Storage Hardware

If you’re looking for ways to simplify and save in the data center – or even “server closet,” one of the most important strategies available to you is server virtualization.

When you migrate several applications running on several different servers onto a single server, you save. For starters, you see a substantial reduction in energy costs because you’re powering fewer servers. Equally important, you’re also cooling fewer servers. And you have fewer servers to physically maintain, which means fewer maintenance hours for the technicians who maintain them.

This all adds up to OpEx savings that can be as high as 25 percent. And when a new replacement cycle comes up, you won’t need to purchase as many servers. This will let you actually lower your CapEx budget. As times get better, you’ll have more funds available to allocate to other projects. Regardless of the economic situation, virtualization is a smart strategy for any business with five servers or more.

The savings benefits of server virtualization are indisputable. But does virtualization really simplify your operations?

A few years ago, the answer might have been in doubt. But with today’s mature virtualization technology, the answer is definitely yes. To give just one example, virtualization streamlines application development and platform certification, because with virtualization there’s a single, common virtual interface, and there’s no need to deal with multiple hardware implementations or generations.

At Dell, we provide all the resources you need to make virtualization a cost-saving reality for your business, from workshops and assessments to design, implementation and support. If you’re interested in learning more, a good place to start is our white paper, Server Virtualization in the Scalable Enterprise. For details about the services we offer, check out our Virtualization Services brochure, which has links to even more resources. You can also visit these previous posts. 

(editor's note - this post comes to us from Tony Ansley of Dell’s storage product group which will be supporting hands-on labs at SNW next week.)

 If you’re interested in what Dell is doing with enterprise storage, make every effort to get to Dallas (OK, Grapevine…) for the Computerworld Storage Networking World conference that is starting on October 13^th.  Please come by and see us in booth #400.

Here's a list of some of the things we'll be doing at the show:

• Agenda Session: Data Infrastructure Track: “Yes, Fibre Channel and iSCSI Can Co-Exist” by Praveen Asthana, Director of Dell Enterprise Storage and Networking (Monday Oct 13, 4:45)
• Hands-on-Labs (running all week), staffed by Dell product management, engineering and user experts
  • Establishing a Virtual Storage Environment – Get to experience the advanced features that make Dell EqualLogic PS Series SANs the best mid-range storage solution providing enterprise class features and true virtualized storage. 
  • Configuring IP SANs – Experience how easy it is to deploy and provision storage with iSCSI SAN solutions.  Both the MD3000i entry-level iSCSI AND the Dell EqualLogic mid-range SAN solution will be available.
  • Protecting and Securing Your Environment – Be the first to experience the PowerVault DL2000 - Dell’s new integrated disk-to-disk data protection solution.

In the Dell Booth#400

• Dell EqualLogic – See the latest PS Series array, the PS5500E that packs 48 TB into only 4U of rack space, and experience new Auto-Snapshot Manager software with VMware and Microsoft Exchange integrations and take a glimpse at technology demonstration of what’s possible in the future with SSD and 10Gig technologies in the EqualLogic family.
• Dell | EMC – check out the new CX4 with unprecedented flexibility in a SAN with UltraFlex Modular I/O which allows you to easily add more ports in both iSCSI and Fibre Channel
• Dell PowerVault MD Series – Find out what makes MD an ideal entry-level iSCSI storage solution
• Dell PowerVault DL2000 – See the latest in data protection from Dell with the new appliances powered by CommVault and Symantec Backup Exec software delivering integrated solutions for de-duplication and faster disk-based backup and recovery.

Also, while you're at the booth don’t forget to enter for your chance at winning a brand new Dell Inspiron Mini-9 laptop!

HP made an interesting move today with the intent to acquire LeftHand Networks. Obviously HP is coming to recognize what Dell did a long time ago – simple, intelligent, automated storage is what the mid-market wants.

That’s why we moved to buy EqualLogic almost a year ago. What really interested us was the ease-of-use, intelligence and automation of EqualLogic’s systems. That was a big advantage that others don’t have.

As an example, let’s look at investment protection: With EqualLogic, you can expand using the latest and greatest hardware regardless of the EqualLogic generation you initially purchased. Load balancing between unequal nodes on LeftHand’s architecture is a much different proposition.

We now offer full integration of EqualLogic into Dell servers – particularly blades - and application solutions, so we can help our customers manage and protect their data center growth.

It’s no secret that Dell is #1 in iSCSI SANS worldwide.

Looks like HP is playing catch up.

(editor's note - this post comes to us courtesy of Tim Sherbak, one of our virtualization gurus)

The VMworld show is next week in Las Vegas and we'll be there in a big way.  We'll be there to show solutions highlighting data protection, disaster recovery, consolidation, virtual desktops, and systems management.  We’ve got a series of live demos in the booth including a full VMware environment built from our new blade and rack servers and the new Dell EqualLogic PS5500E.  We’ll be demonstrating VMware Site Recovery Manager as well as the new Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition, Blade Server Management, Chassis System Controller and our OpenManage system management tools. 

In addition, we’ve got some exceptionally innovative technology demos that VMware and Dell engineering have put together. 

Some of the new products we'll have there include the new quad core M905* blade and 4 socket 6 core R900* rack Power Edge servers, Dell EqualLogic PS5500E, Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition, our integration with VMware’s Site Recovery Manager, the Dell | EMC CX4, our on-demand desktop streaming (ODDS) and virtual remote desktop (VRD) solutions.   We’re even raffling off a couple of new Dell Latitude E laptops to some lucky attendees. 

Here’s a few of the breakout sessions that Dell is participating in or contributed content to and gives you an idea of some of the areas of our focus and energy.

• Dell Keynote Presentation: The Intelligent, Automated IT Infrastructure (KNDell)
• Managing Power and Cooling with Virtualization (PO2514)
• Server and Storage Sizing Best Practices for VMware VDI (VD2505)
• Planning and Implementing Simple, Affordable, Automated Disaster Recovery Through Dell | Virtualization Solution (BC2512)
• Operational Readiness – Truth and Fiction (PO2535)
• Fulfilling Regulatory Requirements in the Healthcare Industry Using VMware Virtualized Infrastructure (BC2411)
• VM-Aware Storage: A Blueprint for VMware Infrastructure Integration with Storage Hardware (TA1465)

A couple of interesting notes on a few of these breakout sessions. 

· John Joseph is providing our keynote presentation.  As you may or may not know, John comes to Dell as a part of the EqualLogic acquisition and has been fully involved in the virtualization market and intimately tied in to EqualLogic’s VMware partnership over the past several years.

· BC2411 is being delivered by Donald Wilkins of Navicure Inc. highlighting his virtualized environment built on Dell equipment and his experience in being one of the first to deploy VMware Site Recovery Manager.  For more on his implementation, check out our case study.

· TA1465 is being presented by Scott Davis, from VMware’s CTO office and reflects upon some interesting developments underway to optimize the integration of VMware and SANs (and smartly ties into the technology demos we’re demonstrating at the Dell booth – more on that later).

· VD2505 reflects upon a joint engineering project between VMware and Dell to analyze and understand infrastructure sizing requirements for virtual desktop workloads (a sneak peak of this presentation was just broadcast over the web. See it here. More than 700 people have signed up for the breakout session!  Virtual desktops are the new hotness.

· BC2512 is effectively a free hour of disaster recovery consulting from our Dell professional services group that also details implementing VMware Site Recovery Manager as a disaster recovery solution.

Also, be sure to check out the Akorri booth (#1314) where they will have a “Live” demo of Akorri BalancePoint managing multiple VMs in an ESX cluster running on Dell PowerEdge servers with Dell EqualLogic storage. It’s a great example of a Dell virtualized data center in a box.

And of course we’ll have a whole slew of virtualization experts on hand to consult with VMworld attendees. In fact, there will be presentations on a variety of topics all day long right in our booth. We'll also have people from our PartnerDirect program on hand for those interested in our channel program.

So please stop by the Dell booth (#1000).  You can’t miss it.  It looks like this:

And if you can’t make it to the show, our TechCenter has put up a Dell site at the VMworld virtual exhibitor booth so keep tabs on us there.

* These generations of servers were specifically engineered from the ground up with virtualized environments in mind and they hit the mark.  We just released VMmark scores for the M905 and R900 configurations and they are smoking! 

Lot's of virtualization news today. My guess is that most of our readers aren't asking "if" they should virtualize – the benefits from server virtualization and server consolidation are well-touted.

One by-product of moving to a virtual server environment is the near-mandate for shared storage.  That gives a great opportunity to assess your storage environment and try to get the same consolidation benefits for storage as you plan to achieve from server virtualization.

The undeniable reality is that IT departments are faced with growing storage requirements, and disparate islands of storage, whether server-attached DAS, NAS, FC SAN or traditional iSCSI SANs are hard to grow, protect (e.g. backup/replicate) and manage individually. So storage consolidation isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a real and necessary tactic to reduce the man-hours required for manual storage tasks, to cut power consumption and better protect critical business data. And chances are – you can do it at the same time you’re looking to virtualize.

With that in mind, today we launched the EqualLogic PS5500E, a new hugely-scalable virtualized iSCSI storage array and VMware ESX-integrated snapshots. The PS5500E is aimed squarely at consolidation. The unique storage virtualization and ease-of-use built into all Dell EqualLogic arrays help simplify the consolidation process by automatically handling many otherwise tedious administrative tasks for storage management.

Additionally, the PS5500E, in the context of a larger EqualLogic SAN, provides an easy and cost-effective way for many customers to begin tiering their data stores. In other words, put less frequently accessed application data on highly dense less-expensive, less power-hungry SATA storage pools and put more heavily hit Exchange, SQL and Oracle services on 10K rpm or 15K rpm SAS, but manage it all from a single intuitive SAN management interface. Of course take into account your virtual server workloads when determining your storage tiers; just like in a physical world, not all of your VMs will have equivalent I/O or capacity requirements.  Luckily with an EqualLogic SAN, you can migrate your volumes (and the VMs on them) between pools/tiers online if you want to change your initial configuration.

Check out this video from one of our storage strategists - Travis Vigil - explaining more about the PS5500E.