Scale Datacom’s Data Storage Blog

We get asked about Thin Provisioning quite a bit so I thought it might be a good idea to post a quick overview of it.

Thin Provisioning is like a credit card for your SAN storage. It allows you to present more storage capacity to your applications and users than you physically have.  It allows you to make full use of your physical resources with almost no waste…but it comes w/ some asterisks.

In the olden days (2006), when you created a data volume, you hard-allocated the entire amount.  ex: your SQL DB was using 3GB at present but was anticipated to grow to 10GB within 4-6months so you created a 10GB volume. 10GB was removed from the SAN and 7GB of it sat idle for some time while the DB grew.

With Thin Provisioning, you can still create a volume that looks like 10GB to your apps but you can elect to only hard-allocate 3-4GB to it while allowing it to dynamically grow to 10GB on its own. The remaining 6-7GB is free to be used by other apps/users on the SAN.

At its base Thin Provisioning is a lie: you are telling your apps that you have more physical storage than you really do.  Given that, you really only want to Thin Provision volumes with predictable growth patterns.  Picking volumes for new applications or users that have erratic usage patterns is a bad idea because if you have a run on the bank and everyone goes for that same pool of unused capacity at the same time, bad things happen and you may be looking for a new job.

Almost all Thin Provisioning systems have what we call a “save your job slider” in the volume creation area. This slider is the “in-use warning” notification which makes you aware when volumes start to grow towards their maximum aloted size so you can either un-thin-provision the volume, increase the volume size, or think about buying additional physical storage. In the example above, you make 10GB volume, thin provision it for 3GB and put the in-use warning slider at 7GB and when the volume gets to that size a warning is kicked off to make you aware.

If you’d like to discuss this feature in more detail or would like info on which SAN vendors include Thin Provisioning, just let us know.

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CRN’s got a story out that basically illustrates what most of us knew was coming: Dell’s newly-acquired EqualLogic line is chewing away at EMC’s bit of business over in Round Rock.  Altho EMC flatly spins denies that anything is awry, the writing’s on the wall: EqualLogic’s iSCSI solution is superior to EMC’s and unless an opportunity is fibre, it would make more sense for Dell (and its army of EqualLogic VARs) to propose EqualLogic.

Full article here

As a long-standing EqualLogic Partner we’re keeping a watchful eye on this and from what we’re seeing in the field, EMC is in the odd position of playing catchup in the iSCSI space as fibre is no longer the only game in town.

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How early are we to this story?  Lets put it this way: its not even on Nexsan’s web site yet!  But trust us: Nexsan is taking the wraps of their newest product, the SASbeast as we speak.

Those of you familiar with the industry-leading SATAbeast will readily recognize the chassis: 4U, 42-bay, Single or Dual-Controllers, 4GB Fibre and ISCSI etc… But SASbeast allows you to not only use SAS drives (duh) but allows you to mix SAS and SATA in the same chassis for a truly tiered architecture in a dense rack footprint. The drive choices are limited to 300GB 15k SAS and 1TB SATA, but that what most people would want anyway.

Nexsan is really a company on the move lately.  First the DataBeast and Edge NAS Gateway announcements…then new Assureon archiving product and now the SASbeast.  If you’re looking for a good-performing, flexible and energy-efficient disk storage solution from 1TB to say, oh 4 petabytes (and more soon!), they deserve a serious look.

If you have a requirement and would like to discuss if a Nexsan solution might be an option, feel free to drop us a line.

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Dell-EqualLogic has just added a new model to its 5000VX line, based on 450GB 15k SAS drives.  This gives the range-topping array 7.2TB of blazing fast raw capacity that can serve duty as RAID 5, 50 or 10.

As always, this new model is completely compatible w/ all past, present and future arrays and is a welcome addition for folks that want more density in a high-performance 15k rpm medium.

If you’d like more technical or pricing info or disucss things in more detail, feel free to give us a shout.

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Its has been a busy week at Dell-EqualLogic.  First the PS-5500E announcement and now they’re released a version of their Auto-Snapshot Manager for VMware.

If you are thinking of deploying (or already have) VMware in your environment, the aptly-named Auto-Snapshot Manager VMware Edition will no doubt make your life a lot easier. It leverages the VMware snapshotting technology to place virtual machines in the native snapshot mode, takes a SAN-based snapshot, then returns the environment to its normal state.

In their own words:  “Integrated directly with standard VMware and EqualLogic APIs, Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition understands the relationships and location of virtual machines, VMFS Datastores, and PS Series SAN-based volumes. With intuitive SAN and VMware-centric navigation and a built-in scheduler, the VMware administrator can simply and flexibly set snapshot creation schedules of individual virtual machines, groups of virtual machines, or even all virtual machines in a VMware Datacenter, coordinating snapshot creation across all SAN-based volumes upon which the virtual machines reside.”

Benefits:

• High performance, space-efficient hypervisor-aware SAN-based snapshot support
• Automated, consolidated virtual machine backup and recovery
• Scalable HW-based solution for online data protection of virtual infrastructure
• Reduced snapshot space overhead and enhanced ESX Server performance
• Fast recovery of virtual machines and VMFS DataStores
• Easy to navigate GUI with both SAN and VMware-centric views
• Snapshot policies logically assigned to virtual machine hierarchies

On-Demand Seminar - Auto-Snapshot Manager VMware Edition in action

Oh yeah, and it comes bundled w/ every array at no-cost….Yet another reason why Dell-EqualLogic is the best VMware storage platform on the planet.

Contact us if you’d like more info or to discuss in further detail.

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File this one under BIG: Dell-EqualLogic has just announced their latest array, the PS-5500E (development codename: Sumo).  The PS-5500E packs 48 x SATA II drives into 4U of rack space making it one of the densest iSCSI SAN arrays around.

Certainly there are other arrays on the market that offer this level of density (Nexsan, Xyratex etc.) but no one offers the level and breadth of features and tight host-side integration that Dell-EqualLogic does.  And because its completely virtualized, it plays well with all the other Dell-EqualLogic PS Series arrays, allowing you to build a true end-to-end storage platform.

Due to its intended role (replication DR and disk backup target, near line and archival storage tier), there are some particulars on the PS-5500E that make it unique among the rest of the PS Series family.  It is SATA-only (for now), RAID 50 is the only RAID setting and PS-5500E’s can only be in a tier w/ themselves (altho they can be in the same SAN w/ all other arrays).  You can add up to 12 in a single SAN, giving you a raw total capacity of 576TB!

Adding this new, ultra-dense tier of storage fills out the PS Series line and makes it an even more attractive enterprise-class iSCSI SAN solution.

There will be 2 drive options for the PS-5500E initially: 500GB (24TB Raw) and 1.0TB (48TB raw).  Give us a shout if you’d like to discuss this or any of the PS Series arrays further.

More info and Quote Request

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Nexsan has announced today they are getting into the NAS market with the introduction of their first NAS appliance, “The Edge”. This 1U powerhouse runs Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server (WUDSS) and can connect to the company’s SASboy, SATAboy and SATAbeast arrays allowing for true tiered storage up to 84TB.

They are pricing The Edge right in the middle of the SMB market. This should be important for a number of reasons: 1) they make very good RAID arrays, 2) they have AutoMAID which is their fantastic energy-saving “green” technology 3) they have historically very good support. Given that, The Edge, when paired w/ Nexsan’s arrays, will no doubt constitute an unbeatable value as most players in that market have somewhat kludgy solutions and even clunkier support….and you gotta love their product names!

Contact us if you’d like to discuss further

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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

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A few months back our friends at Exagrid released the aptly named “Exagrid Deduplication Gateway for iSCSI” and had closely aligned themselves with the market leader in iSCSI storage, EqualLogic.

A slight name tweak now knows this box as the Exagrid iSCSI Backup Gateway (Data Sheet) which has a nicer ring to it. Make no bones about it, these guys want tape GONE.  And lets face it, tape is a pain in the ass neck.

Exagrid makes a pretty good case:

• Eliminates failed backups and restores
• Greatly reduces your backup window
• Works with your existing backup app
• Perfect for environments w/ 1-60TB backups
• Compression and dedupe backups in one package
• Optional WAN-efficient remote replication for DR

So, if you one of the 6000+ organizations that already have an EqualLogic SAN or are thinking of implementing one, this would be a great add-on to tie everything together from a backup perspective.

If you’d like to discuss this product or deduplication in general, please drop us a line.

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At long last, and after much fanfare, VMware’s Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is finally here.  Given the buzz around this product, we get a lot of folks asking “This is gonna be so great!….now, exactly what does SRM do?”

In a nutshell: SRM takes the hassle out of validating and testing your disaster recovery plan. DR plans have historically been  complex and difficult to errect and test, often involving heroic levels of scripting and finger-crossing.  SRM removes that and is honestly a quantum leap in simplifying this once daunting part of IT.

SRM ties into compatible replication engines from most leading vendors (EqualLogic, EMC, NetApp etc..) and allows you to create a “recovery image” that includes VM’s, storage and network connections at a remote location and to autonomously switch over to that image in the event of a disaster.  It also allows you to segregate this environment, allowing you to freely test it to ensure your environment fails over correctly without fear of impacting production ops.

One thing to keep in mind: SRM does NOT replicate data.  That duty is still the responsibility of the SAN, so make sure your storage platform has the requisite storage adapter for SRM.  EqualLogic has a great SRM adapter and when coupled with their excellent replication engine, creates a bulletproof DR platform.

If you’d like to see a demo of VMware’s SRM and EqualLogic  in action, simply let us know.

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