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VMware Orchestrator: Driving the Train to VM Automation and Cloud adoption?

2010-03-07T12:53:03Z

Did you know that through the use of VMware Orchestrator within vSphere 4 you can automate the process of..

Converting disks to thin provisioned disks across your entire environment
Remove old snapshots, remove excess snapshots, remove snapshots of a given size
Discover and remove unused orphaned VMDKs
Upgrade virtual hardware
Turn on time synchronization
Provision and de-provision VM’s, based on load, based on temporary project demand, etc.
Disconnect all detachable devices, and on and on..

Then why no love, I ask? Is it for lack of awareness, lack of field engineer creativity or is the product truly ahead of its time? I can tell you its not due to setup complexities, which as a whole will run you about one twenty-fourth of your day. And that is a combination of first-time reading and doing…

As a by-product of the Dunes Acquisition back in 2007, it did however trip out of the starting gate as it was only offered as an add-on with Lifecycle Manager (which in my eyes got no traction). Fast forward 3 years, its free (great reposition) and rides a top the most successful and only true Cloud-OS out, vSphere 4. This drag and drop workflow componentry, can ease the burden of day to day mundane tasks for any pocket administrator. Manual tasks may be your thing, but it ain’t Orchestrator’s thing..

So my question is how big a role does/will Orchestrator play in private to public cloud federations? Is Orchestrator the true “sleeper cell” within VMware’s portfolio, positioned as free in one regard but really underpinning all of its future (and present?) automation products? To me the true value in Orchestrator has not been realized or even touted as much as it should, it certainly has not lived up to its potential. Can we as a partner and VMware as a vendor do more to educate customers on the true benefit of such automation? If we manage to pull this off maybe cloud federation wont be so “pie on the sky” at least from our customers perspective..

Please comment, I am curious of your thoughts!

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Explaining Heaven to Bears: RecoverPoint and SRDF a matter of Differences

2010-02-28T16:11:44Z

The number of remote replication technologies available from EMC today is dizzying. From MirrorView to SAN Copy, Open Replicator to Celerra Replicator, to RecoverPoint and SRDF, all have come about to fit a need or to fit a platform. The title of this post, Explaining heaven to bears is in most counts like explaining the different EMC replication products to someone not in the know. Its not a matter of intelligence or aptitude, its a matter of product overload or even product overlap in some cases. In a league of multi array, multi function devices it becomes imperative to reach down into the bowels of what is your replication product portfolio, spit-shine your two superlatives and march them forward. So, that being said let me take the liberty of highlighting those two: RecoverPoint and SRDF and their very distinguishable differences AND likenesses in sales guy talk : )

Note: this of course is not a lesson in SRDF or RP usability, functionality or design, its merely a thought on the future of replication within EMC. I have NO internal knowledge on this topic, only heresy and personal opinions.

How the two compare..

Both products are block based replication, offering both synch and async solutions. Which means both can provide zero data loss, or replicate over any geographical distance. In addition, new to both are support for three-site DR configurations or cascades. This typically involves synchronous replication from the primary to what's called a bunker site, and then asynchronous replication from the bunker site to a tertiary site. Hardware compression is available in the V-MAX engines to reduce the amount of data sent across the WAN link. RecoverPoint has long provided this capability and is very much one of its key selling points. Are there others? most definitely, but lets not get lost in the details.

Look there are more differences between the two engines than there are comparisons. My point of this comparison is to lead you down the path of a trimming in the EMC replication portfolio. Its got to happen, and these two darlings are the most likely candidates mainly from a covered platform perspective. Moving on..

How the two differ..

Lets take a bulleted approach here, my A.D.D tends to tail off my conclusions in a post in an abrupt manner, now is no exception…

SRDF is Symmetrix ONLY replication, RecoverPoint is a heterogeneous replication elucidation. Depending on the splitter involved RP can replicate to and from any array even the Symmetrix. There is a reason this is the first in the bunch, it is the single most defining difference between the two.
Protocol supportability: SRDF works with ESCON, FC, and GigE. RP works with FC and GigE.
As of current release, multipoint or replicating one source to many remote destinations (CLR is on the fence, talking remote here) is only supported within SRDF. This will change I am sure..
SRDF is array based within the data path, RP is appliance based out of the data path.
App consistent point and time (any time, any write) is clearly a feature of CDP technology. As far as I know the true downside to traditional “mirror” type replication is the inability to recover from logical corruption. Now I am sure there are certain ways to combat against this from a design perspective or perhaps mechanisms with the Symm or SRDF itself, I personally don’t know.
Others? You betcha, but these are large enough talking points to get my point across.

SRDF and RecoverPoint each represent the best in their specific areas of excellence. It is my belief and word on the street that after its all said and done, expect these two products to mold to any of your remote replication needs across the EMC platform divide. And that my friends is a good thing..

For more information between the two please check out the following, here.

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SANTap/RecoverPoint: Ornamental Grasses and Modus Operandi

2010-02-20T20:21:25Z

How are SANTap/Recoverpoint and ornamental grasses a like? Well think about this, grasses can be used in all different types of landscapes and climates. Whether its the tall prairie grass of the Midwest or the brown, itchy, sneezy bermandagrass in my backyard. Grasses..overcome..and integrate nicely into any environment.

Quick Facts..

Grasses are adaptable to changing conditions and can thrive in poorer quality soils than any other plant
Grasses seemly operate with little effort to maintain
Grasses come in many flavors, colors, textures, heights, etc.

As you can see the power of grass (ease up there Captain Toke, not that kind of grass) elevates beyond all that is indigestible in this world…

So what the hell am talking about? Lets flip the script..

Quick Facts

RecoverPoint is adaptable to changing conditions in your environment. Whether your WAN link is 10Mbps or 200 +Mbps, through a combination of BW reduction and WAN acceleration this whistle shines under any situation. Integration is non-disruptive to hosts which is a must in today's ever changing Data Center.
RecoverPoint seemly operates with little effort. Once the initial setup is complete, the system for the most part is always dynamically adapting to write changes to maintain consolidated or non-consolidated snapshot pushes to other appliances. You simply add additional journal volumes to maintain your RPO or another wards pop on the cruise kids you never realized replication could be so fluent.
RecoverPoint via SANTap has the power to replicate from and to nearly any array and nearly any OS. OSs and arrays of any type, vendor, color, texture or height : )

Ok, ok enough fun for the day…how much can one really talk about Ornamental grasses in one post, eh? I had fun..

Modus Operandi

Although all of these explanations and Operandi are covered here, I thought I would take a page from my engineering notes to give you, my faithful readers, a crib sheet for your future fabric splitter/RecoverPoint gigs. See you in the field!

Summary of what goes in what VSAN

The Front End VSAN will encompass the following:

Host initiator ports (HBA ports)
DVT (Data Virtual Target)

The Back End VSAN will encompass the following:

RPA’s (RecoverPoint Appliances)
Storage Targets
CVT (Control Virtual Target)
VI (Virtual Initiators)
AVT (Appliance Virtual Target)
Any host initiators that will not be under SANTap’s services but need to access Storage ports in the BE VSAN

What I have to create

FE VSAN, the assumption is the current VSAN in a non-recoverpoint environment will be the BE VSAN.
A DVT for each BE storage target in the FE VSAN
One CVT per BE VSAN
AVT in the BE VSAN
Zoning below..

Zoning that needs to take place

Create a host to storage zone in the FE VSAN. You copy the zoneset from the BE VSAN for use in the FE VSAN. Otherwise create new and zone all host initiators in the FE VSAN to the DVTs.
Once all host initiators are in the FE VSAN, all traffic should be flowing through the SANTap module. Now we can introduce RP, no impact to the host and completely transparent.
Zone CVT with VI and RPA ports
Create AVT, add all RPA ports to zone

Explanation of each Acronym Above

FE and BE VSANs – Front End and Back End Virtual SAN. In a simple ST implementation there is the concept of FE VSANs and BE VSANs. This is a requirement for SANTap in this proxy mode setup. Proxy mode basically means the host must exist in a different VSAN than the storage targets. These are setup on the MDS itself per fabric. The FE VSAN will contain all host initiator ports and the DVT or Data Virtual Target.

DVT- Data Virtual Target (FE). This is a virtual instance of your storage ports. Data sent to a DVT from a host is forwarded to both the BE storage ports and the RPA (which enables replication). You will have a DVT for each storage port on your BE array. The DVT communicates with the CVT and the BE storage ports.

CVT – Control Virtual Target (BE). This is the interface used by RecoverPoint to talk to the SANTap services. It also sends a copy of the write I/O to the RPA itself.

AVT – Appliance Virtual Target (BE). This allows for masking of the RPA’s themselves allowing it to mimic the host itself, ultimately given the RPA’s the same view of the SAN that the host see’s.

VI – Virtual Initiators (BE). This is the virtual instance of your host initiators. To the storage ports this looks as though the real host is writing to it. This gets created automatically when a host in the FE VSAN logs into the DVT.

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What is Secure Multi-Tenancy?

2010-02-17T04:33:59Z

Multi-Tenancy by the shear definition of the word has been around for years. Wikipedia states traditional multi-tenancy is, “..a principle in software architecture where a single instance of the software runs on a server, serving multiple client organizations (tenants).” It goes on to say, “..multiple customers share(ing) the same application, running on the same operating system, on the same hardware, with the same data storage mechanism. The distinction between the customers is achieved during application design, so that customers do not share or see each other's data.” Virtualization, naturally, has furthered this definition to allow for namely hardware abstraction which gives the appearance to the tenants of separate physical hardware. This in turn allows for more secure traffic and data isolation ultimately providing the underpinning for a new age of focused and secure Multi-Tenancy solutions…

The basis for this model is Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS. This model is nothing new and has existed, good or bad, in data centers for years. Again concepts are grouped around what we know and love about server virtualization. The ability to provision compute, memory, networking and storage to a customer for OS and application build without the need to manage the underlying physical components is key.

Clearly the greatest challenge to achieving and moving toward any cloud offering is guarantee of services provided (QOS/SLAs) and secure isolation. Not only that, this isolation must hold some level of accountability to be successful. If Jimmy the cloud administrator accidently deletes “Tenant X”, that must be track able.

As this new wrapper term comes to the forefront, partnerships are forming to provide referenced architectures that indeed (on the wrapper) meet these challenges. Market GO time will tell the real story.

The latest coalition between VMware, Cisco, and NetApp includes a tested and validated architecture to provide said solution, of which you can read about here. Although NetApp fulfills one of the pillars of this relationship, to me what they bring to the table is minimal. The real “beef” in this taco lies in the capabilities centered around all that Cisco and VMware provide, namely vSphere, vShield, UCS, Nexus and MDS switched infrastructure. The truth is, any enterprise capable storage vendor could fit this bill, although one with a suite of data center management tools would be peachy…

Now, where is Ionix to manage all this : )

What is SANTap? And how does it dance with RecoverPoint..

2010-02-14T12:57:51Z

There are number of different splitting mechanisms that RecoverPoint can use to facilitate its I/O copy for remote or local replication. We know this from previous posts that I have done that these split cowboys can be accomplished via Array, Host or Fabric splitters.

Each have their place, each have their limitations. The main purpose of the splitter is simple, take an I/O destined for primary storage and copy it to an appliance for transmission locally or remotely. Whether the splitting is occurring within in the array (Clariion), or on a host (windows only) or within a FC switch fabric (Cisco and Brocade) the outcome is essentially the same. Get it to the appliance, out of the data path, reliably, efficiently, without interruption to the primary data path..

So what is this wizardry?

A protocol (offered by Cisco) that allows for third party integration intra-fabric on their modular MDS line, that is the 9200 and the 9500 series switches. So independent of any array, the ability to transparently replicate, migrate, tier, etc. data, non-disruptively is made possible through this service. So imagine the possibilities here. By layering this solution within the fabric you essentially all but eliminate scalability issues while protecting your existing storage investments, all under the management of one interface. The SANTap service itself is provided through a few different means..

MDS 9000 SSM or Storage Services Module-This Gen1 module provides 32 FC ports along with 4 ASICs supporting two DPPs. A DPP or Data Path Processor is the engine supporting this virtualization service itself. It takes care of I/O interception and transfer. The number of DPPs and how a front end VSANs map to these is important in the initial design and will be discussed later.
MDS 9000 MSM or Multiservice Module- This module offers up 18 FC ports and 4 GigE ports. It sports one ASIC and one DPP, although the ASIC itself is based on a multicore architecture. The idea here is that it is capable or more capable than the Gen1 SSM modules in providing these storage virtualization services albeit in a more efficient fashion with less hardware.
MDS 9222i Multiservice Modular Switch- And finally, the MSM on the 9222i is integrated as part of the Supervisor module providing 18 FC ports and 4 GigE ports, again providing one ASIC and one DPP.

Requirements for the Dance

For the sake of brevity and in the interest of a multiple post stint, let me touch on the prerequisites for integration between these two sweethearts. All of which are here in case you were wondering.

One of the three modules above is needed to run this magic if you didn’t realize the ramp up to this section. Although on top of that with anything Cisco product you need additional licensing that isn't in your basic MDS purchase. They are as follows:
- For the ST services themselves you will need the “STORAGE_SERVICES_ENABLER_PKG” license. This is base whether you are running MSMs or SSMs, integrated or non-integrated you need this.
- If you are running the 18/4 MSM you will need the “STORAGE_SERVICES_184” license. One license per module per switch.
- If you are running the 9222i integrated 18/4 you will need the “STORAGE_SERVICES_9222I” license.
RecoverPoint software loaded and ready to roll. Port 23 open for communications between the switches and the RPA’s themselves. Zoning between your hosts and RPAs to your backend storage, ALL WITHIN THE SAME VSAN. Note: there is the concept of front end and back end VSANs that is part of any proxy mode ST implementation. So make sure up front all hosts, storage targets and RPA’s are in the same VSAN (more on this in the next post).
And the last point to finish out this post, supportability. To implement SANTap with for example, RP 3.2 SP1 or SP2 you MUST be at specific rev’s of SAN-OS/NX-OS and SSI code (module code) on your MDS switches or this will not work from what I have seen. This is a very important question you should ask of your partner or EMC, “What code of SAN(NX)-OS do I need to be at to support the version of RecoverPoint we will be running?” The code specific to your switch (9506, 9509, 9513, 9222i) is on Partner Web grouped according to the version of RecoverPoint. Please if you take nothing else from this, make sure these all line up in a supported fashion, here is a subset of what is supported on a 9513 for RP 3.2 SP1/SP2…Next up, SANTap concepts and perhaps a little design mixed in…

Moving up to spin down..

2010-01-25T05:13:12Z

As arrays become more and more dense and as energy costs trend upward, it becomes more imperative to take advantage of such features of Disk Spin Down Technology. As part of FLARE 29 on the EMC Clariion CX4 arrays, the ability to track disk idle time is not only an important feature but a necessity in multi-purpose arrays.

With the introduction of FAST, the dexterity to automatically tier to SATA as part of an archive or storage tiering initiative quickly becomes a win-win. Not only from the perspective of freeing up expensive FC or Flash disk, but also from the viewpoint of spinning down the disks supporting that rarely used archived data. This ultimately leads to reduced energy and cooling costs and summers in the Hamptons if you get my drift..

Now, here is an interesting table addressing DDSD and potential power savings. Of course take these numbers with a grain of salt, as these numbers are driven by application type and drive access. Note: this only takes into account power consumption from a drive perspective not any other componentry within the Clariion itself. Now the amount of power saved is directly harmonious to how much the disks spin in this idle mode. Only the electronics are active, the actual drive motor is not.

-Modes of Operation-

Well there really is only one with DSDT but further explanation is needed. So…the mode I speak of is Standby mode. The requirements for entering and exiting this mode, as well as limitations are quite simple and noted below. The drives can enter this mode when both Storage Processors report in that none of the drives in a RG have been accessed within a 30 minute interval, fixed value here..cannot change. But remember this, and this is important so listen up. Here is where LUN design and RG design are paramount. Senor FLARE only tracks I/O activity at the RG level NOT at the LUN level. Therefore if you have two LUNs within an RG, one is as active as a drunk bunny one is not, then chances are those drives will most likely never enter standby mode and you will be chumming around with egg on your face. Anyway, how about those requirements for candidacy…

Drives that are independent or absent from any RAID group are you guessed it, in like flynn
Drives that are members of a RAID group but have no LUNs bound on them, indeed.
Drives that are configured as hot spares after being idle for 30 minutes..you betcha
Only a “GO” on the CX4, sorry..
Eligibility of the vault drives for spin down..ummm..bite your tongue
Any layered app usage a top a RG is a recipe for non-supportedness..
And, only 1TB SATA II drives under FLARE 29’s tutelage are spin-down qualified <—this will change soon..

-What You Need to Know-

This technology can be managed one of two ways. One, at the storage system level and two, at the RAID group level. What this implies is if enabled at the storage system level, all drives not bound within a RAID group immediately benefit from this feature (assuming they meet the above limits). If enabled at the RAID group level, well do the math, a little more effort pursues but greater efficiencies can be realized.

A number of error checking and sniffing mechanisms run periodically to ensure drive reliability and data integrity as this type of drive access is a bit against the grain. Furthermore, the barrage of testing that disk vendors and EMC themselves do, to me is complete enough to put your trust in it. Now I am glazing over a lot of the details so please feel free to read the hot and heavy here. So in closing, drawing attention to capabilities that you already own as a Clariion/Celerra customer helps you gain greater efficiencies without the added expense, that again is a win-win…

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The @Sakacc Effect.. #EMC #vgeeksquad

2010-01-20T03:50:30Z

I write these words only to mark a period in time of great significance.

This time is notably not marked by one company’s great trek to find the next hot trend (although there is a bit of that as well). No, no..its about a quest..a quest to bring together top talent.

And who is spearheading these efforts, none other than @sakacc, the vGeek, the myth, author of some of the most influential blog posts in our tiny high-five community.

Side Note: You know it still amazes me when on a customers site that in passing I mention Chad’s site and his name is for the first time entering their ears (hence the post) ; )

Anyways its no secret that targeted intellect is becoming a formidable commodity in our neck of the woods. Any combination of VMware, EMC, and Cisco (VCE) experience seems to be flying off the shelf so to speak. That being said, the search is out, proliferation of the vGeek Squad is gaining momentum, if your interested and at the top of your game, follow the directions here..and please follow the directions here…

More details on EMC, Cisco open positions…

Now, who are the current/bygone casualties to Chad’s Squad of Squads? See below..Here is my current count, who am I missing? And don’t get me started on VMware’s recent pluckin’s…

@edsai – “The Squad” member? Need to verify

@CXI - “The Squad” member? Need to verify

@scott_lowe – Confirmed

@rick_vmwaretips – Confirmed

@johnavery - Confirmed

@daverdfw - Confirmed

Oh..and if the halls of EMC aren’t for you, but you still possess the enthusiasm, passion, and love for this crazy VCE stuff and beyond, then reach out to another like-minded individual…ME! Tweet (DM once added) me on twitter, @virtualtacit, for information on positions we (Varrow) are hiring for here in the Carolinas. Happy hunting no matter which route you engage in…our community needs you..Step out of the shadows and make a name for yourself.

Its only you against yourself, my friends..

Battle Ponderings: Year in Review (Y1)

2009-12-29T15:10:00Z

Wow, what a year! Some great partnerships are made public, “Cloud” is no longer a dust bowl term of ambiguity, and M&A continues. Not to mention on the home front, Varrow rocks the Casbah with a number of accolades. Its no doubt IT budgets in general were depressed but you would have barely noticed depending on the sector of IT you were in, namely storage and virtualization. So here are some notable moments in no particular order…

vSphere 4 Released-The long awaited vSphere 4 was released to the wild back in April to much acclaim. VMware’s fourth generation enterprise server virtualization product has made cloud its target, touting there is no better way to get there than with ESX under the hood. Larger maximums, thin provisioning, Distributed Virtual Switches, robust storage API’s for third-party integration, and Fault Tolerance are among some of the new additions to this stellar accomplishment.
VCE Partnership publically established, birthing Acadia-Campaign to righteousness, all hail the ever knowing Virtual Computing Environment coalition. Why not? why not collaborate to bring referenced architectures to the people and a seamless support experience to boot. Of course I speak of vBlock’s and Acadia, more info here, Hot to the Touch: The #VCE Coalition. This really is a great way to sprint into 2010, more on this topic to come.
Varrow Receives EMC Mid-Market partner of the year – Truly remarkable, just goes to show you “size ain’t sh#@”. Put any number of like minded, passionate individuals together and look out world. Just in case you don’t know, “..the partner of the of the year award recognizes valuable partners who have exceeded joint sales and business goals, achieved significant market penetration, an provided superior support throughout the year”, that’s nationwide BTW. Thanks EMC for your faith in us! And trust me, there is no brighter star to hitch your wagon to than the fine individuals at EMC, how can you not succeed!
Varrow Makes FAST 50 in the Triad Business Journal – They just keep coming you know? The FAST 50 recognizes 50 of the fastest growing private businesses in the triad area. For those that missed it, here is the snapshot from the biz journal. Another huge accomplishment for us. With these acknowledgements come a lot of blood, sweat and tears. You can guarantee in 2010 we will hit #1 (we came in fifth btw)
EMC buys DataDomain, bitch slaps NetApp in the process- Sometimes its just a matter of principle and frankly NetApp has an uncanny way of choking on acquisitions, so it was in Data Domain’s (and the shareholders) best interest to be acquired by EMC. Data Dedupe is all the rave, and although both companies at the time had competing products, building a portfolio of products for a particular technology has long been EMC’s approach. Looking for source based dedupe? They gotcha with Avamar. Scouting for target dedupe? In like flynn with DataDomain. Intent on dedup’ing your NFS and CIFS data? Say hello to the Celerra. Its clear (according to my data domain partner bulletin) that dedup is no longer a “feature”, its there in high-end and low-end arrays, primary, near-line and archived data. Its now a baked in, bona-fide, “it”? Come on, its a feature..how else do you subscribe it?
EMC RecoverPoint-Your neighborhood replication engine – For those that don’t follow this blog regularly (u should : ), RecoverPoint is a heterogeneous block based replication solution. It works with the vast majority of arrays out there (not just EMC), its out-of-band appliance based, with dedup and compression to boot. CDP is the surrounding industry buzzword meaning Continuous Data Protection, the ability to capture every write to a LUN with transmission being async or sync. It truly is one of the marvels within the replication arena and assured to gain increased traction in 2010. Personally we have done a number of implementations across NC and VA, ALWAYS to 100% customer satisfaction. I have done a far amount of blogging on the subject to say the least, so if interested please visit here. With supporting products such as Axxana, and VBlock replication just around the bend this product has no where to go but up.
The long awaited FAST is amongst us – ILM reincarnated + automation as I mention here, EMC FAST for Clariion in 60 Seconds or less, is the essence of this technology. This revival of storage tiering couldn't come at a better time. With data consumption growing at a staggering rate, the ability to automate data migration from one Tier to another, especially with the advancements in LP, Spin-down and even SSD technology, is a must. Although not really first to market, depending on who you talk to, it is as far as I know the first to support multi-platform (V-Max, Celerra, and Clariion).
FCoE is impacting DC’s more that originally thought, or at least conversations – At a time where “Data Center” technologies are king, FCoE has become the enabler for network/storage convergence. Very much likened to iSCSI, FCoE forces a host of advancements to the forefront, namely Data Center Bridging (DCB, or CEE or DCE), which in short provides a lossless transport in support of LAN/SAN confluence. Cisco led the industry stampede to this transport and clearly is benefitting the most at this juncture. Sometimes being first to the party has its benefit..
Twitter is the Social Media Titan 2009 is the year of Twitter. From would-be presidents to current presidents, to actors, to techies alike, Twitter and its infamous 140 character limit is very much mainstream. Relax your social media gag reflex and make the plunge if your not among us tweeples, although I would bet all of my followers
are indeed followers, right? Well, If you still don’t get it, check out the 5 phases of Twitter, shorthanded below or Twitter in Plain English. In 190 characters
TweetShrink when I need it>, Twitter is all about entering and leaving streams of information, you can’t be in the know for all of it, but be patient the information you happen to get locked into is invaluable and free!
Cisco drops A-bomb on industry as a whole.. – I’ll admit, my knowledge of UCS (Cisco’s Unified Computing System) is still in “back swing” mode. But I have seen the ripple effect across the technology landscape. Designed from the ground up with the intent of underpinning current and future cloud initiatives, UCS is NOT your average blade system, that is clear. This is your next generation Data Center platform, providing compute, storage, networking and virtualization all within a SPoG united framework. In one massive swoop Cisco has reinvented itself, challenged its deep partner relationships, and shaken the industry to the core. Go Cisco!
EMC cherry picks partner talent and then some – Lets see, @DuncanYB and @ClineK casualty’s of VMware’s siren, @CXI, @scott_lowe and @edsai all swept up by EMC. This is a serious amount of cerebral muscle coming aboard an already stacked international squad. And with the #VCE partnership coming on strong, the writing was on the wall in a non-doom and gloom, non-idiom sort of way (?). Needless to say an @sakacc army was forming it seems…not really sure what to think of it beyond positive ju-ju for the entire ecosystem.

Well there you have it my faithful followers, the second installment of Battle Ponderings (from weekly to yearly-man I sux) I have truly enjoyed the last year we have spent together, you made me stronger, the technology keeps my fuel packs lit, and well the rest will be blogged or tweeted about.. : 0 )

Happy Holidays Everyone! See you in the year of opportunity, lets shoot high!

Is the Future of #vBlock Replication, #RecoverPoint?

2009-12-22T17:36:02Z

I’d like to think so or perhaps its written in the stars already (hence the image) …but has replication even been discussed? Sure there is a lot of talk about easing the transition from “private clouds” to “public clouds” but what about replicating internal private clouds 2 private clouds, clearly this is more approachable of a subject then the aforementioned.

Why RecoverPoint?

Besides the obvious plus’s of which I have hooted and hollered over, these points seem to make sense…

Cisco fabric integration already exists, inline with VCE partnership
Clearly best of breed in EMC’s replication portfolio. vBlock consists of BoB referenced architectures.
One replication engine across all vBlock architectures.
R&D heavy, tighter integration with VMware and EMC product line

Help Please?

Will RecoverPoint futures include support for the Celerra line? or vBlock0 that is, or will we be forced to use Celerra Replicator? I am talking support for file based replication.
Will there be support for replication amongst the vBlock Infrastructure packages (ie. vBlock0 to vBlock1 to vBlock2)?
Will RP be a plate-able addition with each vBlock tier? Or mandated across each tier? Or will native replication hold its own?
Does this complicate vBlock architectures or not? Does this ease backend support for Acadia?
Are there “Cluster” configurations for individual vBlock’s? Is RecoverPoint the enabler for this capability?

To me it seems so obvious to include RP as part of these “vBlock-Replicated” configs, what do you think?

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#EMC #FAST for #CLARiiON in 60 Seconds or less..

2009-12-19T03:10:02Z

Fasting for FAST? Well there’s nothing fast about its introduction to market. But as the adage goes, Good things come to those who wait, and wait we have. So what is FAST? Fully Automated Storage Tiering or another wards ILM reincarnated, with the difference being full policy driven automation that is…

Pool resources of storage
Define policy
Apply to an application
Let ‘er Rip-Sounds simple huh?

Is FAST one product? No, FAST is a suite of products rather. For the CLARiiON that includes FAST LUN Migrator, Navi-Analyzer, as well as Navi QOS. In conjuction with Navi analyzer, LUN migrator examines analysis information to target LUN profiles that would benefit from movement to Flash for better performance or movement to SATA for lower storage costs. The core mechanism behind this migration is Virtual LUN technology. Technology that has been apart of the CLARiiON line for a few generations now and has certainly proven itself. FAST is configured via navicli, supported on CX4 arrays running FLARE 29 and Navi-Analyzer.Its important to note that FAST on CLARiiON’s is unidirectional meaning you can only migrate from FC to SATA disk or FC to Flash. Of course this only applies to CLARiiON’s, bidirectional movement of data is supported on the Symmetrix and Celerra line. And quite the contrary, this doesn't mean you cant manually migrate a LUN back to FC once the automated migration has completed. I am sure futures will change this one-sidedness, we can only hope..

What to Expect..

Here’s the step-by-step approach (albeit high level) for CLARiiON CX4 FAST: 1.The measurement period for analysis of Fiber Channel LUNs is defined. 2.Analysis is run. 3.Results are assessed and migration of data to Flash and/or SATA is executed.

Futures..

Sub-LUN migrations are planned late 2010 as well as better alignment between FAST implementations across the various platforms (Symmetrix, Celerra and CLARiiON). That’s it! Look I only got 60 Seconds…