Scale Datacom’s Data Storage Blog

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.

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

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.

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.

Exagrid announced on Tuesday (aka my birthday) that they are bringing to market the world’s first data deduplication gateway for iSCSI storage. The creatively named ‘Exagrid iSCSI De-Deuplication Gateway’ will cut back storage requirements for backup by 10:1 to as much as 50:1, while promising a 30-90% reduction in backup and restore times.

And since we’re talking about iSCSI, can you guess who they’re marketing this heavily with? One guess….Yup: EqualLogic. De-Dupe has been on our wish list w/ EqualLogic for some time now and this new partnership with Exagrid, one of the clear leaders in the field, fulfills that wish.

If you currently have or are planning on implementing a Dell/EqualLogic PeerStorage SAN and intend to use it for disk backup, this gateway is worth a serious look.

More Info or Pricing: Click Here

StoreVault’s “little array that could” S500 is all grown up and now offers support for 750GB and 1TB SATA drives. Now known as the S550, it betters the previous S500’s 250GB and 500GB drive support, giving it a max raw capacity of 12TB now.

The S550 and its little, desktop-residing brother the S300 are perfect storage solutions for small to medium businesses: they can do SAN and NAS in the same box and offer the flexibility iSCSI and fibre connectivity. And because they’re a division of NetApp, they also offer a tweaked version of their award-winning DataONTAP storage operating system with features like snapshots and remote replication.

Another feature (and a very smart moev by NetApp) that makes these StoreVault boxes cool is their ability to replicate not only to other StoreVault arrays but to larger NetApp FAS arrays. This basically making these little guys gateway arrays to bring smaller organizations into the NetApp fold at an earlier stage in their lifecycle.

Click here for technical info and quote generator

If you’re a midrange SAN vendor in today’s market you need to offer some form of remote replication….and they all do. Given that, what makes one vendor’s implementation stand out over everyone else’s?

The goals are simple enough: offer fast, bandwidth-friendly replications that can be easily validated, don’t require a team from NASA to administer and can be quickly rolled over to in the event of a disaster.

However, most implementations are kludgy, full of gotcha’s and require massive amounts of professional services to erect and maintain. Compellent’s Remote Data Instant Replay on the other hand, is different.

Hows this for a dream-team of features:

• Data De-Deplication
• Synchronous and Asynchronous Implementations
• Pre-Circuit Bandwidth Simulator
• Comprehensive Bandwidth Shaping - down to the volume level
• Ability to store replicas on different disk tiers and RAID sets to reduce cost
• Replicate using Fibre or iSCSI
• Replication / Failover Validation - Test your DR plan w/out bringing your environment down!

There are more but you get the picture. Ask your current SAN vendor (unless its Compellent) if they can do 1/2 of these things. Having done our research I can say their answer will most likely be no.

If you’re considering remote replication and would like to hear more about Compellent’s solution, please drop us a line to discuss further.

Our Compellent Mini-Site

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.

Constant Data Protection (CDP) has been on the fringes for some time and and is really starting to get the spotlight it deserves. Customers are amazed when we explain what CDP is and does….many simply didn’t even know the technology existed…..well, it does and SonicWall’s line of CDP appliances are making CDP a snap to implement.

CDP is exactly what it says: constant data protection. Every time a file is changed its backed up. Even open files can be backed up if so desired. This covers the likes of MS Office docs, Exchange, SQL databases, Active Directory, QuickBooks to name a few. Look, tape restores stink, disk-backup is better, snapshots closed the gap even further….but only CDP is truly constant and, with remote replication, almost eliminates the need for tape at all.
SonicWall’s line of CDP appliances (1440i, 2440i, 3440i and 4440i) ensure your company’s data can be instantly restored from any point in time. And based on user-preferences they can store multiple versions of each file so users can go back and restore from any point in time: minutes, hours, days or more.

Central management, reporting, 256-bit AES encryption, bare-metal restore and remote replication to a second appliance are all included, making these appliances a fantastic value.

Contact us to discuss how SonicWall’s CDP solution can help cure your backup (and restore) blues…..or simply buy one here

Our friends at NeoScale have gone and won themselves another award. This time the prestigious 2007 Tomorrow’s Technology Today Award from Info Security Products Guide in Silicon Valley for their encryption key management system, CryptoStor KeyVault.

Data encryption is one of the hottest topics in IT today and for good reason…there is big money to be made in stolen customer and company data and apparently no shortage of crooks. NeoScale is semi-uniqiue in that they are vendor-agnostic and an open system w/ readily available API’s…oh, and they’re FIPS 140-2 Level 3 compliant.

Here’sthe full press release

Contact us today to discuss how NeoScale’s CryptoStor line of encryption appliances can help safeguard your data.