iscsi

Making the move to a virtualized environment has many implications - particularly for your storage. For example, this conversion from physical to virtual has changed the traditional thinking on data protection. Now instead of protecting many disparate physical servers, you're protecting hundreds of virtual ones.  By putting more eggs in few baskets, new, innovative tools are needed to achieve rock solid data protection.  

The idea is to help offload as much of the data protection off the hypervisor layer and onto the SAN, to provide integrated and highly automated data protection. Yesterday we talked about the EqualLogic PS5500E. As part of that, we mentioned an important new feature for all EqualLogic iSCSI SANs (not just the 5500E)named Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition (ASM/VE). Nice acronym, no? BTW - like all enhancements to EqualLogic software capabilities this is available for via free download for those with active support contracts.

ASM/VE is all about simplifying virtual data protection - allowing for automated, integrated and scalable protection for virtual machines.  ASM/VE is directly integrated with VMware API’s for fast online backup and quick restores of Virtual Machines. ASM/VMware Edition ensures fast and reliable recovery by automating local SAN-based protection through integration with VMware Infrastructure.   

Click here to see a short 5 Min Demo of Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition

ASM/VE combines the benefits of VM and SAN hardware-based snapshots resulting in optimal infrastructure performance and protection. When used with the comprehensive suite of integrated VMware data protection and disaster recovery features, Dell EqualLogic PS Series users can secure their virtual Infrastructure at the application, virtual server, and data center levels for uncompromising business continuance.

We'd like to invite you to a Live Product Demonstration of ASM/VE on Friday, September 12^th.  Click here to Register

And if you're totally busy, we’ve created several online, self-paced seminars on both “Comprehensive Data Protection/Disaster Recovery” and “Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition” for your viewing pleasure.

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.

This video shows how to recover a complete file system (you might also think of it as recovering an entire volume) using the integrated snapshot capabilities of Dell EqualLogic storage arrays.

Alex McDonald at Netapp made a few snarky comments today about Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic.  As if Netapp should be casting stones about anybody else's acquisitions.  Anybody remember Spinnaker?  Dell has made very rapid progress with EqualLogic and now Netapp is desperate to find ways to compete. 

But I should really thank Alex for reminding me to post about our partnership with Exagrid for de-duplication functionality.  Exagrid has excellent technology and they are fast gaining recognition and traction with their products - including their ExaGrid iSCSI De-duplication Gateway™.  

FWIW, Alex linked to this post of mine on Storage@work from last March , to support his assertion we would never have a de-dupe solution. Hmmm....  maybe he was speed reading beyond his limits.  Whatever - I guess he missed the context where our partner Exagrid was preparing to announce their dedupe appliance for iSCSI.

On Thursday last week, I attended the Dell Storage Vision Day press event. It was held at Chelsea Football Club, which luckily didn't seem to deter anyone from coming! Journalists attended from across Europe, including the UK, Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia.

We also had a fantastic line-up from the spokesperson side - first up to present was Robin Kuepers, head of storage, EMEA, and James Quarles, Director of Enterprise Solutions. They gave an overview of the EMEA storage landscape including the latest trends, which was brought to life by two customer presenters: Zafar Chaudry of Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust and Marcel Dumont of Schoolbank.nl, the second largest social networking site in the Netherlands.

Zafar's presentation focused on how the Trust is using a Dell/EMC storage solution to support server virtualization from VMware. Marcel then discussed how he has implemented a Dell EqualLogic storage infrastructure to support exponential data growth associated with the social networking craze. Although Zafar and Marcel are using different storage technologies, one thing was clear; they both turned to Dell to tackle two of the hottest IT trends today - virtualization and social networking - and they have already experienced significant benefits ranging from cost savings to a reduction in management time related to storage-specific issues.

Next up was Tony Lock, an industry analyst from Freeform Dynamics. Tony discussed current issues in the storage market with some strong survey data, giving the journalists a lot to think about before the coffee break!

The second part of the day was led by Praveen Asthana, Global Director of Storage and Networking, and John Joseph, Vice President, Dell EqualLogic Solutions. Both Praveen and John flew over from the US to share with the journalists Dell's current and future plans in storage. They both discussed Dell's commitment to deliver on the promise to Simplify IT - from offering a broad range of products for different types and sizes of customers and also including designed-to-order services for customers that need solutions for their unique requirements. The video below captures pieces of Praveen's and John's presentations.

Last but not least, we got to take a tour of Chelsea Football Club at the end of the day – loved seeing the press room where the managers hold press conferences at the end of each game, as well as sitting in the manager’s chair right on the sideline!