Author Archives: samshouse8

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

May 1, 2018

Posted under

Dell Technologies World 2018

Comments

1 Comment

Introducing PowerMax

Below is a summary of the session I did on VMAX at Dell Technologies World.  Introducing PowerMax!!

  • PowerMax, NVMe driven storage array
  • 10M IOPs, 150GB/sec
  • 16m snaps
  • Compression, dedupe, D@RE
  • 6x9s uptime
  • PowerMax 2000 and PowerMax 8000
    • 7M IOPS and 10M IOPs
    • 1PBe and 4PBe
    • 64 FC/iSCSI and 256 FC/FICON/iSCSI
  • Dual Ported Active/Active
  • 48 CPU cores and 72 CPU Cores
  • 7TB NVMe Drives
  • True NDU, No impact to hosts for upgrades
  • Service levels: Diamond, Silver, Bronze
  • SnapVX, Protect Point
    • 256 snaps and 1024 linked
    • Protect against accidental deletion
  • SRDF
    • Synch, Metro and Async
    • Online device expansion
    • ORS interoperability
    • SRDF Metro: Add, Remove, and Move devices
  • Non-Disruptive Migrations
    • Free
  • Enhanced Mainframe data services
  • ProtectPoint integration to DataDomain
  • Unisphere for PowerMax 9.0
    • HTML5 Based
  • eNAS capabilities
  • 3:1 Average Inline Data Reduction
  • 2019 introduce Real-time machine learning
  • Machine Learning engine
  • NVMe protocol used
  • 3D XPoint drives coming in 2019
  • NVMe + SCM in 2019
Advertisements
Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 30, 2018

Posted under

Dell Technologies World 2018

Comments

Leave a comment

VxRack FLEX: Introduction and What’s New

Below is a summary of the session I did on VxRack Flex at Dell Technologies World.

  • ScaleIO is now VxRack Flex OS
  • Choice of Hyper-visor/bare metal
  • High performance for applications and databases
  • Server SAN / 2-layer architecture
  • Multi-hypervisor / Bare Metal
  • 14th Generation adds 2.3x IOPs, 250% more bandwidth
  • Management and Monitoring
    • VxFlex OS, VMware vCenter, Vision Intelligent Operations, ESRS
  • Data Protection with DPS Suite, Avamar and Netowrker with Data Domain and RP4VMs

Hardware

  • Dell PowerEdge 14th Gen
  • Nexus 9K ToR
  • 9K access switch
  • 3k management
  • VxRack Controller
  • Completely redundant
  • R640 and R740XD options

Software

  • VxFlex OS (Formely ScaleIO)
  • Choice of hypervisor
Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 4, 2018

Posted under

Rubrik

Comments

1 Comment

Rubrik Polaris

Today Rubrik has announced a new platform called Rubrik Polaris.  What is Rubrik Polaris? Rubrik Polaris is a consumable resource that you tap into, rather than a pile of infrastructure that you setup and manage.  Essentially it is a SaaS solution that runs in the public cloud with the ability to connect into all your Rubrik instances, see all the data as well as search the data, creating a unified solution for Cloud Data Management.  Polaris is just the platform, the goodies comes in the form of modules.

Rubrik Polaris GPS

The first module for Polaris is Polaris GPS. Some of the major features are:

  • Command and Control – Command and Control all of you CDM instances, globally
  • Monitor for Compliance – You can leverage alerts to dig into issues
  • Open and documented RESTful APIs – Automate and orchestrate all of Rubrik from a single entry point with the visibility of a global data footprint
  • Create and Enforce Business SLAs – Create and enforce SLAs based on geography, installation, compliance needs, planned growth, data migrations, etc

I look forward to learning more about the future development of modules for Polaris.  Rubrik continues to be an innovator in Cloud Data Management!!

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

August 29, 2017

Posted under

NetApp, VMworld 2017

Comments

Leave a comment

NetApp HCI. Ready for NEXT. Enterprise-Scale Hyper Converged Infrastructure

Below is a summary of the session “NetApp HCI. Ready for NEXT. Enterprise-Scale Hyper Converged Infrastructure.”  This is an interesting product and I look forward to learning more.

NetApp HCI Architecture

  • Integrated Data Services
  • Data Fabric Services
  • 3rd party services
  • VMware vCenter
  • Solidfire Element OS
  • VMware ESXi

NetApp HCI Appliance

  • Chassis or nodes
  • 4 nodes per chassis
  • Compute or storage nodes
  • Minimum
    • 2 chassis, 6 nodes
    • 4 storage, 2 compute
    • 2 expansion slots

Provides Granular Control at VM Level with and without VVOLS.  Scale Compute and storage independently.

Compute Node

  • 3 different sizes
    • 16 – 36 cores for VMware
    • 384GB -768 GB memory
    • 4x 10/25 GbE and 2x 1Gbe for networking

Storage Node

  • 3 different sizes
    • 8 – 18 cores
    • 1x240GB MLC boot device
    • 4x 10/25 GbE and 2x 1Gbe for networking
    • SSD 6x480GB, 6x960GB, 6×1.92TB

NetApp Deployment Engine

  • Rack and Stack to Ready for VMs
  • HCI plugin to vCenter
  • Lightweight management VM
  • Proactive support with Active IQ

Storage Deployment via API.

Checkbox in the UI which shows the commands and can be exported.

NetApp ONTAP Select

  • vNAS on NetApp HCI
  • leverage single platform for block access and NAS File
  • Dynamically add capacity
Standard

Posted by

Posted on

August 29, 2017

Posted under

VMworld 2017

Comments

Leave a comment

VMworld 2017 Day 1 Summary

This is my 1st ever VMworld and Day 1 was a doozy… Lots of things happening and it seems like the day goes by in no time.  Below is some of the areas I targeted day 1.

General Session

Start of the day!! A lot of good stuff with announcements on new products and partnerships.  VMware is ramping up their security portfolio as well and partnerships with AWS.

Solutions Expo

A great place of networking with Vendors, Partners and Customers.  The show floor is massive with tons of vendors here giving presentations and demo of what their products bring to the table.  I spent a good amount of time interacting and learning. I spent a lot of time around Data Protection as well as the Storage Vendors. Did I also mention drawings and Swag!!

Sessions

Sessions are all day and a wide variety from NSX to Cloud to coding to SDDC.  Lots going on with these. I targeted the SDDC around ScaleIO and VSAN.  Great opportunity to learn from some of the great minds in the business as well as the product owners

Events in the Evening

There is a lot of events (parties) in the evening.  To name a few: Netapp, Zerto, Veeam Cloud.  These are always a great way to network and relax from a long day.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

August 28, 2017

Posted under

ScaleIO, VMworld 2017

Comments

Leave a comment

The Software Defined Storage Revolution is Here: Discover Your Options

The Software Defined Storage Revolution is Here: Discover Your Options

Here are some of the highlights of this session I attended

3 different types of SDS

  1. Retrofit SDS
    1. SDS in name only
    2. Not Scale Out or pay as you grow
    3. Can’t do Hyperconverged
  2. Vertically Integrated
    1. Ease of Use
    2. Managed by VM Admin
    3. Optimize resources at signal platform level
    4. Homogenous VM and heterogeneous workload
  3. General Purpose
    1. Flexibility, performance, efficiency paramount
    2. Managed by VM/Storage admin
    3. Optimize resources across Data Center
    4. Heterogeneous VM/OS, heterogeneous workload

VMware vSAN Design Point

  • VM-Centric management
  • Integrated with vCenter
  • x86 Server independent

vSAN Feature Progress

  • Native Security
  • Always-On Protection
  • Enhanced Stretched Clusters
  • Cloud Analytics
  • Intelligent Operations
  • Higher Performance
  • VUM Integration

vSAN Deployment Options

  • Dell EMC VxRail Appliance
  • VMware vSAN Ready Nodes

Dell EMC ScaleIO

  • Abstract – Pool – Automate
    • Abstract the local storage out of each server including, HDD, SSD and NVMe
    • Pools all the storage resources together, leaving no resources standard
    • Automatically allocates and balances resources based upon each application need
  • ScaleIO Data Client and Data server running on any x86 server
    • SDC servers the I/O request of the resident host application
      • Block driver
      • Installed in the hypervisor kernel
    • Deploy ScaleIO your way
      • Traditional Two-layer server and storage
      • One layer co-resident
      • Modern and traditional mixed
    • Consume ScaleIO Your Way
      • Build
        • ScaleIO software
      • Buy and Build
        • ScaleIO ready Node
      • Buy
        • VxRack System FLEX
      • ScaleIO is ideal for
        • Array Consolidation
        • Private Cloud
        • OpenStack/DevOps/Containers

 

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

August 17, 2017

Posted under

Cohesity

Comments

Leave a comment

Cohesity Orion 5.0 Overview

Cohesity has just announced Orion 5.0 and I wanted to give an overview of the release below.  I plan to do a few more posts going in-depth on each topic.

C3000 Dense Storage Nodes

  • Up to 183TB raw in a 2U node
  • Capacity optimized for data-intensive workloads
  • Can be added into a cluster that has C2000
  • Intelligent data placement
    • Data intensive workloads go on the C3000
    • Compute intensive workloads on C2000

Files and Objects

  • Multiprotocol access
    • NFS, SMB, S3 access
  • Global deduplication
    • Only globally deduped S3 object storage
  • Global indexing and Google-like search
  • User and file system quotas with audit logs

Data Protection

  • Hyper Visor Support now includes:
    • Hyper-V 2012R2, 2016
    • AHV
    • KVM
    • vSphere 6.5
  • Database protection now includes:
    • Oracle RMAN with RAC and ASM
    • MS SQL with Windows clustering, AAG
    • Either Physical or Virtual
    • Able to quickly clone and copy and attach those to other database instances
  • NAS Support with the ability to Snapshot based data protection now includes:
    • Pure FlashBlade
    • NetApp
    • Isilon
  • Physical Support:
    • File and volume level backup for Linux
    • Bare-metal restore for Windows

Cloud

  • Integrate with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud
  • 3 different ways
    • Cloud Archive or replacing Tape with Cloud
    • Cloud Tier
      • Base data temporarily in the cloud
    • Cloud Replicate
      • Replicate to Cohesity DataPlatform Cloud Edition
      • GA on Azure
      • Limited Availability on AWS

SpanFS and SnapTree

  • 3 key layers to SpanFS
    • Access
      • This is where you support, NFS, SMB, S3 and DataProtection
    • Metadata Store
      • SnapTree
      • Consistent NoSQL Store
      • The IO Engine lives at this layer as well
    • Data Store
      • SSDs
      • HDD
      • Cloud Storage

You can find out more at http://www.cohesity.com/blog/introducing-cohesity-orion/