Dell just dropped the new Dell FS7500 announcement.  See Pic, hands on first look will be uploaded via qik on my main blog.
Qik – dell storage forums 2011 – equallogic fs7500 first look by Roger Lund http://qik.ly/Htw46

I will be directly uploading video of the events and such at the Dell Storage Forums. It will be auto embedded into my blog, and you’ll see a auto twitter post. After the event, I will recap and add context to each video.

Right now I am at the house of blues, via dell.

Location:E Buena Vista Dr,Orlando,United States

Yesterday I wrote about the Dell Equallogic line of products. Today, I am going to give us a overview of the Dell Compellent Fluid Data Storage platform.

Comepellent has a nice white paper titled

Fluid Data Storage: Driving Flexibility in the Data Center

Dell Compellent takes a different approach to data than a traditional San. Dell Compellent is about Fluid Data Architecture, which includes the following. (taken from the above link)

1. Fluid Data Architecture
2. Storage Virtualization
3. Thin Provisioning
4. Automated Tiered Storage
5. Space-efficient Snapshots
6. Thin Replication
7. Unified Storage Resource Management
8. Open, Agile Hardware Platform

Since I have some Dell Compellent experience, I will do my best to put each into context.

• Fluid Data Architecture

“Dell Compellent storage is enabled by a dynamic Fluid Data architecture that actively, intelligently manages data at the block level. Specific information about each block is captured in flight throughout the day to provide real-time intelligence for dynamically storing, migrating and recovering data. These use characteristics are gathered using minimal system overhead but can be extensive. Examples include the type of data stored, disk drive used, RAID level, time written, frequency of access and more.”

Basically, this manages data for you, by placing new data in faster locations and moving data that is just being read into a different tier, as a example. Which I will get into later.

• Storage Virtualization

“Managing data at the block level also enables Dell Compellent to virtualize storage at the disk level.

Storage is presented to servers simply as capacity, regardless of disk type,
RAID level or server connectivity.”

Within a Dell Compellent San, different disk types, speeds, and raids all are within the same Virtual storage. Volumes are mapped directly with ease. You can map volumes to single servers, or clusters, from the Storage Center management application, or even a VMware vSphere Client plugin.

• Thin Provisioning

 

“Dell Compellent significantly reduces the cost of storage by enabling you to purchase and manage fewer disk drives now and in the future.

Dell Compellent Thin Provisioning software, called Dynamic Capacity™, completely separates allocation from utilization, eliminating preallocated but unused capacity.”

With a Dell Compellent San, all storage is thin provisioned, allowing for huge pre allocation storage savings. The Dell Compellent Storage Center Management application gives you a great overview of current allocation of used space, along with estimates based on usage until full, per tier.

• Automated Tiered Storage

 

“To continue containing costs throughout the lifecycle of enterprise data, Dell Compellent leverages an innovative data movement engine that integrates intelligent tiering with advanced virtualization.”

Dell Compellent Data Progression movies data from Tier’s in order of the disk speeds in your array.  New data is written within a Higher Tier and moved down in Tiers, and therefore disk speed. 

Tier 1 > Tier 2 > Tier 3.

Data is also written on the outside of the disks if needed, to increase system performance.

Basically, as data ages, the idea is it is cheaper to have it on Sata disk, than SSD, or SAS. This technology will automatically do this. I have seen in work, and it works well.

• Space-efficient Snapshots

 

“With Dell Compellent, snapshots are space efficient because Data Instant Replay™ software doesn’t require a full mirror image or subsequent full-volume clones. In fact, only changes in data since the last snapshot, or Replay, need to be captured, dramatically reducing the amount of disk space required.”

Dell Compellent does a great job of managing data at the block level, this makes snapshots fast. Enough said.

• Thin Replication

 

“Dell Compellent Thin Replication™ technology, Remote Instant Replay, provides affordable, verifiable and simplified multi-site data protection leveraging space-efficient Replays. Following initial site synchronization, only incremental changes in data need to be replicated.”

Since the Data in Managed on a block level, again it makes replication easier and faster. Dell Compellent doesn’t require same disk or storage protocol to be used on the replication partner. You can even use pre configured portable drives for initial replication.

• Unified Storage Resource Management

 

“With Dell Compellent, there is no need for specialized skill sets or ongoing systems training. Wizards guide users through system setup and application configuration, making even advanced operations simple and straightforward.”

The Dell Comepellent Management interface is a easy to use, web management solution. In addition , Enterprise Manager, allows extensive reporting and trending of uage and or performance.

• Open, Agile Hardware Platform

“Unlike systems that require you to rip and replace hardware as your business needs change, Dell Compellent supports the continual adoption of new technologies on a single, modular platform. This isa major departure from the status quo, which imposes artificial restrictions on everything from drive type to server interconnect.”

This allows for the same code set across the line of controllers, and by large the difference in controllers in cpu, cache, and I/O slots. The controller’s are Clustered, allowing for failover in a downtime , or planed event.

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Dell Compellent has detailed information on each of the above Here.

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Today the Compellent Storage Center 4.5 has the following technologies. Compellent SAN Technical Specifications * note, I will summarize to my best abilities. The following is taken from the above link/document.

• Controller differences.

• Drive technologies and protocols

“Fibre Channel and iSCSI server connectivityDrives, Enclosures• Supports any external interfaces and drives • SAS • FC • SSD • FCoE • iSCSINAS• Storage Center with NAS (boots from Compellent SAN)• zNAS (boots from Compellent SAN)”

Detailed Hardware information, included dedication pages with additional information can be found Here.

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Make sure to check out the CompellentCML’s Channel on youtube. Here are a few suggestions.

Compellent Live Volume Demo Part 1

Compellent Live Volume Demo Part 2

DEMO: Initial System Configuration

DEMO: Maximizing Storage Efficiency and Utilization with Compellent

DEMO: Establishing Remote Replication with Compellent

DEMO: Adding Storage on the Fly with Compellent

DEMO: Rapid Local Recovery with Compellent

DEMO: Intelligent Data Tiering

DEMO: True Thin Provisioning with Fluid Data storage from Compellent

I hope this gives you of you new to Dell Compellent a good understanding of the product.

Roger Lund

The Dell Equallogic line has be a increasingly popular Storage Platform. I wanted to do up a prep for those of you new to Equallogic, to give you a starting point; both if your attending Dell Storage Forum 2011, or just exploring Storage options. Equallogic Storage is all iSCSI based. Dell has a large area with lots of Resource, Here

The below image is from dell.com, and it is copy righted by Dell.

To start, take a look at the PS Seriries Overview Here Gives you a idea of the capabilities.

Some of those are as follows:

Peer technology, allowing ease of management
Auto Provisioning , self managing storage.
Simple San to San Tiering, and replication.
Snap shot technologies, both VMware / Hyper-v and Microsoft Application VSS.
VMware SRM compatibility.

There are a large number of different array’s to choose from today. If we look at them Here we can get a idea of some of the differences.

I’ll outline a few differences at a high level.

All units have two controllers.

If we start at the PS4000 series, we are looking at two gig interfaces , with a varied amount of total drive capacity. The configurations varie on maximum number of drives, and drive technologies , from SATA , SAS, or SSD.

The PS600x Series offers larger drive configurations and four gig connections per unit.

Next the 601x series, have two gig connections and like the above, but additionally have two 10GB iSCSI ports.

The beautiful thing about the over all solution is the software, and how the different storage model’s all work together. A total of 16 Array’s can be in one service group, including two PS4000 series array’s.

A little birdie told me that all of the software features, I talked about above, like VSS snaps, and replication are included with the hardware cost. ^^

Before to check out the Demo’s of the product , Here

I hope this overview gives those of new to Equallogic a new enlightenment in to one of Dell’s strongest product offerings.

I am trying this from my Ipad, so any feedback is welcome.

Roger Lund
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I recently was challenged with designing a VMware Environment for a team within a existing network.

I had some requirements.

I needed to keep the cost low, meaning I could propose some license costs, but I had to use existing backed storage and server’s with a little ram.

I had ten users that needed to use Visual Studio with dual monitor’s within Windows 7 , but had older computer resources. Staff needed a Environment to that was separated from Production. Staff had a SQL requirement to use in conjunction with Visual Studio in a separated Environment.

I had the following hardware.

A FC San in main Environment.
A VMware View cluster in main Environment

A Hardware Pool with the following.

A Dell MD100 with 14 300GB 10k disk, & PCIe Hardware Raid card.
Two Dell 2950’s.
A Dell 2850.
A Dell 2650.

I decided to take the 2850 and make it a openfiler box, connected to the Dell MD1000.

I perposed,the following new hardware for the Lab.

Additional Ram for the three hosts, and the open filer box. I would recommend NFS for ease of use.
A SMB Switch, with enough ports, that has Jumbo Frame and LACP support. The switch had to support the proper VLAN’s for the Lab. NFS, iSCSI, etc.
VMware vSphere, vCenter and Windows Licensing.

No redundant requirements ( IE switch, or storage at this time ) , backup’s were decided to be done outside of this scope.

My Thought process was to take the above hardware and create the needed environment, the challenge was to deliver the VMware View performance and VMware vSphere cluster performance with the above hardware. Additionally, I needed to provide a segmented secure network, with controlled access in and out.

In this first configuration, I recommended a configuration using a firewall both internal to the segmented network, but going into the main Network.

In this configuration I setup two Trunked ports from the Segmented Network, into the VMware View Hosts. This allows the VMware View Desktop’s to be on the Segmented domain.
This would require configuration of Etherchannel on the switches, and a separated vSwitch/vDS that the interfaces would be plugged into on each host. Additionally, a recommendation of using a 1000v Cisco vSwitch with VLAN security, or vShield zones.

Thoughts on each? Other recommendations? Any recommendations to improve each of the above? I’d love to see some comments. Which would you pick, and why?

DM me, or e-mail me.

If you want to see my Prof of Openfiler concept, See my Post:

Lab Powered by vSphere OpenFiler And NFS – A view from Veeam Monitor

Next:  backup planning.

UPDATE: To clarify some below questions.

The VMware view host server’s on the right diagram are FC connected to a Enterprise San. the desktop’s will not saturate the San in term’s of I/O.
I also made the recommendation to max the memory on one of the two server’s.

The openfiler box is using raid 10, with 1 hot spare.

A VMware essentials bundle was recommend for in the lab. A cluster will be defined, as two hosts are vmotion compatible.

Roger L