Dell Activities at Storage Networking World 2010

Yesterday afternoon I sat down with Gary Gumanow for a quick preview of what the Dell Team is doing out at the spring Storage Networking World event next week in Orlando, Fl. We decided to leave the blooper in just for fun, enjoy!




If you are at SNW, make sure and stop by the Dell Booth (#101)and meet Greg White and other Dell Storage experts where they’ll be showcasing EqualLogic and the recently announced DX Object Storage Platform.

Below you’ll find a few more details on the sessions Gary mentions, per the SNW website:

iSCSI SANs: Ideal Applications, Large and Small (10:20-11:05)
Jason Blosil, Product Marketing Manager, NetApp
Gary Gumanow, Senior Product Manager, Dell

Description
Current IT trends in technologies such as server virtualization, are offering additional reasons to deploy shared storage. Yet, nearly 50% of the storage deployed is still DAS. This presentation will outline reasons to move to shared storage and will focus on how iSCSI offers an ideal solution for SANs both large and small. IP SANs with iSCSI offer a number of advantages to organizations including flexibility, lower cost, and simplified management. Many applications are ideally suited for iSCSI including, server virtualization, infrastructure applications, storage consolidation, and business applications. Learning Objectives • Why iSCSI - What is iSCSI and why it the fastest growing network storage protocol on the market? • Which applications are well suited for IP SANs and why. • What are the key features and value proposition of iSCSI, including comparisons to DAS.

iSCSI: A Lossless Ethernet Fabric with DCB (11:15-12:00)
Gary Gumanow, Senior Product Manager, Dell
Jason Blosil, Product Marketing Manager, NetApp

Description
A look at different storage technologies and a brief look at each; benefits/tradeoffs, making the case for a SAN. Then looking at making your SAN a lossless, high-performance, predictable, resource for your business. Well look at different storage protocols and how they compare to the OSI model, and the new DCB protocols. And lastly, I'll present some findings of using these technologies. Learning Objectives • Attendees will understand receive an overview and comparison of different storage technologies; DAS, NAS, SAN; and the benefits and tradeoffs with each technology • A detailed look and comparison between three storage models; iSCSI, FC, and FCoE. Comparing all three to the OSI model. A discussion of the requirements for each layer of the networking stack. • A look at the benefits that DCB can provide iSCSI, as a lossless Ethernet fabric. A review of performance and contention issues.

In addition to those sessions, we’ll be participating in 3 hands on labs:

IP Storage Solutions
In organization of all sizes, Internet (IP) Storage Area Networks (SANs) are increasingly becoming a networked storage solution for business critical IT environments. In addition, the value of traffic convergence is quickening an investment in Unified Fabrics, an area in which IP SANs are relevant. This Lab guides participants through the steps required to setup and configure a Unified Fabric based IP SAN. Upon completion, you will better understand IP based SAN technology within a traffic converged network, Converged Network Adapters, data center bridging, and usage of IP Storage solutions.

Dell EqualLogic PS - With the Dell EqualLogic PS6000 storage array, use the web-based management GUI to provision, set access control, connect to the volumes using Windows or LInux iSCSI software initiators, improve reliability and performance with the Host Integration Toolkit Multi-Path IO DSM, use the Dell EqualLogic Host Integration Toolkit to preserve and restore data using the Auto-Snapshot Manager, and optionally provision and manage thin volumes and see the benefits of DCB. (Dell)

Dell EqualLogic PS & CommVault - The CommVault iSCSI Off-Host Data Protection lab will walk the participant through the steps necessary to configure the data protection environment for true off-host data-protection. The participant will configure the client machines and establish policies to utilize the CommVault SnapProtect technology to create application consistent snapshots of the clients EqualLogic iSCSI mounted volumes. These iSCSI volumes will be indexed and cataloged and made available via the CommVault CommCell console as data restore points. The participant will then view the snapshots and selectively recover data back to the client machine.”

Data Deduplication
With today’s pressure on organizations' storage infrastructure, data deduplication provides a solution to reduce the physical disk footprint and replication bandwidth required. This Lab guides participants through exercises that illustrate how organizations store and transmit data using data deduplication technology. Upon completion, you will better understand the potential benefits this technology can offer.

Dell DL2100 & Symantec - The purpose of this lab is to configure the multiple data deduplication options offered by the PowerVault DL Backup to Disk Appliance powered by Symantec Backup Exec 2010. Students will learn how to configure backup jobs with data deduplication supporting WAN optimization (client dedupe), Storage Optimization (media server dedupe), and replication capabilities to easily move and store data as part of their backup environment.

Server Virtualization
With ever more focus on ROI and TCO, there is heightened interest in virtualization and its impact on storage. This Lab guides participants through the steps required to establish a virtualized environment. Upon completion, you will better understand server virtualization activities, including creating virtual machines, deploying VMs on storage, provisioning volumes, and automating storage provisioning.

Dell EqualLogic PS & PowerEdge - Using Dell EqualLogic PS Series arrays, PowerEdge servers , and a Microsoft Hyper-V R2 based virtualization ecosystem, students will deploy virtual machines on EqualLogic storage, customize virtual machine settings, and perform virtual machine live migrations. Students will also simulate hardware failures and warnings to learn about fault tolerant design principles and how to avoid application downtime through use of a Dell plug-in to the Microsoft System Center framework.

The iSCSI & Datacenter Networking Trends webcast Gary mentions is open for EqualLogic customers. More information and registration can be found here.