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

This video illustrates one of the big differentiators of Dell-EqualLogic’s PS Series iSCSI SAN arrays: simplicity.

The clip takes you from populating the hard drives in a chassis to setting up the SAN, creating a data volume and mounting it to a server.  Its sped up in the interest of time but so is the stopwatch keeping time so its entirely accurate….as are the not-so-subtle digs at HP thruout. Warning: the music is annoying.

If you’d like to schedule a Dell-EqualLogic online demo like this just drop us a line.

We write in this blog a fair bit about EqualLogic’s technology and why its so special. But given that a picture is worth a thousand words, I think it’d be better to show you. We do a lot of these WebEx demos for prospective customers and most of them are blown away at the ease with which an EqualLogic SAN can be admin’ed (especially if they’ve dealt with EMC in the past).

So, I’m opening it up to any folks out there that may be thinking of implementing an iSCSI SAN in the near future. We’ve got an EqualLogic array here and we’ll run thru a WebEx demo to show you how the SAN is setup, config’ed and go over all of their award-winning features. If you’re considering an EMC CX3, NetApp FAS, LeftHand or any other midrange iSCSI SAN, you should take a look at this.

Click this link to schedule an EqualLogic WebEx Demo Today!

As a long-standing Certified Partner of EqualLogic’s I can honestly say we here at Scale Datacom were more than a little concerned when Dell announced their acquisition intentions. Dell had a well-earned reputation for treating resellers, how you say, poorly. We sat in on con-calls w/ EqualLogic and Dell folks where they pledged up and down that we partners would continue to be the backbone of their sales efforts on the EqualLogic line and they looked forward to a long and prosperous relationship bla bla bla…. we rolled our eyes and braced for the worst.

But the worst never came…

Turns out they are doing exactly what they said they would. We have been welcomed with open arms and are actively engaged with the Dell Sales folks at all levels working as a united team to make sure all our customers are taken care of and prospective customers get the technical information and great pricing they deserve. We are winning new customers left and right as a united team and for the first few weeks I found myself trying to slap myself out of what I was sure was a dream.

Scale Datacom’s extensive technical and competitive knowledge on the product and professional services coupled with Dell’s economies of scale in manufacturing and distribution have truly created a dream team that offers much more value than I could’ve imagined.

At the end of the day its about getting our customers the best iSCSI SAN for the best value and I can honestly say that our new and improved Dell/EqualLogic partnership is helping us do exactly that.

More on the product and quote request: www.scaledatacom.com/equallogic

The midnite oil has been burning at Dell / EqualLogic since the acquisition was announced and today we saw the first in what will surely be a big year of product rollouts from the newly married couple.

Announced today, the PS5000 Series of iSCSI arrays are a rename in some cases and an upgrade in others. Here’s the rundown:

• PS5000E Series - these 16-bay SATA arrays will be replacing EqualLogic’s 14-bay SATA boxes (aka: 100E, 300E, 400E). They also add a model populated with 1TB drives now.
• PS5000X - Just a rebadged PS3700X - 6.4TB of 10k SAS goodness
• PS5000XV - Rebadged PS3900XV - 4.8TB of 15k SAS

Dell has thankfully left EqualLogic’s all-inclusive software licensing policy in place: the price of the array includes all software features (and there are a lot of them).

If you’d like technical, competitive or pricing info on any of these arrays, or would like to schedule a WebEx to see the technology in action (its imressive), just let us know.

More info and quote request form  here.

Hows this for irony: we sign on as reseller partner with Compellent and American Megatrends and the following week BOTH win Finalist Awards in Storage Magazine’s 2007 Storage Products of the Year. I’d like to think our glowing blog posts of both products helped…but I’m pretty sure we had nothing to do with the outcomes.

Click here for the full rundown

American Megatrends (AMI) won for their StorTrends 3200i iSCSI & NAS array and Compellent for their Storage Center SAN w/ NAS. The AMI 3200i slots in at the small-medium business market….right where the Compellent picks up and runs straight thru to the high-end enterprise.

Both solutions are notable in that they are both very good at masking their power and complexity to users, giving them a simple, strightforward and very flexible GUI from which to work.

Well, here’s to keeping good company in 2008. If you have any SAN or NAS projects in 08 please give us a shout and we can help architect a solution that may very well include one of these award winners.

American Megatrends…yes, the BIOS company. Turns out they make a line of IP SAN arrays. We sat in on an overview of their product and took a turn driving the GUI and I gotta say: WOW!

Their arrays come in 1U, 4-Bay (StorTrends 1100) and 3U, 16-Bay (StorTrends 3200) configs, support either SATA or SAS drives and can be had as NAS-only or NAS and ISCSI.

What’s truly amazing is the long list of features that’s included:

• Remote Replication (Synchronous and Acynchronous)
• Advanced Snapshots
• Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)
• Network Port Teaming
• Online capacity expansion and RAID migration
• Array Failover / Load Balancing

Sweet Fancy Moses! These guys need to hire a marketing person to get the word out. Luckily, thats where Scale datacom comes in. As an American Megatrends (aka: AMI) Partner, its now our job to spread the good word to anyone that may be in need of a cost-effective and feature-rich IP SAN and NAS solution.

Please give us a shout if you’d like to discuss in further detail and see the technology in action (they have an array online).

We’ve always had a good iSCSI SAN solution for our customers (read:EqualLogic) but have never had a true enterprise-class EMC-killer solution on the fibre side…until now.

Scale Datacom is very proud to announce that we are now a Compellent Business Partner and able to offer our customers Compellent’s entire line of award-winning virtualized SAN products.

The nice thing about Compellent is that their solution does it all: Fibre and iSCSI SAN as well as NAS in a single, easy-admin environment. Also, in addition to enterprise features like snapshots, thin provisioning and remote replication, Compellent also offers the ability to automatically migrate data across different storage tiers while data remains online. This ensures that your data is on the most performance and cost-appropriate hardware and makes Compellent a great choice for everything from MS Exchange and SQL to VMware and Web Operations.

Their recent win as InfoWorld’s “Best SAN of the Year 2008″ is further proof that this company has got a product that offers great performance, easy of use and value.

Contact us today to discuss if Compellent is the right solution for your needs.

And check out our new Compellent Mini-Site for more info on this exciting solution.

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.