This is the first in a series of blog posts on configuring VNXe using the command line. All the configurations here will be performed using “uemcli” which can be downloaded here . If you prefer to use the GUI interface then Henri has a very good series of blog posts here. The following scripts defined here are very useful if like me you need to configure VNXe systems on a weekly basis. VNXe is the base storage for the Vblock VB100 series and also used as the shared storage for management hosts in the VB300 and VB700 series.

The configuration steps outlined in Part 1 will be the following:
• Accept License Agreement
• Change Admin Password
• Create a New User
• Change the Service Password
• Commit IO Modules
• Perform a Healthcheck
• Code Upgrade
• Create a Storage Pool
• Add Hot Spare
• DNS Configuration
• NTP Configuration

Accept License Agreement
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /sys/eula set -agree yes

Change Admin Password
First run the show command to get the –id of the user account to change. In this case we are changing the Admin password which will have an ID of user_admin:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /user/account show
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /user/account -id user_admin set -passwd NewPassword -oldpasswd Password123#

Create a New User
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /user/account create -name newUser -type local -passwd Password -role administrator
The role for the account can be:
• administrator — Administrator
• storageadmin — Storage Administrator
• operator — Operator (view only)

Change the Service Password
The Service password is used for performing service actions on the VNXe.
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /service/user set -passwd newPassword -oldpasswd Password123#

Commit IO Modules
The following commits all uncommitted IO modules:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /env/iomodule commit
The following command displays a list of system IO modules:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /env/iomodule show

Perform a Healthcheck
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /sys/general healthcheck

Code Upgrade
In a dual SP VNXe this will be an NDU. Services will failover between SP’s during upgrade.
Perform a Healthcheck of the system prior to upgrade and resolve any issues first.
Firstly we upload the new code to the VNXe using the -upload switch before creating the upgrade session:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# -upload -f PathToSoftware\VNXe-MR4-upgrade-2.4.0.20932-RETAIL.tgz.bin.gpg upgrade
The following command displays details about the installed system software and details about the uploaded upgrade candidate.We also need to run this command to get the -candId of the uploaded upgrade candidate:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /sys/soft/ver show
Now we create a session to upgrade the system software using candidate CAND_1:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /sys/soft/upgrade create -candId CAND_1
Status of Upgrade:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /sys/soft/upgrade show
Confirm software version:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /sys/soft/ver show

Create a Storage Pool
View the Storage profile. Storage profiles are preconfigured settings for configuring storage pools based on Raid type, capacity and stripe length. We will choose a storage profile that best suits the server workload:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /stor/config/profile show
Next view details about disk groups on the system. We will need the disk group ID to create the pool from:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /stor/config/dg show
Here we create the “VMWARE-NFS” pool for vmware using 5 disks from the disk group disk_group_1 and using storage_cap_0 profile:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /stor/config/pool create -name VMWARE-NFS -descr “VMware NFS Pool” -storProfile storage_cap_0 -diskGroup disk_group_1 -drivesNumber 5 -resType vmware -usage datastore
View the Pool configuration:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /stor/config/pool show -detail

Add Hot Spare to the pool
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /stor/config/dg -id disk_group_1 set -spares 1

DNS Configuration
The following command adds two DNS servers to the domain dcr.com. The servers are grouped by domain under the ID dcr.com:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /net/dns/domain create -name “dcr.com” -nameServer “10.0.0.2, 10.0.0.3”
List all DNS server domains:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /net/dns/domain show

NTP Configuration
The following creates an NTP server record
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /net/ntp/server create -server 10.0.0.4
uemcli -d 10.0.0.1 -u Local/admin -p Password123# /net/ntp/server show

In the next post (part 2) I will show how to script the iSCSI and NFS server configurations and creation of datastores for each.