantages of HPE InfoSight
• Describe the benefits of data reduction technologies
• Perform space reclamation
• Describe data reduction technologies: deduplication, compression, and data packing
• Perform a data reduction estimation
• Perform an online virtual volume conversion
• Describe System Reporter capabilities
• Use SSMC and the CLI to run reports
• Use the CLI stat commands to look at realtime statistics
• Use HPE Primera app volume sets (AppVVset) in performance context
• Use the SSMC Workload Insights feature for performance reasons to isolate application spikes and trends
• Understand the SSMC Workload Insights concept of a performance score
• Understand the advantages of the Topology Insights feature to pinpoint performance bottlenecks
• Describe basic HPE Primera UI monitoring
• View, interpret, and manage system events and alerts
• Use the checkhealth command for troubleshooting
• Work with alert notifications for System Reporter
• Monitor and manage the event log
• Forward events to syslog server
• Explain SNMP settings and capabilities
• Describe the SMI-S standard, WBEM initiative, and HPE Primera CIM support
• Explain REST API use
• Describe the advantages of Priority Optimization and Quality of Service (QoS)
• Discuss the performance implications of Priority Optimization
• Administer Priority Optimization
• Monitor the impact of Priority Optimization
• Create a scheduled and immediate snapshot
• Export a snapshot
• Perform a recovery using a snapshot
• Work with a clone
• Describe the key features, benefits, and advantages of Remote Copy
• Explain different types of Remote Copy implementations
• Explain the differences between synchronous and periodic asynchronous replication modes
• Discuss different failure scenarios
• Perform a failover of a Remote Copy group
• Briefly describe data migration, high availability, and disaster tolerance solutions

• Customers, administrators and channel partner sales or technical sales
• Storage administrators who desire additional training on the advanced features of HPE Primera

Module 0: Introduction

• Course introduction

• Course agenda

Module 1: Solution Overview:

• Hardware
– HPE Primera technical specifications
– HPE Primera hardware building blocks
– Data-in-place upgrade
– HPE Primera controller enclosure
– HPE Primera drives
– HPE Primera hardware architecture
– Software and features overview
– HPE Primera persistency and high availability features
– HPE Cabling Tool
– HPE product information
– Documentation and resources
– HPE storage interoperability
– HPE SAN certification and support

Module 2: HPE Primera Management

• HPE Primera manageability
• HPE StoreServ Management Console (SSMC)
• Data Services Cloud Console
• HPE Primera UI
• HPE Primera command line interface (CLI)
• HPE Primera integration portfolio overview
• HPE Primera initial setup
• Customer self-install

Module 3: Storage Concepts and Terminology
• HPE Primera OS virtualization—logical view
• HPE Primera OS virtualization concepts
• HPE Primera OS virtualization advantages
• Chunklet concepts
• Logical disk (LD) concept and controller node ownership
• Logical disk concepts
• HPE Primera high availability
• Common provisioning group (CPG) concepts
• Virtual volume overview
• Thin provisioning overview
• HPE Primera data reduction overview

Module 4: Host Connectivity and Storage Allocation
• Host to HPE Primera front-end configuration: fibre channel (FC) example
• HPE Primera block I/O connectivity
• Persistent checksum based on T10-DIF
• HPE Primera persistent ports
• HPE Primera OS 4.x host OS support
• HPE Primera Implementation Guide
• Obtaining host HBA WWNs
• Host bus adapters (HBAs) and worldwide names (WWN)s
• HPE Primera—iSCSI support
• HPE Smart SAN for HPE Primera
• HPE Primera zoning overview
• HPE Smart SAN for HPE Primera overview
• Adding hosts in SSMC: Smart SAN
• Making VLUNs visible to hosts
• HPE Host Explorer
• HPE LunInfo
• Host configuration and storage allocation

Module 5: Host, Volume, and App Volume Sets
• Host and volume sets
• Host sets and virtual volume sets overview and advantage
• Virtual volume set—other use cases
• Host sets and virtual volume sets— SSMC and CLI examples
• Data Services Cloud Console—host group and volumes
• App volume sets overview
• App volume sets— SSMC examples
• SSMC dashboard—top app vol sets
• App sets vs virtual volume (VV) sets

Module 6: HPE InfoSight Introduction

• HPE InfoSight sees and predicts behind the scene
• Get the full picture with HPE Primera and HPE InfoSight
• The artificial intelligence (AI) process for HPE self-healing storage
• HPE InfoSight—artificial intelligence operations (AIOps)
• HPE Primera—PDF report
• HPE InfoSight cross-stack analytics for VMware® environments
• HPE Primera UI—HPE InfoSight software recommendations
• Managing HPE Primera software updates
• HPE Primera wellness filters
• HPE InfoSight unified tenancy

Appendix 1: HPE Primera Virtual Domains
• HPE Virtual Domains software
• HPE Virtual Domains for multitenancy security
• What are the benefits of virtual domains?
• Priority Optimization
• Data protection solutions overview
• HPE Primera leadership—replication
• Peer Persistence
• VMware vSphere®s disaster recovery with Site Recovery Manager

[Detailed lab outline]

Lab 0: vLabs Access and Initial Set up

• Task 1: Accessing HPE vLabs
• Task 2: Initial setup
– Exercise 1: Log in to the HPE StoreServ management console
– Exercise 2: Configuring hosts
? Exercise 2a: Adding a host manually using the HBA WWPNs with SSMC
? Exercise 2b: Adding a host using Host Explorer with SSMC
– Exercise 3: Install Iometer
– Exercise 4: Enabling advanced system performance analytics

Lab 1: Online Virtual Volume Conversion and Data Reduction Estimates
• Exercise 1: Lab set up
• Exercise 2: Data reduction savings estimate using CLI
– Estimation analysis results
• Exercise 3: Online conversion using SSMC
 

Lab 2: Monitoring and Reporting

• Exercise 1: Initial lab set up
• Exercise 2: SSMC default reports
• Exercise 3: Custom reports using SSMC
– Physical drives—performance statistic report
– CPGs—capacity report
– System capacity report
• Exercise 4: Realtime information reports
• Exercise 5: Monitoring app virtual volume sets using
dashboard
• Exercise 6: Using CLI to view real-time performance

Lab 3: Events and Alerts

• Exercise 1: Viewing alerts (SSMC GUI)
• Exercise 2: Viewing alerts (CLI)
• Exercise 3: Viewing tasks (SSMC GUI)
• Exercise 4: Viewing events (CLI)
• Exercise 5: Syslog
• Exercise 6: System Reporter alerts (SSMC GUI)
• Exercise 7: SNMP traps
• Exercise 8: Using REST API
– Part 1—HPE Primera REST preparation and login
– Part 2—Using the Postman client to create a resource
– Part 3—Using the Postman client to delete a resource
– Part 4—Using cURL to manage resources
• Exercise clean-up

Lab 4: Priority Optimization (QoS)

• Exercise 1: Initial lab set up
• Exercise 2: Configuring Priority Optimization using SSMC
• Exercise 3: Monitoring and managing Priority Optimization using SSMC
• Exercise 4: Monitoring and managing Priority Optimization using CLI
– QoS analysis results
– Additional commands to manage QoS rules

Lab 5: Snapshots and Clones

• Exercise 1: Initial lab set up
• Exercise 2: Snapshot file recovery
• Exercise 3: Snapshot full volume data recovery
• Exercise 4: Restore data between two snapshots
• Exercise 5: Schedule snapshots and snapshot expiration policies
– Create a snapshot policy
– Create scheduled snapshots using a snapshot policy
– Exploring scheduled snapshots over time
• Exercise 6: Create a clone
• Exercise 7: Create a clone with resynchronization capability
• Exercise 8: Working with snapshots and clones using CLI

Lab 6: Remote Replication

• Planning and initial set up of Remote Copy
– Exercise 1: Lab set up
– Exercise 2: Verify RCIP ports and configuration set up using SSMC
? Verifying the RCIP port configuration
? Remote Copy configuration
– Exercise 3: Creating and managing Remote Copy groups
– Exercise 4: Add a volume pair to an existing Remote Copy group
• Outage Scenarios: Failover to the remote site and failback
– Exercise 5: Planned failover to the remote site
– Exercise 6: Recovery of a Remote Copy group after the source system is back online
– Exercise 7: Restore a Remote Copy group
• Failover to the remote site for testing or off-site backup
– Exercise 8: Stop and failover a Remote Copy group
– Exercise 9: Revert a Remote Copy group and failover again
? Revert
? Failover again
– Exercise 10: Revert the Remote Copy group and replicate in the original direction
– Exercise 11: Delete a Remote Copy group
– Exercise 12: Lab clean up
– Exercise 13: Configuring Remote Copy using CLI
 

Lab A (Optional): Working with VMware®

• Exercise 1: Switch between client VMs
• Exercise 2: Adding the ESXi host and exporting a volume in SSMC
• Exercise 3: Working with storage using VMware vCenter®

Lab B (Optional) Working with Linux

• Exercise 1: Switch between client VMs
• Exercise 2: Adding the RHEL Linux host and export a volume using SSMC
• Exercise 3: Discovering devices and working with multipathing on the Linux host
• Exercise 4: Create a partition, add the filesystem, and mount the volume

• An understanding of general storage concepts including fibre channel technology and RAID
• Operator level functionality in a Windows environment