Welcome to Episode 2 in a series around information for you regarding EMC FAST! (Also known as Fully Automated Storage Tiering!)

You may recall from Episode 1 that I said this was something I am extremely excited about – and I thought I made that clear!  

To tell you the truth at first I was mainly excited about the V-MAX FAST, and didn’t even give much thought to the whole "Unified" Celerra FAST or  CLARiiON FAST

That was until I started to delve into the details, find, sort and collect the documents (which I unveil for you to find here!) and not to mention all of the other features above and beyond just FAST! That is what got me excited for FAST beyond the V-MAX!  So I hope this collection of documents gets you going in the right direction so you can become just as excited about FAST for the Celeriion just as I AM :)

I know a lot of you are looking for materials and information regarding FAST – There are numerous questions you have regarding this and since a lot of you are self-starters, I’m going to tell you what information I directly know about today, and where to get it!

Available today on PowerLink are the following documents around Celerra FAST and CLARiiON FAST in the areas of Introduction, Implementation and Solution

The documents below require credentials on EMC’s PowerLink – so please keep that in mind when it comes to accessing the links!

• Celerra
  • Automated Tiered Storage with EMC Celerra and Rainfinity File Management Appliance – Applied Best Practices
  • Celerra Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) Demo Lab Guide
  • Reference Architecture: Automated Storage Tiering on EMC Celerra
  • Reference Architecture: EMC Celerra Fully Automated Storage Tiering
  • EMC Celerra Unified Storage
  • EMC Rainfinity File Management Appliance
  • Storage Tiering with EMC Celerra FAST
  • EMC Celerra NetWork Server – Release Notes
  • Video: Foster Pepper on Celerra FAST
    • Definitely check out the video! I thought about hacking together a display of the video on here, but since it’s not published via YouTube or other, and I didn’t want anyone to spank me for exporting the .flv video, and uploading it or displaying it through another site – I’ll just link you to it’s source :)
• CLARiiON
  • Data Sheet: EMC CLARiiON CX4 Series
• Other great resources!!!
  • Theory and Best Practices for FAST: Performance and Planning
  • Enterprise Flash Drives and Unified Storage – Technology Concepts and Business Considerations
  • Clipper Group: EMC Rolls Out Fully Automated Storage Tiering and Other Storage Enhancements
  • Building the Virtual Information Infrastructure – Technology Concepts and Business Considerations
  • EMC Ionix ControlCenter 6.1 Admin guide – includes steps around FAST
  • Handout: Simple, Powerful, Unified Storage from EMC
  • EMC FAST and Technology Direction

Being that I’ve consolidated Celerra and CLARiiON into a single post, you might be asking “Well, what value do I get from either or both of these?!” Here is a Features and Benefits list!

I know what you’re saying “Wow Christopher, you got those marketing terms down pat!” hee, but seriously, those are quoted verbatim from the links mentioned above.   However, one hard solid benefit of Celerra you need to make sure you’re always aware of is the fact that on its own, Celerra largely reduces your backup window.  Add FAST to Celerra and watch out!

So, I hope you get as much joy and excitement out of this new launch and technology which will revolutionize the way you not only do business but by the way you think about SLA’s and business problems in the future.   I’ll cover specific details of how this has solved real hard business problems for customers so you can enjoy those successes like I have!

I’ve provided these direct links using PowerLink and a Partner account (not employee)  – Please advise if for whatever reason you’re unable to find something and I’ll be sure to get that taken care of and the document in front of you!   Also, if you come across a document I missed and you think should be included, raise the roof and let me know and I’ll be sure to get it featured here! Not to mention if you find a particular document to be overly useful, feel free to comment on that fact, I’d love to know which would be a better doc to re-read or recc’ to others!

I’m really excited about this and your questions are what will make me and the whole community as a whole a lot more knowledgeable around this subject! So Keep em coming!

Be sure to check out my other posts about EMC FAST: One Stop Shop for Symmetrix V-Max Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) docs! and FAST from EMC – Performance meet the quickening!

So, there has been a lot of controversy by people on how do you actually get to vote when trying to vote for people in the RedEye Vibin Bachelor/Bachelorette contests.

Hopefully this little tutorial will give you the basics you need in order to vote! (And if I’m still in this contest at the time you read this, a vote for me ;))

First step is to Find the contest in question – My contest is accessed via this URL  Hello Bachelors! Voting is now open

You’ll see something looking like this: And once you scroll down a little bit, you’ll see this which tells you how to vote, yet obscured by other text on the screen! Leave a vote for your favorite bachelor in the comments…

So, it seems pretty straightforwardish now – I simply need to comment, right?! Well, that requires me to log in via Twitter, Facebook or ChicagoNow!

So, if you want to login via each of the services you’ll get different options

Clicking on Twitter gives you: Enter your credentials and it grants you the ability to comment using Twitter as your auth!

Clicking on Facebook is mostly a wash – comes up fine! but after putting in creds I get FAIL!

Leaving your only other option to be “Create an account”

I’m not opposed to the create an account function (okay, seriously I really am.. At that point, I’d rather you create a twitter acct ;))

So, once you’re finally logged in, scroll down to the “Leave a Comment” box and say something like “I love you christopher!” or whatever ;)

And there you go then! You aren’t the first to hit challenges while trying to vote, and may not be the least! so until then… here are the tools you need to vote!

So get out there, vote early and vote often (Hey, that’s a chicago thing!)  And if you’re looking to vote for me, I appreciate the vote!

Welcome to Episode 1 in a series around information for you regarding EMC FAST! (Something I’m extremely excited about)

I know a lot of you are looking for materials and information regarding FAST – There are numerous questions you have regarding this and since a lot of you are self-starters, I’m going to tell you what information I directly know about today, and where to get it!

Available today on PowerLink are the following documents around for V-Max FAST in the areas of Introduction, Implementation and Solution

The documents below require credentials on EMC’s PowerLink – so please keep that in mind when it comes to accessing the links!

• Introduction
  • Symmetrix V-Max Series FAST Quick Start
  • EMC Symmetrix V-Max Series Product Guide
  • FAST for Symmetrix V-Max Feature Sheet
  • New Features in EMC Enginuity 5874: Enhancements for Symmetrix V-Max in Open Systems Environments
• Implementation
  • Implementing Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Standard Provisioning Environments
  • EMC Solutions Enabler Symmetrix Array Controls CLI Product Guide
  • Theory and Best Practices for FAST: Performance and Planning (This is a GREAT document, I’m reading it right now!)
  • Best Practices for Fast, Simple Capacity Allocation with EMC Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning
  • Symmetrix Management Console (SMC) online help and FAST Wizards
  • Symmetrix Performance Analyzer (SPA) online help
• Solutions
  • Storage Tiering using Microsoft SQL Server and Symmetrix V-Max with Enginuity 5874
  • Storage Tiering using Microsoft Exchange Server and Symmetrix V-Max with Enginuity 5874
  • Symmetrix Storage Tiering for Oracle Databases using Virtual LUN and FAST technologies with Enginuity 5874
  • Symmetrix Storage Tiering for VMware using Symmetrix V-Max and FAST Technologies
  • Symmetrix Storage Tiering with DB2 for z/OS Systems using Virtual LUN and Fast Technologies
  • Symmetrix Storage Tiering for DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Databases using Virtual LUN and FAST Technologies
  • Symmetrix Storage Tiering for SAP using Virtual LUN and FAST Technologies with Enginuity 5874
• Other amazing links and use cases I was able to find!
  • EMC Tiered Storage for Microsoft SQL Server 2008—Enabled by EMC Symmetrix V-Max with FAST
  • WP: Building the Virtualization Information Infrastructure—Technology Concepts and Business Considerations
  • WP: EMC Tiered Storage for SAP: A New Way to Optimize with Use Cases for EMC Symmetrix V-Max with FAST and Virtual LUN—Applied Technology
  • Clipper Group: EMC Rolls Out Fully Automated Storage Tiering and Other Storage Enhancements
  • EMC Ionix ControlCenter 6.1 Admin guide – includes steps around FAST
  • ESG: Enabling Next Generation Tiered Storage With FAST – Video

Whoa, wait a minute – Are you saying there is already a Best Practices guide and solutions already built out for every major application under the sun? (psst, yes I am saying that :))

I’ve provided these direct links using PowerLink and a Partner account (not employee)  – Please advise if for whatever reason you’re unable to find something and I’ll be sure to get that taken care of and the document in front of you!   Also, if you come across a document I missed and you think should be included, raise the roof and let me know and I’ll be sure to get it featured here! Not to mention if you find a particular document to be overly useful, feel free to comment on that fact, I’d love to know which would be a better doc to re-read or recc’ to others!

I’m really excited about this and your questions are what will make me and the whole community as a whole a lot more knowledgeable around this subject! So Keep em coming!

I’m looking forward to producing a similar single point of capture list for Clariion FAST and Celerra FAST as well, so that’ll be coming soon!

Yea I think that’s pretty clear in the title though I think it bears repeating!

This years TechEd North America will be hosted in none other than New Orleans, LA! – Which frankly is a GREAT city to host a TechEd in (I went ~10 years ago in NOLA – Good times!)

What this year does have on track for those of you looking to attend are – talking points and ways to convince your boss!

This actually takes you to a web-form which will generate off an email and send it to your boss :)

Now from a personal perspective, the benefit and value of this promotion is pretty severe.  I attended TechEd NA 2009 (Maybe you met me! I personally talked to ~3000 people!) And with that said, the attendance was dismal as far as I was concerned! Not to mention there was a great imbalance of Developers compared to IT Pro’s!    So the value of convincing your boss is and should be very important – considering the fact that VMWorld had 3-4x the number of participants yet worldwide FAR more people work within the space of Microsoft Technologies (Hey, I love VMware too, but you’d think we’d atleast get a decent attendance!)

I’ll be ‘convincing’ my boss, and so should you!   So, I’ll see you at TechEd (By hook or by crook :)) And what better time to convince than when you can save $300! :)

First of all, let me thank our good friends at EMC (Formerly Conchango )(This may even sound like a strange shill being that EMC acquired Conchango some time ago)  But the reality is, I really like SCRUM! (I’m more of an Scrum guy vs an Agile one – so it’s all relative, eh? ;))

There’s so much to say about this – but if you have any semblance of what Scrum is, I highly encourage you to check out Crispin Parker’s blog, and all will reveal itself :) Even if you’re an Agile guy, check it out! (Or if you’re an up and coming programmer :))

Important Reference Links:

SCRUM For Team System V3, Beta 2 released

Scrum for Team System – V3.x Beta 2 Discussions

Crispin Parker’s Blog