Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN arrays have been very popluar storage choices for virtualization. Today's chat will feature some experts from EqualLogic to disucss the key benefits of EqualLogic and some of the features that work so well with virtualization.

Technical Community - Background Reading

Dell EqualLogic Auto Snapshot Manager VMware Edition
Dell EqualLogic Auto Replication and VMware Site Recovery Manager

Deploying Citrix XenServer 5.0 wtih Dell EqualLogic PS Series Storage Whitepaper
Integrating Dell EqualLogic SANs with Citrix XenServer Solution Brief
XenServer and EqualLogic Integration Demo

EqualLogic FAQ
Discussion:Layer 2 Networks and EqualLogic SANs
EqualLogic PS Series Quick Reference

Chat Transcript

DELL-ScottH	Hello Jay
Jay	Hey Scott
DELL-ScottH	How's your day so far?
Jay	So far so good
Jay	How about you?
DELL-ScottH	Tired, think my wife has got me sick; she was in Columbia so who knows what the heck she brought back! :-)
Jay	Lol
	DELL-ToddM joined.
DELL-ScottH	Hey Todd
DELL-ScottH	Just griping about my wife getting me sick
DELL-ScottH	Didn't realize we are up to 42 followers on the official delltechcenter twitter account—that is nice
DELL-ScottH	Thought it might take some time since we tweet from the geeks account more
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DELL-ScottH	Hello astorrs
astorrs	Hi Scott, Todd—just got the tweet in time. :)
DELL-ScottH	Looks like Todd is having some problems
astorrs	I usually slip out to lunch 5 minutes before you send them :)
DELL-ScottH	Or he doesn't like you ::laugh
astorrs	lol
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DELL-ScottH	Could be light today; the storage "experts" are all at thddll ae
DELL-ScottH	At a conference in Dallas
DELL-ScottH	Hey Jason
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DELL-ScottH	So we'll have to pretend to be the experts
DELL-ScottH	Hello iSCSI
DELL-ScottH	Jason, you get my email on wiping out the MD3000i?
iscsisanse	Hi, first time here...gonna hang out a bit
JasonPowell	Scott - yes! Thanks!
DELL-ScottH	Lurk and hang , it's all free
DELL-ScottH	Todd just called from the lab...there he is
DELL-ScottH	You working now, Todd?
DELL-ToddM	Hello, Can you hear me now?
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DELL-ScottH	Hello Jose
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DELL-ScottH	Yes
Jose_Ricardo	Hello
DELL-ToddM	Hello everybody!
DELL-ScottH	Can hear you now
DELL-ScottH	Hello rbell
DELL-ToddM	Welcome to today's chat
Jose_Ricardo	I can’t hear
DELL-ToddM	This is part 2 of our Selecting Storage for Virtualization series of chats
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DELL-ScottH	Hey Tim
DELL-ScottH	Here's the link on our site that consolidates this chat series: http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/selecting+storage+for+virtualization
DELL-ToddM	The focus for today is Benefits of EqualLogic for virtualization
DELL-ScottH	Feel free to jump in anytime with comments / questions
rbell	Hello Scott!
DELL-ToddM	We very much encourage questions and discussion—so jump in any time
DELL-ScottH	It's not considered rude in a chat; see how I'm doing it to Todd? :-)
DELL-ToddM	This week we have an EqualLogic expert: Tim Sherbak from Dell EqualLogic
DELL-ScottH	He'll slap me later
DELL-ToddM	Tim, Can you intro yourself?
DELL-ToddM	FYI: We like to keep the chat on topic (at least at the beginning), but if you have other questions or topics we can try to address those as well—especially in the second half of the chat
DELL-ToddM	Good to see fellow tweeter Jasonpowell!
DELL-ScottH	Yeah Twitter is cool: www.twitter.com/dellservergeeks
JasonPowell	*takes a bow*
tsherbak	Hi Guys, I'm a member of the solutions marketing group in the EqualLogic marketing team focused on virtualization. I've been with EqualLogic (now Dell) for about 3 years.
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DELL-ScottH	Hello Tony!
Dell-Tony_A	I made it...seems the VPN was the problem.
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DELL-ScottH	Ward!
DELL-ScottH	Jason, thanks for the retweet
DELL-ToddM	Hey Ward!
ward_wolfram	Hello Scott...Hope you do not mind me joining today's session
tsherbak	Customers are particularly motivated by EqualLogic in a virtual environment because of the simplicity, flexibility, and lower TCO, the same reasons that people are virtualizing in the first place.
DELL-ScottH	Glad to see you here...reminder to all, use "action" "recent room history" to catch up on the chat
DELL-ToddM	I believe that Jason is using EqualLogic; is it with VMware?
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tsherbak	What customers are quick to discover is that virtualized storage is a natural complement to virtual servers. That is, both are “scale out” architectures that make it easy to build a scalable, dynamically reconfigurable, resilient infrastructure upon which to base their operational application workloads.
JasonPowell	We have three Equal arrays at my day job...using VMware Server (about to migrate to ESXi), and I work with Alan Hunt of Vr6 Systems as an Equal VAR on the side :-)
DELL-ScottH	FYI, Ward's got a demo of EqualLogic and EMC configuration comparisons—this page at the bottom: - http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/ebc+demos+and+presentations
DELL-ScottH	Welcome Stephen
DELL-ScottH	"action" .. "recent room history" will catch you up
ward_wolfram	Tim, is Equal doing work with Microsoft Hyper-V? Is there going to be any ASM integration into it like there is with VMware?
JasonPowell	We choose Equal shortly after we began to virtualize servers. Was a no brainer.
DELL-ScottH	@jason , don't short yourself, I think you've got a big brain :-)
DELL-ToddM	Jason, can you say why you chose EqualLogic? Was there a specific reason?
JasonPowell	I blogged about our SAN research (two years ago). We looked at many vendors (Lefthand, Equal, IBM, Intel, EMC)
JasonPowell	What Blew us away was the easy setup and management in Equal
JasonPowell	Equal dude came on site and inside of 10 minutes the array was up and running
DELL-ScottH	FYI, Jason's blog is here: http://jpowell.blogs.com/ Search on EqualLogic; lots of posts
tsherbak	EqualLogic is very active with Microsoft Hyper-v. As many know, we've been heavily deployed in Microsoft environments for many years (WHCL-certified, Simple SAN designated, VSS integration, etc.). With Hyper-V today, our advanced multipathing DSM (device-specific module) can be integrated in with the iSCSI stack in Hyper-V. In addition, our advanced VSS integration can be employed today in Hyper-V environments using Auto-Snapshot Manager/Microsoft Edition. In this scenario, the ASM/ME module runs in the guest OS using the native iSCSI SW initiator in the guest OS. As we move forward, we'll have more advanced integration as well, as we focus on native ASM/ME integration into the Hyper-V layer.
JasonPowell	Other vendors strongly recommended we go get training (several days) on how to set up and manage.
DELL-ScottH	Oooo my, Tim wrote a book :-)
DELL-ToddM	I agree that EqualLogic is very easy to set up and manage
astorrs	Thanks for the link to the EMC versus EqualLogic demo Ward did. I'm intimately familiar with EMC provisioning (and the number of steps required), so it's nice to see a one-for-one comparison against EqualLogic.
DELL-ToddM	I just published a whitepaper with Hyper-V and EqualLogic - http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/hyper-v+performance+on+r900+with+six-core+intel+xeon+whitepaper
JasonPowell	We were also very impressed by the feature set; no extra $$ for new features, and the array was built with great redundancy planned.
DELL-ScottH	Quick tip - right click on links
DELL-ToddM	I wonder if Stephen was caught by the need to right-click the link to avoid exiting the chat?
stephenSFLC	Truly :)
DELL-ToddM	Sorry, Stephen - I should have warned you
JasonPowell	Yeah...the single click is very annoying on the links :(
DELL-ScottH	Hello crew, welcome back, Stephen, my last tip was right-click :-)
tsherbak	We've also recently made announcements of advanced integration in the VMware environment . In May we announced integration of EqualLogic with VMware's Site Recovery Manager that automates disaster recovery in a VMware environment, leveraging the EqualLogic auto-replication feature of the arrays to replicate the SAN-based volumes. We've also just recently introduced Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition, which uses SAN-based snapshots integrated with VMware snapshots for online data protection. Lastly, at VMworld, VMware announced their vStorage initiative, which we are very involved in.
DELL-ScottH	Oh, need to clear out that old room; was from when we purchased EqualLogic months ago
tsherbak	Todd, I saw your whitepaper on Hyper-V and EqualLogic. Nice stuff. Thanks for the effort.
DELL-ToddM	I put some links up to demos of the EqualLogic integration with SRM and Auto-Snapshot Manager here: http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/selecting+storage+for+virtualization
DELL-ToddM	This was the first chance I had to do some performance testing with the EqualLogic arrays—and I was impressed
tsherbak	Citrix has also done some advanced integration of XenServer with the EqualLogic arrays, providing native provisioning and snapshot support.
DELL-ToddM	I was able to max out the performance of a 24-core R900 server :)
tsherbak	R900 is truly one of the bad boys of computing these days.
DELL-ToddM	Tim, I was surprised by the depth of the integration with XenServer. There is a new whitepaper that gives the details: http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/partnerdocs/citrix-xenserver-equallogic_final.pdf
JasonPowell	It might also be of interest to note that Exagrid now supports EqualLogic arrays for data deduplication: http://www.exagrid.com/news_and_events/press_releases/dell_equallogic_iscsi_storage_with_new_exagrid_de-duplicating_gateway.asp
ward_wolfram	Tim, besides the DSM part, is there any support for Hyper-V VV snapshots (consistent) today like there is with VMware? (I do not know much about Microsoft Hyper-V).
tsherbak	By the way, there's a webcast tomorrow with one of our ASM/VE beta customers, River City Bank. You can sign up for this webcast here: http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=117521&s=1&k=c971d77a38169ffb8ebf610bf21dafe8&partnerref=techcenterchat
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DELL-ToddM	Oh No!
astorrs	Well that's gonna make the chat a short one. :D
DELL-ToddM	Surely he didn't go to sign up right now…
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DELL-ToddM	Hey Tim
DELL-ScottH	Did that link work? :-)
DELL-ScottH	Actually it didn't for me
tsherbak	I just got booted off when I linked to that. I'll try posting a link again.
DELL-ToddM	One other question that I get a lot is when to choose MD3000i versus EqualLogic
DELL-ScottH	Just right-click on it; you won't get kicked
JasonPowell	Todd M, I get that question too!
Jose_Ricardo	Very good question, Todd; I had that question too this week
DELL-ToddM	I have an answer, but I wanted to know what everybody else thought
JasonPowell	In fact I have a conference call tonight at 9 pm about MD3000i Vs Equal
JasonPowell	I've not had enough time to play with our MD3000i to make a review
JasonPowell	Obviously the 2 TB volume limit on the MD3000i could be an issue
JasonPowell	And from what I can gather the MD3000i holds the array configurations on the first four drives
DELL-ScottH	What's the difference in number of Ethernet ports out the back?
JasonPowell	Rather than the controllers
DELL-ToddM	The MD3000i and EqualLogic have different architectures
ward_wolfram	MD3000i will not have the 2 TB limit in the new FW released sometime in the next 3-4 weeks.
DELL-ScottH	Ward, I talked to the devs and that got pushed back
Dell-Tony_A	Also, remember the value-add of ASM/VE and SRM for a complete DR solution.
DELL-ScottH	@ward, sending you e-mail now
DELL-ToddM	The MD3000i has two ports per controller; with two controllers in the main MD3000i array
tsherbak	Webcast is linked here (hopefully this works) DP/DRW/EqualLogic and VMware with River City Bank: http://www.equallogic.com/news/release_display.aspx?id=640
DELL-ToddM	To expand the MD3000i , you can add up to simple MD1000s (no controllers, just Jbods)
DELL-ToddM	With EqualLogic the array has two controllers each with three ports
ward_wolfram	Todd, what special integration with XenServer did you experience when using Equal? Are there API's used to do unique management things?
JasonPowell	The MD3000i setup is not nearly as clean and simple as the Equal IMHO
DELL-ToddM	To expand you add more arrays each with their own controllers
DELL-ScottH	Tim, that link worked for me
DELL-ToddM	But here is the cool part: the additional arrays are simply added to the existing group, and the data is automatically rebalanced across all group members
iscsisanse	The major differences lie in the level of automation and virtualization. With Equal, network load balancing and page-based volume load balancing across a group are automated: MD still requires some manual configuration
DELL-ToddM	The MD requires more knowledge and planning to set up and manage because it is more manual
tsherbak	Ward, ASM/ME works in a Hyper-V environment. You would use the iSCSI SW initiator in the virtual server itself to attach to the iSCSI-based volume.
JasonPowell	Todd M., and it's worth noting to add another Equal array into your group requires all of three fields of information :-)
Dell-Tony_A	Todd M is right! Remember that scalability in the overall performance of the SAN for VM is very important. Equal is a very scalable solution and allows...it is the total package :)
astorrs	When adding a new array to an existing group, do you set the priority of the data rebalancing? Or does it just operate at a background process, etc?
DELL-ToddM	I actually recommend EqualLogic for IT departments with less experience in SANs because it is so much easier
tsherbak	It’s a background process that runs at a lower priority to host I/O processing, so the time it takes can vary.
DELL-ToddM	MD3000i actually requires more knowledge and planning to decide how to set up RAID groups and virtual disks for each server
ward_wolfram	Tim, that is what I do with VMware also; to create application data consistency...I was wondering about the VM itself; is this what you were referring too? Thanks!
iscsisanse	Astorrs, you have the option to wait until RAID policy is completed before load balancing or place in group and allow group placement, load balancing, and RAID policy to occur concurrently
tsherbak	Ward, in the currently shipping ASM/ME, the use case is for the application data sets, not for the virtual machines themselves.
JasonPowell	Can anyone confirm where the array configuration is stored on the MD3000i? I've heard it's the first four drives on the array.
DELL-ToddM	OK, so after we beat up the MD3000i here, is the key advantage lower cost, good iSCSI array, good feature set for entry level array
ward_wolfram	I can set up an MD3000i in 30 minutes. Dell EBC does remote demos on the product and setup. The wizards in MD3000 are pretty good, but it does take little reading to work through it. Maybe the Techcenter and Dell|EBC can create a recording of it.
DELL-ToddM	Ward, let's do it!
ward_wolfram	Todd, okay, we have an MD and stuff ready...I'll get with you to create.
DELL-ScottH	Capture that demo, Ward, and I promise it will get posted quicker than the last one
astorrs	Jason, why do you see that as a problem? It's fairly common for small-midrange arrays to write the array configuration in the first handful of disks.
JasonPowell	I just bought an MD3000i as second-tier storage. Equal arrays are for our critical data and VMs, and MD3000i for archival storage needs (we are eating lots of space for video production)
DELL-ScottH	Yes, same way that IBM does it with their smaller SANs
ward_wolfram	Tim, is there much Equal effort to integrate with XenServer too?
JasonPowell	Astorrs, it makes me nervous that if you were to lose those drives you could lose the array configuration. Am I being overly nervous about that?
astorrs	Well it's fairly common for vendors to use that method; I'll speak to the EMC way of doing it since Dell resells that
DELL-ScottH	I think sustaining a four-drive loss at once, and those specific four drives are a pretty rare round-to-zero case
tsherbak	Citrix has done a nice job integrating XenServer 5.0 with EqualLogic arrays that just released this month. More discussions are underway
JasonPowell	I've had two friends lose their array configurations (using other SAN products), and they went through much pain to restore data
JasonPowell	So the configuration is replicated across all four drives? I was worried it was being maybe stripped across them somehow
DELL-ScottH	Yes, replicated
ward_wolfram	I would assume the MD3000 configuration is mirrored. Todd or Tim, do you know? If so, the odds of a double disk failure are extreme. Statistics show that the exposure to a drive rebuild is less than an entire site failure. Thus, your backup processes would kick into play.
DELL-ToddM	I don't know how it is stored; trying to look it up now
JasonPowell	Again, I'm more familiar with Equal; I've got a demo array that I often take all the drives out and shuffle them around, and the array could care less ;-)
ward_wolfram	Jason, yeah, MD has drive roaming too; can mix them up...unlike EMC
ward_wolfram	Dell PERC has drive roaming too...the only thing I can think of as far as Dell storage not supporting drive roaming is Dell|EMC
JasonPowell	Ward, good to note. Thanks
ward_wolfram	Thanks everyone, I learned much today. I hope to return next session. Ward
DELL-ToddM	We are about out of time!
DELL-ToddM	Thanks to Tim for his expertness today on EqualLogic
tsherbak	You can sign up for online EqualLogic demos at www.equallogic.com/demo
tsherbak	All the best
astorrs	Jason (sorry for the small essay), the first five disks in all Clarion are called vault drives. The vault basically includes the "save area," which is where the controller write cache gets written to in the event of a total power loss (there is battery backup—a "standby power supply"—to allow for this to occur). Then you have the Persistent Storage Manager LUN (or PSM LUN), which stores the configuration: disks, RAID groups, snapview configuration, etc. And the Flare database LUN, which contains the Flare code (the OS of the array), which gets loaded into the controllers at startup. The five drives lose about 33 GB of disk space each right now to account for this; the actual RAID types used are complex (a combination of different RAID1 sets that then mirror each other over different disks)
astorrs	I would assume the MD3000i does something similar (although maybe simpler)—as do most of the other vendors who store configuration on disk
JasonPowell	Ugh!
DELL-ToddM	I will get an answer to how the MD3000i saves its configuration and post it to the home page for this chat and the MD3000i page on this site as well
JasonPowell	Another question I get is real-world performance difference between SATA and near-line SAS in the MD3000i
DELL-ScottH	Am reading the sourcebook now, and was hoping to have an answer by now
DELL-ToddM	Or if somebody beats me to it, I will give them a compliment!
JasonPowell	haha :-)
astorrs	One last question, does every Equal model use the same management interface (top to bottom along the product line)?
DELL-ScottH	Found it, reading paragraph now to decipher
DELL-ToddM	Jason, I will look into that one as well. We had a similar question a couple of weeks ago about SAS versus SATA on the discussion board
DELL-ToddM	Yes, EqualLogic uses the same management interface for all
JasonPowell	astorrs - yes
JasonPowell	And it's a Web GUI unlike the MD3000i
astorrs	Good, it looks almost idiot proof :)
DELL-ScottH	MD3000i controllers store configuration metadata in a private 512 MB region on every configured physical disk. This metadata area contains physical disk state and status information, virtual disk state and status information, and controller and subsystem information. The metadata on each physical disk stores that physical disk’s state and status, the worldwide name of its disk group, the virtual disks it contains, and the definitions for those virtual disks. Additionally, one physical disk in each disk group (with a minimum of three in each storage system) stores the controller- and subsystem-level information.
DELL-ToddM	Thanks to everybody; see you next week for a discussion of when to go with iSCSI or Fibre Channel for Virtualization
DELL-ScottH	Storing metadata in this nonvolatile region provides the highest availability and enables easier reconfigurations and migrations. As system configuration data resides on every configured physical disk, controllers and/or multiple physical disks can be removed or swapped without losing the system configuration. Physical disks can be relocated within the storage system to improve channel utilization/protection or even migrated as a complete disk group into another storage system. In instances, all configuration metadata and user data remains intact on the physical disks.
DELL-ScottH	Thanks everybody!
JasonPowell	Astorrs, I tell people, if I can manage an Equal, anyone can :-)
DELL-ScottH	Left a book for you to read
JasonPowell	*begins reading*
astorrs	lol
DELL-ScottH	If you do it in the Battlestar Galactica getup, I'm most impressed :-)
astorrs	Thanks, guys; see you on Twitter
JasonPowell	Oh, that would be awesome!
DELL-ToddM	Gotta run to Meeting - See you in the twitterverse
DELL-ScottH	Thanks again everyone; the transcript will be up tomorrow on the same link
JasonPowell	Thanks Dell dudes!
JasonPowell	Impressed that the MD3000i has that much intelligence
DELL-ScottH	Yeah, I was a little shocked to see that in writing... ssshhh
JasonPowell	*everyone look at this shinny red light I'm holding*
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DELL-ScottH	lol
JasonPowell	Time to head home...Scott, thanks for fielding my questions.
DELL-ScottH	No problem, heading home soon; wife needs chicken soup
JasonPowell	Bummer...unless she just has a craving for chicken soup versus being sick
DELL-ScottH	Yeah, definitely sick. Was fun to follow you guys at the show last week; sounds like you had some fun
JasonPowell	It was a great gathering. We tried to get someone from Dell to come and talk about geeky stuff, but no dice.
DELL-ScottH	Ping us next year, and maybe we can get Michael to show up...maybe not that big a hitter, but someone
JasonPowell	Colorado Springs in April is next one :-)
JasonPowell	If you bump into church, IT guys/gals please direct them to Citrt.org
DELL-ScottH	Oh I would be up for that...could be the Scott and Todd show...will do
DELL-ScottH	We work with the EBC; I'll keep an eye out for you
JasonPowell	Ministrytech.org has the info for April
JasonPowell	EBC = ?
DELL-ScottH	Executive Briefing Center
JasonPowell	Ah...fancy ;-)
DELL-ScottH	Can look for church IT people coming in and tell the host to mention it
JasonPowell	Sweet
DELL-ScottH	Have a great night
JasonPowell	Ditto