Scale Datacom’s Data Storage Blog

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.

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.

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.

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.