Scale Datacom’s Data Storage Blog

Nexsan, the industry leader in ultra-dense and energy-efficient RAID storage recently announced their aptly named DATAbeast storage system. DATAbeast is a melding of their current SATAbeast and SASboy arrays into a whole system that is far greater than the sum of its parts. It offers central management for the entire environment which can scale from mere terabytes to a very respectable 4 petabytes. On top of that they have layered SAN (4GB FC now, iSCSI later) and NAS functionality as well as sync and async replication, snapshots and thin provisioning. Nexsan’s fantastic AutoMAID technology is also employed, allowing users to balance between performance and energy savings.

This combination of Nexsan’s already-loved storage hardware with the ability to scale it out to petabytes and manage it centrally and keep it as energy-efficient as possible should be a winning formula and a much needed option in the marketplace.

The DATAbeast comes in neatly packaged “Ready To Go” packages in 25U and 42U racks w/ all arrays, controllers, software, switches and cabling needed so you can have the solution up and running in no time at all.

More info: www.scaledatacom.com/nexsan

Contact us if you’d like to discuss further

The blogosphere has been alight these past months with discussions and rants about the “impending war” between iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)…Who will win, what will it mean for the industry and where should customers put their IT budgets. Add to this Data Center Ethernet (DCE), Fibre Channel pushing 8GB and 10GB iSCSI moving into the limelight.

Having been doing this for a while I’ve seen this movie a few times…different actors, same plot. The way I see it, FCoE is going to be a waste of time and money for most folks…iSCSI is mainstream, performs well, has a massive ecosystem and with 10GB iSCSI hitting its stride in 08/09, I don’t see FCoE being a viable solution. Those that bought HD-DVD players in the last year will relate: if the protocol doesn’t have massive support and industry inertia it’ll be money wasted and you’ll need to migrate to Blu-Ray the winner sooner or later.

So, let the vendors hack it out in the quest to buy their CEO’s even bigger yachts. Our pick is iSCSI. Unless you’ve got a significant investment in FC infra that you’d like to stretch for another couple of years, from what we’ve seen iSCSI is the way to go. FCoE will wind up on clearance cart along w/ Titanic HD-DVDs.

Compellent is running on methanol these days folks (for non-car-guys: thats a good thing). Their solid technology and rich feature set are winning customers and industry accolades left and right.

• Best SAN of 2008 - InfoWorld
• Midrange SAN Quality Award 2008 - Diogenes Labs / Storage Magazine
• Green 15 Award 2008 - InforWorld
• Storage Product of the Year 07 Finalist - SearchStorage
• Excellence Award 2007 - eWeek

Their Storage Center software platform and robust, flexible hardware are truly bringing their mantra “The only SAN so sophisticated its simple” to the masses with rave reviews. Their Remote Replication and Data Instant Replay (aka: Snapshots) features are among the best out there and are extremely easy to use.
The R&D groups at EMC, NetApp, Hitachi et al are no doubt burning the midnite oil to combat this relatively new and powerful threat to the midrange fibre world….oh and also they do iSCSi and NAS quite well thank you very much.

More info: www.scaledatacom.com/compellent

If you have a SAN need coming up and would like to discuss how Compellent compares to the usual suspects, just drop us a line.

Boy is this getting old…or is it? Like our beloved New England Patriots, EqualLogic can do wrong these days. InfoWorld has voted EqualLogic “Best iSCSI SAN of the Year” for 2008. They are going to need a larger mantle for all their trophies.

Full press release here…

Yet another feather in their cap and further validation that the architecture path they’ve charted is the best for high-performance, feature-rich iSCSI SAN’s.

Let us know if you’d like to discuss how EqualLogic’s line of virtualized iSCSI SAN’s can help your organization.

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.

EqualLogic’s blogger extraordinaire Marc Farley has posted a great video on his Storage @ Work blog of their Director of Product Management, Eric Schott, explaining how their remote replication works.

Click here for the video

In keeping with their corporate mantra “simplifying networked storage”, EqualLogic’s remote replication implementation is truly incredible because of its simplicity and as well as performance. If you have remote site data that you’d like to centralize or are thinking of implementing a disaster recovery plan, EqualLogic’s PeerStorage iSCSI SAN arrays have the features, horsepower and reliability to be the backbone of your disk storage needs.

Contact us today if you’d like to discuss EqualLogic’s products/features in further detail. Or try our new EqualLogic Quote Generator

Everyone’s favorite iSCSI SAN vendor has just released their latest and greatest firmware rev: v3.2.0.  This new version builds upon EqualLogic already rock-solid feature set and adds a few new tricks, like Thin Provisioning and an enhanced remote replication implementation….and becasue its EqualLogic, all new features are free of charge to existing customers.

The coolest feature is an updated replication feature.  In the past it was recommended that both arrays be in the same location for the initial replication as the first dump is the largest.   This worked well for most folks but was an inconvenience for folks w/ a lot of remote sites as well as folks w/ arrays overseas.  The new manual replication feature allows the initial replica of a volume to be transferred to the secondary group location by physical media instead of over a network connection.  Manual replication is ideal for cases where the network used for replication meets the performance requirements for ongoing replication operations, but is insufficient for the initial data transfer of the entire volume.

Get yours today at the EqualLogic Customer Service Home, or contact us for a copy.

Everyone is looking at virtualization these days. And those that aren’t aren’t because they already have it. VMware…The undisputed king of server virtualization (and new Scale Datacom Partner!) is doing it part across this great land to help IT organizations save time and money by greatly increasing the efficiency and flexibility of their server hardware assets. So, you’re considering VM’ing your server environment…or you’ve just VM’ed it. Now what? One word: storage.

Going with a virtualized disk storage platform affords you the same budget savings and operational agility that VMware does on the server side. Another partner of ours, EqualLogic, offers full virtualization on all their iSCSI SAN arrays and is a perfect compliment to a VMware environment.

EqualLogic’s ability to scale capacity (from 1-168TB), mix, match and reallocate RAID sets, disks types, speeds, and sizes on the fly all in a completely redundant, enterprise-class environment insures that your organization will be ready as its data storage requirements change.

Here’s an overview PDF

Let us know if you’d like to discuss how virtualized storage (or servers) can help you.