The long goodbye
It was sure a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. Thanks everybody!
If you want to reach me, send an email to marcafarley@gmail.com
July 30, 2008
May 23, 2008
Interview with Dave and Derek on SRM & more
PCL Construction in Edmonton is one of the largest construction companies in North America - and they are employee owned, which means employees there are always looking for ways to be more efficient.
They became EqualLogic customers 3 years ago after having been a Fibre Channel shop prior to that. They can run everything they need to on Dell EqualLogic storage and like the ease of use and flexibility that our advanced virtualization architecture gives them. I have a video on my InsideIT blog where Derek Knox from PCL speaks at the VMware forum in San Jose about doing live data migrations while upgrading his systems.
In video below, Derek and David Howse talk about the simplicity of using Dell EqualLogic storage and SRM. Derek talks about how they get performance equal to that of their Fibre Channel SANs. Some of that comes from having a smart SAN infrastructure, but a lot comes from the design of EqualLogic arrays. FWIW, most of the new systems they are buying today have SAS drives, to give them even more overhead for their high performance applications.
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May 19, 2008
Yes, SRM supports linux
Last week was a big week for virtual server data protection with the introduction of VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM). I got a question over at my InsideIT blog that asked if linux would be supported as a guest OS for SRM functionality. Yes, it is.
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May 14, 2008
Virtualization.info is doing something interesting
I'm not sure what is going on here, but virtualization.info just added a couple Dell EqualLogic arrays to their Rent-a-Lab operation. I don't know who these folks are or what they are doing, so if anybody out there does, please comment and I'll post so we all know.
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May 12, 2008
Eric Schott on SRM storage access methods
We shot this video during a birds of feather during VMworld in San Francisco last September. Eric Schott (Director of Product Management, EqualLogic) and Kiran Ranabhor (Technical Product Manager for DR, VMware) has presented SRM and were asked what kinds of storage provisioning (or access modes) SRM would support.
In short, the answer is VMFS. Raw device maps and iSCSI software initiators running in virtual systems were not slated for the first release. I assume nothing changed there since September.
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May 9, 2008
Just about the time you think you've seen it all.....
Something like this comes along. Jason, this is a crack up! I mean, I can't get away with THAT, how do you do it?
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I never have been much of a bragger....
But we did really kick butt last year. So, I'm supposed to talk about the awards that Don Bulens and EqualLogic won. OK.
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Mojo Harris hacked - what about storage?
StorageMojo got hacked recently and talks about it on his blog. Of course that all happened in cloud space, but it made me think about the situation closer to home.
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May 8, 2008
Rock on, Dude!
DevCentral has an great post about the development of HA over the years. And he's a rocker too, which led me to a completely unrelated site that I liked.
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Chris Mellor said it
His views on Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCoE and competition in our industry. FWIW, we are kicking butt with our channel partners, despite the FUD our competitors are trying to spread.
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May 2, 2008
Compellent follows EqualLogic footsteps, except profitability
Phil Soran, Compellent's CEO has been telling anybody that will listen that Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic has been a boost to their channel business. It would be a lie for me to say that we kept all our channel partners, but we've kept the lion's share of them and continue to add more all the time.
Its flattering to see another startup copying our marketing messages and sales success. From looking at their most recent earnings report, they still apparently have a long ways to go to match our sales numbers and profitability.
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April 30, 2008
Online iSCSI Events
There's a few excellent live online events in the next couple days you might want to check out.
April 30 (Today) 12:30 PM Eastern: De-dupe for Dell EqualLogic iSCSI arrays - featuring Exagrid's new iSCSI De-dupe gateway product.
April 30 (Today) 1:00 PM Eastern: VMware's Site Recovery Manager and Dell EqualLogic storage. I know a lot of people are going to be interested in this one - integrating intelligence into the recovery side of VMware DR!
May 1st 3:00 PM Eastern: Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN array live demonstration
May 2nd 10:00 AM Central European Time: In German: Live Dell EqualLogic PS Series array product demonstration
May 2nd 1:00 PM Eastern: VI3 (VMware Infrastructure 3) and Dell EqualLogic demonstration.
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April 28, 2008
Exchange Aware Snapshots with PS Series Storage
The newest rev of (FREE) Dell EqualLogic software is coming out and it includes application-aware snapshots for Microsoft Exchange (we already had application aware snaps for SQL Server).
This is an amazing value for our iSCSI SAN customers, many of whom are already storing their Exchange data on Dell EqualLogic PS Series storage arrays.
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April 24, 2008
Looking for a few good rants
Dell opened a site called "The Future of Storage". There's plenty of opinions there and occasionally the people contributing even agree with each other. (What is this world coming to?) Anyway, its a good place to leave a piece of your mind about iSCSI, FCoE, virtualization, replication and de-deplication.
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April 23, 2008
Google House??
Finding my stuff - real, physical stuff, not data stuff - seems to get more difficult all the time - especially the real stuff. Oh yeah and I can't find my things either. When Google House is invented, I'm buying.
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April 18, 2008
Visit the server room and give blood
The Server Room has to be one of the best forums I've seen. So if Dell EqualLogic people go there, lets make sure we don't trash it. Put the Name Dell in your sign on to avoid being poachers and don't pimp our stuff. It's fine to talk about experiences and what we know and all that, but its a tech forum not a drop box for hype - perbole.
And the rest of you too. Do your thing and back up your blood type. Somebody might need it for the ultimate restore.
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April 17, 2008
Crash consistent snapshots of Exchange
The conversation below recently was posted to an older post in this blog. I thought it was a good one, so I copied it below. Stan is the external commenter and Darren Miller is an excellent product guy and SME who responded to Stan's questions.
FWIW, Darren has a couple upcoming online Demos that I recommend, including today 4/17 at 3:00PM Eastern
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In the past I was advised that Equallogic SAN replication was not "crash consistent", that is since many server apps hold data in RAM buffers/cache , the data on the SAN is not complete, thus replication to other SAN's sends incomplete data. To workaround this problem the SAN needs software running in conjunction with the server to sync the data in the buffers/cache to storage.Does Equallogic do this now? How does it and where could I read the details of this? I'm interested in how crash consistent Exchange, SQL, windows AD and assorted VMware vm's with custom apps are.
Thanks.
Posted by stan | April 16, 2008 11:36 AM
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Stan,To address your questions and concerns, Auto-Snapshot Manager (ASM), is included in the Dell EqualLogic Host Integration Tools Kit. ASM integrates with Microsoft VSS and the EqualLogic VSS provider service to create application consistent copies (Smart Copies) of data on Win server 2003 systems.
The way it works is you would install the Host Integration Tools kit (downloadable at www.equallogic.com) on your server making sure you select Auto-Snapshot Manager as part of the install package. Once installed you authenticate the host to the PS Series SAN through CHAP authentication. Once all configured, ASM will be able to protect data on the host.
ASM facilitates the volume protection capabilities of the PS Series SAN like snapshots, clones, and replicas but integrates directly with the application through VSS to ensure data consistency. You as the user determines what type of Smart Copy to create beit snapshot, clone or replica.
For more information on how you would use ASM with SQL Server databases there is a detailed technical report describing this functionality on equallogic.com.
In terms of VMware protection, there is a lot of information out on the site with different examples of how to protect your VMware environment on a PS Series SAN.
Posted by Darren Miller | April 16, 2008 4:39 PM
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April 16, 2008
The Server Room has great stuff
This entry was initially posted here on Inside IT.
Dell has sponsored a forum on the Ars Technica site called The Server Room. This is how it's described on the forum header: This forum is dedicated to the "bigger picture" topics--high-level
systems that don't easily fit in the other forums. Before you can build
a server room, there must be understanding of the requirements and
technologies. This forum, then, is for the architects, the designers,
and the decision makers for IT systems.
There are a lot of smart people weighing in there on some interesting threads, such as Interesting Uses of Virtualization. For example, two scenarios discussed in that thread involve using a VM to circumvent corporate security implementations and using a VM as a surrogate when your laptop goes into the shop.
I recommend this forum to any readers who want to compare notes with talented and smart IT professionals. Of course, if you need help from experts at Dell, don't hesitate to visit the forum on the Dell TechCenter.
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April 15, 2008
More on this FCoE thing
This blog was first posted here on Inside IT.
This FCoE thing is probably going to last for some time as a difference of opinions and perspectives. For those who wished I had kept my mouth shut (or keyboard locked), I was probably a little nastier a year ago with this post on my Storage @ Work blog. Being a CREATURE OF HABIT, I responded to last week's news from SNW with my usual open-minded and fair approach.
Having said these snide things about FCoE, I am quite sure that it actually will be an excellent solution for lots of FC customers that need a migration path onto something less mortal than Fibre Channel. The move to Ethernet-based SANs struck me as an obvious evolution a long time ago, after I heard the first FC bigot explain that FC was a channel and Ethernet was a network. So I guess I shouldn't be too hard on FCoE, because it is a move in the right direction. Being an iSCSI technology bigot, it just seems like a unnecessary, cumbersome step, but to be fair, I tend to see the world through medium-sized business glasses.
I believe that most of the concerns people have had with iSCSI are based on the implementations that are available. They either don't exploit the iSCSI standard very well or they do not scale up to be a good fit for large-scale data processing. I'm not buying the protocol arguments for FCoE. At the end of the day, I believe the brute force power of 10Gb Ethernet will be sufficient for iSCSI and that I would rather deal with the rare tuning problems that occur than the crushed-veggie-juice-on-papyrus methods of managing storage in an FC SAN. I know Greg Ferro (see his comment on Dante's post) agrees.
So where the heck do I stand today? FCoE is as imperfect as FC, but it gets people headed where they need to be, which is Ethernet - and a lot better than FC. There are going to be situations where taking a leap of faith to iSCSI is going to be a bit like riding a zipline. You know its safe, but you don't want to attempt too much all at once.
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April 10, 2008
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- The long goodbye
- Interview with Dave and Derek on SRM & more
- Yes, SRM supports linux
- Virtualization.info is doing something interesting
- Eric Schott on SRM storage access methods
- Just about the time you think you've seen it all.....
- I never have been much of a bragger....
- Mojo Harris hacked - what about storage?
- Rock on, Dude!
- Chris Mellor said it
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