Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN arrays have been very popluar storage choices for virtualization. Today's chat will feature some experts from EqualLogic to disucss the key benefits of EqualLogic and some of the features that work so well with virtualization.

Technical Community - Background Reading

Dell EqualLogic Auto Snapshot Manager VMware Edition
Dell EqualLogic Auto Replication and VMware Site Recovery Manager

Deploying Citrix XenServer 5.0 wtih Dell EqualLogic PS Series Storage Whitepaper
Integrating Dell EqualLogic SANs with Citrix XenServer Solution Brief
XenServer and EqualLogic Integration Demo

EqualLogic FAQ
Discussion:Layer 2 Networks and EqualLogic SANs
EqualLogic PS Series Quick Reference


Chat Transcript

DELL-ScottH Hello Jay
Jay Hey Scott
DELL-ScottH How's your day so far?
Jay So far so good
Jay How about you?
DELL-ScottH Tired, think my wife has got me sick; she was in Columbia so who knows what the heck she brought back! :-)
Jay Lol
DELL-ToddM joined.
DELL-ScottH Hey Todd
DELL-ScottH Just griping about my wife getting me sick
DELL-ScottH Didn't realize we are up to 42 followers on the official delltechcenter twitter account—that is nice
DELL-ScottH Thought it might take some time since we tweet from the geeks account more
astorrs joined.
DELL-ScottH Hello astorrs
astorrs Hi Scott, Todd—just got the tweet in time. :)
DELL-ScottH Looks like Todd is having some problems
astorrs I usually slip out to lunch 5 minutes before you send them :)
DELL-ScottH Or he doesn't like you ::laugh
astorrs lol
JasonPowell joined.
DELL-ScottH Could be light today; the storage "experts" are all at thddll ae
DELL-ScottH At a conference in Dallas
DELL-ScottH Hey Jason
iscsisanse joined.
DELL-ScottH So we'll have to pretend to be the experts
DELL-ScottH Hello iSCSI
DELL-ScottH Jason, you get my email on wiping out the MD3000i?
iscsisanse Hi, first time here...gonna hang out a bit
JasonPowell Scott - yes! Thanks!
DELL-ScottH Lurk and hang , it's all free
DELL-ScottH Todd just called from the lab...there he is
DELL-ScottH You working now, Todd?
DELL-ToddM Hello, Can you hear me now?
Jose_Ricardo joined.
DELL-ScottH Hello Jose
rbell joined.
DELL-ScottH Yes
Jose_Ricardo Hello
DELL-ToddM Hello everybody!
DELL-ScottH Can hear you now
DELL-ScottH Hello rbell
DELL-ToddM Welcome to today's chat
Jose_Ricardo I can’t hear
DELL-ToddM This is part 2 of our Selecting Storage for Virtualization series of chats
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DELL-ScottH Hey Tim
DELL-ScottH Here's the link on our site that consolidates this chat series: http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/selecting+storage+for+virtualization
DELL-ToddM The focus for today is Benefits of EqualLogic for virtualization
DELL-ScottH Feel free to jump in anytime with comments / questions
rbell Hello Scott!
DELL-ToddM We very much encourage questions and discussion—so jump in any time
DELL-ScottH It's not considered rude in a chat; see how I'm doing it to Todd? :-)
DELL-ToddM This week we have an EqualLogic expert: Tim Sherbak from Dell EqualLogic
DELL-ScottH He'll slap me later
DELL-ToddM Tim, Can you intro yourself?
DELL-ToddM FYI: We like to keep the chat on topic (at least at the beginning), but if you have other questions or topics we can try to address those as well—especially in the second half of the chat
DELL-ToddM Good to see fellow tweeter Jasonpowell!
DELL-ScottH Yeah Twitter is cool: www.twitter.com/dellservergeeks
JasonPowell *takes a bow*
tsherbak Hi Guys, I'm a member of the solutions marketing group in the EqualLogic marketing team focused on virtualization. I've been with EqualLogic (now Dell) for about 3 years.
Dell-Tony_A joined.
DELL-ScottH Hello Tony!
Dell-Tony_A I made it...seems the VPN was the problem.
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DELL-ScottH Ward!
DELL-ScottH Jason, thanks for the retweet
DELL-ToddM Hey Ward!
ward_wolfram Hello Scott...Hope you do not mind me joining today's session
tsherbak Customers are particularly motivated by EqualLogic in a virtual environment because of the simplicity, flexibility, and lower TCO, the same reasons that people are virtualizing in the first place.
DELL-ScottH Glad to see you here...reminder to all, use "action" "recent room history" to catch up on the chat
DELL-ToddM I believe that Jason is using EqualLogic; is it with VMware?
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tsherbak What customers are quick to discover is that virtualized storage is a natural complement to virtual servers. That is, both are “scale out” architectures that make it easy to build a scalable, dynamically reconfigurable, resilient infrastructure upon which to base their operational application workloads.
JasonPowell We have three Equal arrays at my day job...using VMware Server (about to migrate to ESXi), and I work with Alan Hunt of Vr6 Systems as an Equal VAR on the side :-)
DELL-ScottH FYI, Ward's got a demo of EqualLogic and EMC configuration comparisons—this page at the bottom: - http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/ebc+demos+and+presentations
DELL-ScottH Welcome Stephen
DELL-ScottH "action" .. "recent room history" will catch you up
ward_wolfram Tim, is Equal doing work with Microsoft Hyper-V? Is there going to be any ASM integration into it like there is with VMware?
JasonPowell We choose Equal shortly after we began to virtualize servers. Was a no brainer.
DELL-ScottH @jason , don't short yourself, I think you've got a big brain :-)
DELL-ToddM Jason, can you say why you chose EqualLogic? Was there a specific reason?
JasonPowell I blogged about our SAN research (two years ago). We looked at many vendors (Lefthand, Equal, IBM, Intel, EMC)
JasonPowell What Blew us away was the easy setup and management in Equal
JasonPowell Equal dude came on site and inside of 10 minutes the array was up and running
DELL-ScottH FYI, Jason's blog is here: http://jpowell.blogs.com/ Search on EqualLogic; lots of posts
tsherbak EqualLogic is very active with Microsoft Hyper-v. As many know, we've been heavily deployed in Microsoft environments for many years (WHCL-certified, Simple SAN designated, VSS integration, etc.). With Hyper-V today, our advanced multipathing DSM (device-specific module) can be integrated in with the iSCSI stack in Hyper-V. In addition, our advanced VSS integration can be employed today in Hyper-V environments using Auto-Snapshot Manager/Microsoft Edition. In this scenario, the ASM/ME module runs in the guest OS using the native iSCSI SW initiator in the guest OS. As we move forward, we'll have more advanced integration as well, as we focus on native ASM/ME integration into the Hyper-V layer.
JasonPowell Other vendors strongly recommended we go get training (several days) on how to set up and manage.
DELL-ScottH Oooo my, Tim wrote a book :-)
DELL-ToddM I agree that EqualLogic is very easy to set up and manage
astorrs Thanks for the link to the EMC versus EqualLogic demo Ward did. I'm intimately familiar with EMC provisioning (and the number of steps required), so it's nice to see a one-for-one comparison against EqualLogic.
DELL-ToddM I just published a whitepaper with Hyper-V and EqualLogic - http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/hyper-v+performance+on+r900+with+six-core+intel+xeon+whitepaper
JasonPowell We were also very impressed by the feature set; no extra $$ for new features, and the array was built with great redundancy planned.
DELL-ScottH Quick tip - right click on links
DELL-ToddM I wonder if Stephen was caught by the need to right-click the link to avoid exiting the chat?
stephenSFLC Truly :)
DELL-ToddM Sorry, Stephen - I should have warned you
JasonPowell Yeah...the single click is very annoying on the links :(
DELL-ScottH Hello crew, welcome back, Stephen, my last tip was right-click :-)
tsherbak We've also recently made announcements of advanced integration in the VMware environment . In May we announced integration of EqualLogic with VMware's Site Recovery Manager that automates disaster recovery in a VMware environment, leveraging the EqualLogic auto-replication feature of the arrays to replicate the SAN-based volumes. We've also just recently introduced Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition, which uses SAN-based snapshots integrated with VMware snapshots for online data protection. Lastly, at VMworld, VMware announced their vStorage initiative, which we are very involved in.
DELL-ScottH Oh, need to clear out that old room; was from when we purchased EqualLogic months ago
tsherbak Todd, I saw your whitepaper on Hyper-V and EqualLogic. Nice stuff. Thanks for the effort.
DELL-ToddM I put some links up to demos of the EqualLogic integration with SRM and Auto-Snapshot Manager here: http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/selecting+storage+for+virtualization
DELL-ToddM This was the first chance I had to do some performance testing with the EqualLogic arrays—and I was impressed
tsherbak Citrix has also done some advanced integration of XenServer with the EqualLogic arrays, providing native provisioning and snapshot support.
DELL-ToddM I was able to max out the performance of a 24-core R900 server :)
tsherbak R900 is truly one of the bad boys of computing these days.
DELL-ToddM Tim, I was surprised by the depth of the integration with XenServer. There is a new whitepaper that gives the details: http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/partnerdocs/citrix-xenserver-equallogic_final.pdf
JasonPowell It might also be of interest to note that Exagrid now supports EqualLogic arrays for data deduplication: http://www.exagrid.com/news_and_events/press_releases/dell_equallogic_iscsi_storage_with_new_exagrid_de-duplicating_gateway.asp
ward_wolfram Tim, besides the DSM part, is there any support for Hyper-V VV snapshots (consistent) today like there is with VMware? (I do not know much about Microsoft Hyper-V).
tsherbak By the way, there's a webcast tomorrow with one of our ASM/VE beta customers, River City Bank. You can sign up for this webcast here: http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=117521&s=1&k=c971d77a38169ffb8ebf610bf21dafe8&partnerref=techcenterchat
tsherbak left.
DELL-ToddM Oh No!
astorrs Well that's gonna make the chat a short one. :D
DELL-ToddM Surely he didn't go to sign up right now…
tsherbak joined.
DELL-ToddM Hey Tim
DELL-ScottH Did that link work? :-)
DELL-ScottH Actually it didn't for me
tsherbak I just got booted off when I linked to that. I'll try posting a link again.
DELL-ToddM One other question that I get a lot is when to choose MD3000i versus EqualLogic
DELL-ScottH Just right-click on it; you won't get kicked
JasonPowell Todd M, I get that question too!
Jose_Ricardo Very good question, Todd; I had that question too this week
DELL-ToddM I have an answer, but I wanted to know what everybody else thought
JasonPowell In fact I have a conference call tonight at 9 pm about MD3000i Vs Equal
JasonPowell I've not had enough time to play with our MD3000i to make a review
JasonPowell Obviously the 2 TB volume limit on the MD3000i could be an issue
JasonPowell And from what I can gather the MD3000i holds the array configurations on the first four drives
DELL-ScottH What's the difference in number of Ethernet ports out the back?
JasonPowell Rather than the controllers
DELL-ToddM The MD3000i and EqualLogic have different architectures
ward_wolfram MD3000i will not have the 2 TB limit in the new FW released sometime in the next 3-4 weeks.
DELL-ScottH Ward, I talked to the devs and that got pushed back
Dell-Tony_A Also, remember the value-add of ASM/VE and SRM for a complete DR solution.
DELL-ScottH @ward, sending you e-mail now
DELL-ToddM The MD3000i has two ports per controller; with two controllers in the main MD3000i array
tsherbak Webcast is linked here (hopefully this works) DP/DRW/EqualLogic and VMware with River City Bank: http://www.equallogic.com/news/release_display.aspx?id=640
DELL-ToddM To expand the MD3000i , you can add up to simple MD1000s (no controllers, just Jbods)
DELL-ToddM With EqualLogic the array has two controllers each with three ports
ward_wolfram Todd, what special integration with XenServer did you experience when using Equal? Are there API's used to do unique management things?
JasonPowell The MD3000i setup is not nearly as clean and simple as the Equal IMHO
DELL-ToddM To expand you add more arrays each with their own controllers
DELL-ScottH Tim, that link worked for me
DELL-ToddM But here is the cool part: the additional arrays are simply added to the existing group, and the data is automatically rebalanced across all group members
iscsisanse The major differences lie in the level of automation and virtualization. With Equal, network load balancing and page-based volume load balancing across a group are automated: MD still requires some manual configuration
DELL-ToddM The MD requires more knowledge and planning to set up and manage because it is more manual
tsherbak Ward, ASM/ME works in a Hyper-V environment. You would use the iSCSI SW initiator in the virtual server itself to attach to the iSCSI-based volume.
JasonPowell Todd M., and it's worth noting to add another Equal array into your group requires all of three fields of information :-)
Dell-Tony_A Todd M is right! Remember that scalability in the overall performance of the SAN for VM is very important. Equal is a very scalable solution and allows...it is the total package :)
astorrs When adding a new array to an existing group, do you set the priority of the data rebalancing? Or does it just operate at a background process, etc?
DELL-ToddM I actually recommend EqualLogic for IT departments with less experience in SANs because it is so much easier
tsherbak It’s a background process that runs at a lower priority to host I/O processing, so the time it takes can vary.
DELL-ToddM MD3000i actually requires more knowledge and planning to decide how to set up RAID groups and virtual disks for each server
ward_wolfram Tim, that is what I do with VMware also; to create application data consistency...I was wondering about the VM itself; is this what you were referring too? Thanks!
iscsisanse Astorrs, you have the option to wait until RAID policy is completed before load balancing or place in group and allow group placement, load balancing, and RAID policy to occur concurrently
tsherbak Ward, in the currently shipping ASM/ME, the use case is for the application data sets, not for the virtual machines themselves.
JasonPowell Can anyone confirm where the array configuration is stored on the MD3000i? I've heard it's the first four drives on the array.
DELL-ToddM OK, so after we beat up the MD3000i here, is the key advantage lower cost, good iSCSI array, good feature set for entry level array
ward_wolfram I can set up an MD3000i in 30 minutes. Dell EBC does remote demos on the product and setup. The wizards in MD3000 are pretty good, but it does take little reading to work through it. Maybe the Techcenter and Dell|EBC can create a recording of it.
DELL-ToddM Ward, let's do it!
ward_wolfram Todd, okay, we have an MD and stuff ready...I'll get with you to create.
DELL-ScottH Capture that demo, Ward, and I promise it will get posted quicker than the last one
astorrs Jason, why do you see that as a problem? It's fairly common for small-midrange arrays to write the array configuration in the first handful of disks.
JasonPowell I just bought an MD3000i as second-tier storage. Equal arrays are for our critical data and VMs, and MD3000i for archival storage needs (we are eating lots of space for video production)
DELL-ScottH Yes, same way that IBM does it with their smaller SANs
ward_wolfram Tim, is there much Equal effort to integrate with XenServer too?
JasonPowell Astorrs, it makes me nervous that if you were to lose those drives you could lose the array configuration. Am I being overly nervous about that?
astorrs Well it's fairly common for vendors to use that method; I'll speak to the EMC way of doing it since Dell resells that
DELL-ScottH I think sustaining a four-drive loss at once, and those specific four drives are a pretty rare round-to-zero case
tsherbak Citrix has done a nice job integrating XenServer 5.0 with EqualLogic arrays that just released this month. More discussions are underway
JasonPowell I've had two friends lose their array configurations (using other SAN products), and they went through much pain to restore data
JasonPowell So the configuration is replicated across all four drives? I was worried it was being maybe stripped across them somehow
DELL-ScottH Yes, replicated
ward_wolfram I would assume the MD3000 configuration is mirrored. Todd or Tim, do you know? If so, the odds of a double disk failure are extreme. Statistics show that the exposure to a drive rebuild is less than an entire site failure. Thus, your backup processes would kick into play.
DELL-ToddM I don't know how it is stored; trying to look it up now
JasonPowell Again, I'm more familiar with Equal; I've got a demo array that I often take all the drives out and shuffle them around, and the array could care less ;-)
ward_wolfram Jason, yeah, MD has drive roaming too; can mix them up...unlike EMC
ward_wolfram Dell PERC has drive roaming too...the only thing I can think of as far as Dell storage not supporting drive roaming is Dell|EMC
JasonPowell Ward, good to note. Thanks
ward_wolfram Thanks everyone, I learned much today. I hope to return next session. Ward
DELL-ToddM We are about out of time!
DELL-ToddM Thanks to Tim for his expertness today on EqualLogic
tsherbak You can sign up for online EqualLogic demos at www.equallogic.com/demo
tsherbak All the best
astorrs Jason (sorry for the small essay), the first five disks in all Clarion are called vault drives. The vault basically includes the "save area," which is where the controller write cache gets written to in the event of a total power loss (there is battery backup—a "standby power supply"—to allow for this to occur). Then you have the Persistent Storage Manager LUN (or PSM LUN), which stores the configuration: disks, RAID groups, snapview configuration, etc. And the Flare database LUN, which contains the Flare code (the OS of the array), which gets loaded into the controllers at startup. The five drives lose about 33 GB of disk space each right now to account for this; the actual RAID types used are complex (a combination of different RAID1 sets that then mirror each other over different disks)
astorrs I would assume the MD3000i does something similar (although maybe simpler)—as do most of the other vendors who store configuration on disk
JasonPowell Ugh!
DELL-ToddM I will get an answer to how the MD3000i saves its configuration and post it to the home page for this chat and the MD3000i page on this site as well
JasonPowell Another question I get is real-world performance difference between SATA and near-line SAS in the MD3000i
DELL-ScottH Am reading the sourcebook now, and was hoping to have an answer by now
DELL-ToddM Or if somebody beats me to it, I will give them a compliment!
JasonPowell haha :-)
astorrs One last question, does every Equal model use the same management interface (top to bottom along the product line)?
DELL-ScottH Found it, reading paragraph now to decipher
DELL-ToddM Jason, I will look into that one as well. We had a similar question a couple of weeks ago about SAS versus SATA on the discussion board
DELL-ToddM Yes, EqualLogic uses the same management interface for all
JasonPowell astorrs - yes
JasonPowell And it's a Web GUI unlike the MD3000i
astorrs Good, it looks almost idiot proof :)
DELL-ScottH MD3000i controllers store configuration metadata in a private 512 MB region on every configured physical disk. This metadata area contains physical disk state and status information, virtual disk state and status information, and controller and subsystem information. The metadata on each physical disk stores that physical disk’s state and status, the worldwide name of its disk group, the virtual disks it contains, and the definitions for those virtual disks. Additionally, one physical disk in each disk group (with a minimum of three in each storage system) stores the controller- and subsystem-level information.
DELL-ToddM Thanks to everybody; see you next week for a discussion of when to go with iSCSI or Fibre Channel for Virtualization
DELL-ScottH Storing metadata in this nonvolatile region provides the highest availability and enables easier reconfigurations and migrations. As system configuration data resides on every configured physical disk, controllers and/or multiple physical disks can be removed or swapped without losing the system configuration. Physical disks can be relocated within the storage system to improve channel utilization/protection or even migrated as a complete disk group into another storage system. In instances, all configuration metadata and user data remains intact on the physical disks.
DELL-ScottH Thanks everybody!
JasonPowell Astorrs, I tell people, if I can manage an Equal, anyone can :-)
DELL-ScottH Left a book for you to read
JasonPowell *begins reading*
astorrs lol
DELL-ScottH If you do it in the Battlestar Galactica getup, I'm most impressed :-)
astorrs Thanks, guys; see you on Twitter
JasonPowell Oh, that would be awesome!
DELL-ToddM Gotta run to Meeting - See you in the twitterverse
DELL-ScottH Thanks again everyone; the transcript will be up tomorrow on the same link
JasonPowell Thanks Dell dudes!
JasonPowell Impressed that the MD3000i has that much intelligence
DELL-ScottH Yeah, I was a little shocked to see that in writing... ssshhh
JasonPowell *everyone look at this shinny red light I'm holding*
astorrs left.
DELL-ScottH lol
JasonPowell Time to head home...Scott, thanks for fielding my questions.
DELL-ScottH No problem, heading home soon; wife needs chicken soup
JasonPowell Bummer...unless she just has a craving for chicken soup versus being sick
DELL-ScottH Yeah, definitely sick. Was fun to follow you guys at the show last week; sounds like you had some fun
JasonPowell It was a great gathering. We tried to get someone from Dell to come and talk about geeky stuff, but no dice.
DELL-ScottH Ping us next year, and maybe we can get Michael to show up...maybe not that big a hitter, but someone
JasonPowell Colorado Springs in April is next one :-)
JasonPowell If you bump into church, IT guys/gals please direct them to Citrt.org
DELL-ScottH Oh I would be up for that...could be the Scott and Todd show...will do
DELL-ScottH We work with the EBC; I'll keep an eye out for you
JasonPowell Ministrytech.org has the info for April
JasonPowell EBC = ?
DELL-ScottH Executive Briefing Center
JasonPowell Ah...fancy ;-)
DELL-ScottH Can look for church IT people coming in and tell the host to mention it
JasonPowell Sweet
DELL-ScottH Have a great night
JasonPowell Ditto