The line of Dell™ EqualLogic™ PS Series Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage area network (SAN) arrays are flexible and very easy to use. Join us for a discussion of how easy it can be to set up and use EqualLogic iSCSI SANs right out of the box.

Technical Community - Background Reading

Chat Transcript

DELL-ScottH So who is in need of EqualLogic 101? And who has it deployed already?
JasonPowell /me have deployed several EqualLogic :-)
DELL-ScottH Hello Tony
erson I could probably use the 101
brennels I have basic 101 knowledge
TonyMimms Hey!
Dell-EricReed Following you now, Jason :-)
DELL-ScottH Me too :-)
JasonPowell Ruh roh
jtberry21 Just bought four, but haven't deployed them yet
DELL-ScottH Hello John!
Dell-EricReed What didja buy, Jtberry?
TonyMimms 101 knowledge...I'm thinking I could use that as well
JasonPowell Jtberry, that's unacceptable! Deploy! :-)
Depping I deployed a couple
jtberry21 PS5000xvs
Dell-EricReed Cool
JasonPowell Sassy
DELL-ScottH Okay, so here's the deal: the Dell experts that were supposed to join had last minute conflicts...but luckily, we have Jason Powell, who is an EqualLogic partner and has knowledge in the area. So between us all I think we can salvage this chat
DELL-ScottH A couple of quick housekeeping things:
JasonPowell Salvage++
DELL-ScottH First, welcome to the TechCenter. If this is your first time, glad to have you. We host these chats weekly. They are recorded, so don't worry about writing down any URLs, just click on them later in the transcript.
DELL-ScottH If you click them now, be sure to right-click or you will exit the chat. :-) Ask questions at any time; we can sort them out midstream, and don't worry about interrupting.
JasonPowell Or set your browser to not allow pop-ups on this page
DELL-ScottH I'm Scott, joining us is Jason of Twitter and Citrt fame :-) He is also a Dell EqualLogic seller partner at Vr6systems—Jason, link?
JasonPowell Jason Powell, EqualLogic Sales and Consulting, Vr6systems, Dell Certified Partner, Mobile: 574-532-3352, Jason.powell@vr6systems.com. My personal blog: http://jpowell.blogs.com/ And Twitter: http://twitter.com/jasonpowell
JasonPowell How's that? ;-)
DELL-ScottH Today will be more of an EqualLogic 101, and next week we'll dive a little deeper...hopefully, I'll have some demos that I can show off
TonyMimms Wow...nice Jason! ;-)
DELL-ScottH It's like you had that ready to go :-)
JasonPowell And just for the record I'm both an EqualLogic customer and channel partner on the side. You can see some of our production arrays at http://jpowell.blogs.com/jason_powell_church_it/san/
DELL-ScottH When we first kicked off our Dell EqualLogic launch, we had a chat session on the TechCenter. Much of that information is still relevant and can be seen here: www.delltechcenter.com/page/equallogic
JasonPowell Okay, I'm done pimpin’
DELL-ScottH We also have several demos on the site
JasonPowell Hey Tony, missed you coming in here
DELL-ScottH I love demos. Links coming...
TonyMimms Snuck in the back door....
JasonPowell Along those lines, I'd be happy to do a personal demo for anyone, including looks at our production environment
Dell-EricReed So, Scott, for those who didn't catch the Twitpic of your EqualLogic array: http://twitpic.com/1zaov. I found that pretty impressive; tell us about that
DELL-ScottH Ah yes, we have five arrays; that only shows three, four had 15,000 SAS and one with SATA. Slower but good for all my iso’s :-)
brennels Wow that is impressive
Depping Looks impressive indeed, I heard that Scott will be sponsoring Yellow-bricks.com
DELL-ScottH Hey J
DELL-ScottH Lol
DELL-ScottH Actually @virtualtodd is back in the lab with me right now. He is using that plus one of the MD3000i's for some Exchange VMware testing
Depping So this array is linked to an ESX environment?
DELL-ScottH About to be :-)
wantmoore Sumo photos: www.flickr.com/photos/thejrod/sets/72157610681370684/
DELL-ScottH We just migrated it from RAID 10 to RAID 5 to get more space
brennels Doing any Hyper-V testing yet?
Dell-EricReed Have you done any Exchange testing on EqualLogic?
JasonPowell If you've never seen the Sumo, aka 48-drive EqualLogic, see wantmoore's link :-)
DELL-ScottH Hello sr and kilodelta. Use Action, Recent Room History to catch up
DELL-ScottH No native Exchange testing yet, but this testing will be part of a paper that Todd is doing on virtualized exchange using some of our newer equipment and a release of VMware that can only be called vSphere…out loud :-)
JasonPowell There are some Exchange on EqualLogic white papers available
DELL-ScottH Where was that sumo picture taken?
JasonPowell And we run Exchange on our EqualLogic. Picture was taken at one of my customers, Newspring Church
lynxbat So I am new to EqualLogic. Where does it play in the storage market? SMB? Mid?
DELL-ScottH Very cool
Dell-EricReed Exchange on EqualLogic, how many seats?
DELL-ScottH @lynxbat, right now more mid to upper end, but check in a few weeks for some announcements on a box that fits the SMB space more
JasonPowell Lynxbat, fits them all IMHO
JasonPowell I see EqualLogic in all size environments, from small non-profits to huge corporations
Depping I mainly implemented it, pre-Dell, in SMB environments to be honest
JasonPowell Eric, was that question to me?
lynxbat How does it stack against say an EMC or HP levels?
DELL-ScottH Here's a link to a paper with 90,000 Microsoft Exchange 2007 users: www.equallogic.com/resourcecenter/assetview.aspx?id=7195
JasonPowell We have one customer with 26 EqualLogic arrays; a huge law firm in Detroit
brennels Are you testing using the EqualLogic auto-snap feature as well for Exchange recovery?
JasonPowell We run everything in VMs on our EqualLogic arrays, including Exchange, SQL, etc.
Dell-EricReed Jp, yes, but you've pretty much answered my question. Thanks!
Depping How do you guys do load balancing, Jason?
JasonPowell Here's a pic of the SAN monitor from our production EqualLogic: http://twitpic.com/1cedl
DELL-ScottH They are perfect for virtualization. The load balancing magic really helps for when the I/O moves from VM to VM and you never know where you will need performance boost at any given point in time
JasonPowell Depping, on the EqualLogic side or server side?
JasonPowell We have two arrays grouped together mainly for space; a third array for replication and testing
Depping Both :)
erson Any version on the horizon that supports both SAS and SATA?
JasonPowell Server side we're doing MPIO and round robin
JasonPowell Erson, all versions support both
lynxbat 90,000 @ 224 disks is quite good
DELL-ScottH The beauty is that you can put them all SATA and SAS in the pool
erson Jason, great, odd though that the EqualLogic page on Dell.se says the Sumo and 5000e supports SATA and 5000x and 5000xv support SAS
JasonPowell Lynxbat, re EMC/HP...all I can say is that the setup and management of EqualLogic is far superior
DELL-ScottH Nick, aren't you looking at some other vendor right now? What's your big deployment coming up? What application? Exchange?
JasonPowell Which is why I purchased EqualLogic three years ago
DELL-ScottH Of all the management interfaces on all the SANs I've used, and there's been a bunch over the last decade, I'd agree with Jason that the EqualLogic has been the easiest to use and understand
lynxbat We already did Exchange 2007 on VMware and EMC. Finishing the last clean up now. Migration is done
JasonPowell Erson, the model numbers are a bit misleading IMO
lynxbat Next project is a new data center, 100 percent virtual for relocating all of our applications and warehouses. Looking for next-generation SAN
JasonPowell The difference between a 5000e and 5000x is just which drive is in the chassis
lynxbat We are looking at Compellent; looks like EqualLogic is doing a similar thing
DELL-ScottH Anyway, we can steer you from that? Or have they already bought your lunch? :-)
lynxbat I am interested in EqualLogic dynamic LB. Are spindles bound across controllers? Or is data striped across?
DELL-ScottH Stripes across everywhere; shelves, controllers
DELL-ScottH Welcome Todd!
lynxbat So when you bind a RAID-10 like in the document above, the RAID-10 is a meta target and the PS group is the method of striping?
JasonPowell The RAID type is "attached" to the array/member
virtualTodd Hello all
JasonPowell So a single array/member/chassis can only do one RAID level...if you follow
lynxbat Okay. I see
JasonPowell But you can have multiple members/chassis of different RAID levels in the same storage pool. So you can tier your volumes and have them auto-migrate as needed
lynxbat Ah, so what about extension within the pool?
JasonPowell Add another chassis and you can add it into the pool
wantmoore Takes like three minutes; even an IT director can do it
Dell-EricReed Which is the beauty of it, after all!
DELL-ScottH Yeah, I'm in the interface right now and just added some
JasonPowell Wantmoore, works for me... :-)
erson What about price?
Dell-EricReed Yeah, they set an EqualLogic array in front of Michael Dell, and he had it configured in minutes; stepped back and said, "Wow, that was easy!"
JasonPowell I'm an IT director guy...so I like to tell people EqualLogic is so easy even an IT director can do it :-)
DELL-ScottH Jason, how about your contact information again for pricing?
JasonPowell Sure
JasonPowell Jason Powell, EqualLogic Sales and Consulting, Vr6systems, Dell Certified Partner, Mobile: 574-532-3352, Jason.powell@vr6systems.com. My personal blog: http://jpowell.blogs.com/ and Twitter: http://twitter.com/jasonpowell
DELL-ScottH :-)
JasonPowell Gosh, I feel a little "dirty" pimpin' myself like that :-)
erson How about a ballpark figure for 5000e with 16 1 TB SATA?
wantmoore Vr6 is awesome
wantmoore <= Hopes boss will buy wings this week
JasonPowell Not sure I'm allowed to talk pricing in here
DELL-ScottH I would take that offline; Jason is a great contact to have as a Dell Certified partner, but wouldn't want pricing to live forever on the Internet in the caches :-)
JasonPowell Yeah, there's all sorts of rules we have to play by...booo
JasonPowell :-)
Depping How does it compare to its competitors? Why should I buy an EqualLogic and not a Lefthand?
Dell-EricReed We don' need no steenkin' rules!
DELL-ScottH Erson, you could throw out what you are comparing it to, and we could shout "higher" or "lower"
JasonPowell When I was looking at Lefthand I didn't like that it needed three nodes to be redundant
erson Am I the only guy that asks questions that can be answered? ::smile
erson s/can/can't
DELL-ScottH Yes—answered that one
wantmoore Depping, it's easy and the infrastructure around the SAN is typically cheaper (Ethernet versus Fibre Channel)
Depping Well, I don't think Lefthand is expensive, and it's also iSCSI
erson Being in the SMB segment, price is important so I often tend to include that on an early stage
bmccleary Scott, I had sent you a message, but I wanted to find out if you might help me in the configuration of our PowerEdge R805 to our MD3000i. I don’t know if this is the proper venue, but if there is any opportunity for you to help me offline (either on the phone or through a chat room), I would greatly appreciate it. You seem very knowledgeable about this issue, and I would like to get your advice
JasonPowell Erson, I work at an SMB...and we have EqualLogic :-) I was in your same boat
erson Yeah, I’m thinking it might be within reach for us as well
JasonPowell A Lefthand rep told me I really needed to go to off-site training to learn how to set up their stuff; whereas, with EqualLogic my rep at the time said training wasn't needed
DELL-ScottH Brian, yes got your message. On my list of things to follow up, Todd actually wrote the article on that page and did the testing; luckily, he is in the lab today (left Dell and went to work for VMware—traitor! :-) So I'll force him to help out; can you call us in the lab after this?
erson I was on the Dell tour in November, and they did an on-stage setup of an EqualLogic in like 15 minutes
JasonPowell Since we were a two-man IT crew I required something that was easy to set up and had great performance and reliability
bmccleary I can just shoot me an e-mail with the time and number...thank you very much
JasonPowell Erson, are you familiar with the iSCSI initiator?
DELL-ScottH @brian, will do
erson Jason, somewhat yes
JasonPowell If you are, it will take you longer to rack the array than it will to have the thing set up and copying data to it
Depping Seems like a valid reason, Jason... :)
JasonPowell And down the road, to add another chassis and increase your storage (and performance) it's only three fields of data to fill in and, voilà! More storage and more performance
erson How are the chassis connected? Do I have to use Dell drives?
JasonPowell You'd want the chassis attached IMO to their own switch
erson Yeah, of course a separate LAN/VLAN for the storage network
JasonPowell We have two "SAN Only" switches...all the host servers and EqualLogic attach to them
erson Ah, when you said "add another chassis" I though you meant you could connect the chassis to display them as one unit on the storage network
JasonPowell In fact, here's a picture of our setup: http://twitpic.com/18xj7
JasonPowell Erson, the chassis "join" together in a storage pool, that is, presented to your servers
DELL-ScottH They show up as additional "members" that you then add to the storage pool
erson Totally off topic reaction to that photo: I'm in love with Neat-Patch.com
JasonPowell We had Neat-Patch
erson Had?
JasonPowell Yup. It became a pain to use after a while
DELL-ScottH Oh, that is nice, could use that in our lab
erson Okay, thanks, Jason and Scott regarding to info on how to connect them
JasonPowell http://jpowell.blogs.com/jason_powell_church_it/2006/02/neat_patch.html
JasonPowell We've since moved to short one-foot, two-feet, three feet cables
JasonPowell We needed the room the Neat-Patch was taking up
DELL-ScottH Here's a pic of the interface for EqualLogic; might help: http://twitpic.com/1zhue
erson Dell should have a virtual demo GUI that one could play around with
DELL-ScottH Can see the storage pools, members, volumes on the left…
DELL-ScottH Yes I plan on a demo to be ready for next week’s chat
erson Jason, yeah, they "steal" 2U, but if you have the space it's totally worth it compared to other solutions
Dell-EricReed Excellent!
DELL-ScottH But agree with you, that a virtual interface "player" would be good to have
erson It sure would, but looking forward to the demos though. What about my question regarding "Dell drives only"?
JasonPowell There are product demos available on DELL.COM/EqualLogic too
DELL-ScottH Okay, thanks again to everyone for joining. The hour is up already. Have to jump off and help Brian and Improv class tonight; can’t be late for that, but stay as long as you like chatting
JasonPowell Dell drive only
DELL-ScottH Thanks again to Jason! If you want to buy one, give him a call
JasonPowell Lol. Thanks Scott
DELL-ScottH Certified partner and all-around great guy
JasonPowell Even if you don't want to buy one from me, I'm happy to talk about my EqualLogic experience
erson Any experience with using it with Hyper-V?
JasonPowell Not me personally; we're using VMware
lynxbat Hey, Scott
erson Bye Scott
JasonPowell But it can't be any different
Dell-EricReed Thanks, Scott!
JasonPowell As long as the OS supports iSCSI you're golden
JasonPowell OSx, Linux, etc.
lynxbat @scott n/m, I will DM you on twitter
erson Yeah, the trouble more lies with the somewhat immature Hyper-V
JasonPowell Yes, we looked very closely at Hyper-V, since we're a non-profit and get stupid good pricing from Microsoft
erson Seems like 2008 R2 remedies that somewhat with CSV though
JasonPowell But VMware still is the stronger player. So we're moving to ESXi
erson We're a Microsoft Gold Partner so we pay practically nothing
JasonPowell Sweet. I think I can get datacenter for under $400
erson That's crazy good
JasonPowell So we can run unlimited VMs
erson Especially for VMs
JasonPowell Yup, so as soon as Dell starts selling the new 11g servers plan to get two and get embedded ESXi
JasonPowell Wish VMware did non-profit pricing :(
erson We're a bit late in the virtualization game, so we're going to get R710 for virtualization hosts and some iSCSI solution for the storage back end
wantmoore I wish Dell did non-profit pricing on hardware :)
erson Right now we're testing Hyper-V with 2950 III with local drives in the lab
erson Yeah, being a small customer, it's somewhat hard to get a really good deal from Dell
JasonPowell I like to wait until end of Q2 or EOY
JasonPowell Erson, where are you located?
JasonPowell We're on MI/in line; South Bend, IN—home of Notre Dame, if you're into football :-)
erson When I worked at the student union when I studied we had access to the university account, and they could drop the Web site prices with 33 percent right away
erson Lower central part of Sweden here
JasonPowell Across the pond!
JasonPowell :-)
erson Exactly
JasonPowell If you ever want to chat with a bunch of good geeks, you should hit our chat room at http://citrt.org/chat. It's usually got IT geeks in it night and day. Great place to ask questions and get feedback
erson Nice. Gets a bit lonely at the office being the only one in the IT department
JasonPowell Most of us are from SMB/non-profits, so finding low-cost solutions is a big deal
brennels See you next week guys, good info
JasonPowell We have a lot of one-man IT dudes in there
erson Jason, I'm on the channel now
JasonPowell Kewl
JasonPowell I'll close down over here...later all
wantmoore Muhaha
erson /me sobs a bit about the fact that 18 filled memory slots on the R710 limits memory speed to 800 MHz: www.intel.com/technology/memory/ddr/valid/ddr3_udimm_rdimm_results.htm