Scale Datacom’s Data Storage Blog

TechTarget’s doing a survey asking for your experience with your midrange arrays. The metrics include product features, and reliability as well as sales rep knowledge and everything in between.

This is exactly the same very similar poll to the one Storage Magazine did in 2006 which EqualLogic won hands down. I’ll be very interested in seeing the final results here as there are number of hard chargers (ie: Compellent) on the list that have made up a lot of ground since the first poll.

Click here to go to the survey

Quick question for the folks at TechTarget: why on earth is Apple’s Xserve RAID on this list? Its a fine box and all, but its like having a Ford Escort on a survey list with the BMW 7-Series and Mercedes S-Class.

Let me know if this sounds familiar: you have an aging fibre SAN, a bunch of direct-attach SCSI RAID arrays and tape devices in another department and a few newer iSCSI arrays in yet another corner of the company…and of course they’re all from different vendors.

Managing all these disparate storage resources can be a real pain in the ***, consuming time and resources. Add to that that they’re probably not being utilized to their fullest potential.

Enter RELDATA’s 9000 Series of unified storage gateways. They accept iSCSI, SCSI and fibre storage (disk and tape) and present “one pane of glass” to manage them all. The appliances are clsuter’able for high-availability and can remotely replicate over the WAN for DR purposes.

But wait, there’s more! They pull double-duty as both SAN and NAS heads and allow the storage behind them to be provisioned on the fly.

If you’re interested in hearing more or would like to schedule a WebEx to see the product in action, just drop us a line.

Our friends over at TechTarget have posted a pretty cool best practices article about how to integrate iSCSI and Fibre Channel under one roof. We see a lot new SAN implementations going iSCSI from the get-go these days, but the truth is most mid-to-large organizations already have substantial investments in fibre channel technology and don’t want to simply toss it out as they adopt iSCSI. The fact is, the 2 can peacefully coexist under one roof, allowing you to reap each fabric’s strengths while minimizing their respective weaknesses.
Here’s the full article.

As always, if you’re considering a new SAN or thinking of adding iSCSI to your existing FC environment, give us a shout and we can help make sure things go smoothly.

Unless you’ve been stuck in a closet or in Belgium for the last few days you already know that Dell has agreed to acquire EqualLogic for the sum of $1.4billion. This has generated a mini-tornado of speculation among industry folk as to what Dell’s true intentions are for EqualLogic’s technology and more importantly (for us at Scale Datacom at least) Eql’s reseller channel.

Some resellers are screaming their intentions to drop EqualLogic immediately and move to a competing vendor. Others are saying publicly that they welcome the new Dell relationship and look forward to a blissful, bump-free ride to incredible wealth and personal fulfillment….I think the real answer lies in the middle.
Looked at from 50,000 feet, this is what I think (and I could be way off):

• Dell likes selling servers
• Dell likes selling VMware
• Dell now owns the #1 virtualized storage platform for VMware
• Servers / VMware / EqualLogic require professional services
• Dell does not have a good professional services story
• Almost every EqualLogic reseller resells and implements VMware
• Dell now has access to a massive professional services group that can implement the entire solution

So, yes, Dell obviously wants EqualLogic’s special sauce (controllers & firmware) to dribble all over their less-than-good PowerVault boxes, but they also want the EqualLogic channel partners to help offer a Dell/VMware/EqualLogic bundle and install it.

Possible alternate ending: cut to 2009…Dell is up and running with the help of Eql’s channel which they then cut loose, sell direct, and do what they’ve always done. Much to dismay of the customers left in the middle.
Only time will tell…

Yes, we write about EqualLogic a lot on this blog. Fact is, in the sometimes mundane world of SAN storage, these guys are very interesting. Whether they’re winning their 1000th industry award, announcing new products, or winning yet another 3rd party product shootout, EqualLogic is always doing something cool.

To that end they’ve just announced a blistering new MS Exchange 2007 benchmark using Microsoft’s own ESRP framework: 60,000 users using 300MB mailboxes at extremely high I/O levels. Using their PS-3900XV arrays (300GB 15k rpm disks), with standard gigabit ethernet switches (Cisco 3750G’s) over Cat5e cabling to VMware’d Dell servers, they posted results that would shame most fibre channel vendors.

Here’s the full report

Bottom line: EqualLogic’s iSCSI rocks in large scale Exchange environments…take THAT fibre channel!

Check out our new EqualLogic Quote Generator for pricing on custom config’s that will meet your needs today!

EqualLogic has just announced a new member to its SAS-based iSCSI array family: the PeerStorage 3700X (PS-3700X). This new array boasts 16 x 400GB 10k rpm SAS drives, giving it a raw capacity of 6.4TB.

This nudges out its smaller brother, the PS3600X (16 x 300GB) which will be terminated at the close of this year. The 3700X offers 1.6TB more capacity than the outgoing 3600X and carries a List Price on $1000 higher. 1.6TB for $1000 is a GREAT deal no matter how you slice it…and an even better deal given that it comes w/ EqualLogic’s full compliment of features, like Snapshots, Remote Replication, MultiPath I/O, Thin Provisioning, Phone Home etc…

The 3700X is available for order today with first shipments hitting the UPS trucks by October 31th.

If you’d like pricing on this new array, simply drop us a line.

Being from New England I like to write about hometown happening and this is a big one. EqualLogic has just added New England Cable News to its list of >3000 happy customers.

If you live outside New England (or don’t own a TV), New England Cable News is monster of a company. They are the largest regional news network in the US and reach 3.6million homes. They had outgrown their direct-attached storage and were feeling the pain big time with respect to management, backup operations, scalability and DR possibilities. They did their due diligence and looked at both Fiber and iSCSI solutions from EMC, LeftHand Networks, EqualLogic and HP and in the end chose EqualLogic for a number of reasons: performance, flexbility, ease of remote replication and management.
Here’s the write up.

If you’re considering a SAN solution and would like to discuss which SAN fabric and vendor would be the best choice for your environment, just give us a shout.

New PS Series Software adds Smart Copy for data protection, recovery of Microsoft SQL Server databases and NTFS file systems

Nashua, N.H. — July 16, 2007 — EqualLogic®, today announced PS Series Software enhancements that deliver rapid copies of Microsoft application and file system data. The new Smart Copy function, standard with PS Series storage arrays, allows IT administrators of Microsoft Windows to improve the speed and reliability of database and file recovery and testing operations. Smart Copy extends the PS Series’ host integration capabilities to reduce the amount of time IT administrators spend managing and protecting Windows-based business applications. …more

And as always, this new feature is available free with the latest version of firmware and if fully compatible across EqualLogic’s entire line of arrays: 50E, 100E, 300E, 400E, 3600X, 3800XV, 3900VX

Contact us today to discuss how EqualLogic can help your Windows environment’s storage needs.

Lets face it: no one ever got fired for buying EMC. Their products work reasonably well and do what they say they will. However, in the mid-range (1-100TB) space there are better ways to get a SAN done; both budgetarily and technically.

EqualLogic is one.

• All-inclusive price includes all software features in cost of the array
• Scales performance linearly w/ capacity
• True pay-as-you-grow architecture
• No host licensing fees
• The easiest SAN to administer on the planet…period

Invitation: let us do a 1/2hr WebEx for you with our EqualLogic array and you can see for yourself how truly powerful and easy to administer this product is.

If you’re not blown away then..well…I don’t know what…but if you have EMC you probably will be.

iSCSI Takes its rightful place next to Fiber Channell..

The landscape of storage area networks (SANs) is changing, and the established perceptions of Fiber Channel (FC) vs iSCSI SANs are blurring rapidly. These days, you can build a fiber channel SAN for less than $10,000, but you can also spend $1million on an iSCSI SAN or run database applications from network attached storage (NAS). There are no absolute rules on what you can and can’t do when it comes to Fiber Channel and iSCSI. However, there are some important pros and cons to each approach that you’ll need to consider. …more

Source: Stephen Bigelow - SearchStorage - 6/13/07

If you’d like to discuss which SAN fabric is right for your particular needs, please give us a shout.