Tag emc

Hey big datacenter, I think “booyah” is in order, with this almost stealth announcement of UIM for Ionix!  

Look at the big picture and see what this means for your datacenter!

So, out of box today UIM fully supports management of the whole Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) stack, with evolution to support the rest of the Vblock infrastructure!   Which means taking your Pain of glass you have today and truly turning it into a comprehensive datacenter wide pane of glass for managing the entire stack from a single interface.

What this can mean is consolidated views of your entire Vblock infrastructure..

In the first release your datacenter will be cooking with Service Profile Catalogs enabling a “recipe” for building services and the basis for truly delivering infrastructure as a service.  Yea I know it sounds like lip service but when was the last time you truly had this level of ‘cookie cutter’ capability to deploy what you want, where you want it without having to reinvent the wheel every single time – Service Profile Catalogs will be the answer to let you take control of your datacenter again.

Though, if you feel that even creating recipes is a recipe for disaster – Policy-based management helps keep your environment honest to ensure configuration policies are set and enforced to ensure system-wide compliance to avoid configuration drift.   Oh, did I mention this functionality is also fully supported in this release of UIM with Cisco UCS Network infrastructure, such as Nexus and MDS? I say sweet! :)

What helps to complete this story is Unified Provisioning, configuration, change management – and a simplified integration.

What I’m particularly floored by is the deployment, bare metal provisioning which includes automated provisioning of the disaster recovery site! (Whoa, he did not just say Automated DR!)

The story around provisioning, configuration and change management will be the foundation of your success in the datacenter of the future.   Think about it! unlimited revision history, fine-grained tracking, traceability, and reproducibility! This isn’t the datacenter of 2010! This sounds more like the datacenter of 2100!     Out the gate this first release of UIM will focus on the unified provisioning, configuration and change control of Cisco UCS and the related network infrastructure.

You aren’t going to get away so easily though! I did say simplified integration and I mean it!   UIM Element management integrates with your existing enterprise management solutions on the floor today, providing change and compliance events to help track critical changes.   Furthermore, it leverages Cisco UCS manager APIs and EMC storage management systems allowing you to take advantage of existing instrumentation and component configuration.

So, putting all the marketing jibber jabber aside what does this mean for you, the datacenter owner?   This means that old fashioned model of “Is UCS ready? WTF is this VCE thing? Why do I even need a simplified datacenter operation? What do you mean Private Cloud, it’s sunny outside!”  It means welcome to the future of your datacenter.   The days of silo provisioning, configuration, management and troubleshooting are over!   You know that the top of mind conversation for the 2010 datacenter and on ever C-class’s lips will be  datacenter virtualization, reshaping the data center, and enhanced security – Take a look at that Gartner list and you tell me that VCE isn’t the answer to 5 or more of them ;)

So, the future is most definitely here (hey, 14 days ahead of schedule! How can you go wrong?!)  So there’s no better time than the present to educate yourself about this opportunity and what the rest of the future lay in store.  if you’re looking to discuss the future of your datacenter, let me know because your priorities are my priorities!

I’ve taken the liberty to consolidate all of the Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager 1.0 documents here for your ease: (Powerlink credentials required)

? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Release Notes
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Data Sheet
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Installation Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Report Advisor User Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Backup and Recovery Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager System Management Console Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Regular Expressions User Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Infrastructure Driver Release Version Support Matrix
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Non-EMC Software Read Me
? EMC Ionix Device Services Engineering DASL Language Changes

I’d also like to thank Chad Sakac for this great YouTube Video and post More VCE Vblock Details including EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager and Storagezilla for their post Vblock and Ionix Unified Infrastructure Management

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!

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!

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

For those of you who know me (and even those who don’t) What is important to know is – I love innovation.  I especially love it when something is introduced which does the right thing while removing the need to think about things which frankly we DON’T need to be thinking about (Though ignorance aside, not making it so we cannot think nor take action on our own – thus action without the nanny effect – which is often seen by some announcements which think you can’t be trusted with your own investment!)

Looking at the particular challenge storage brings us – it’s always been a delicate balance of “What kind of storage do I put my APP on” “How do I meet SLA’s for the peak load” and of course “Whatever decision I make today is locked in stone for the next 3-5 years so I better design appropriately”.    If you disagree that these harp on the extremely delicate balance of App v Infrastructure please let me know you’re feelings :)

Now while I absolutely love to have those design conversations above – The time has finally come where we don’t need to have a doctorate in ‘application layout’ or get religion around IOPS Latency calculation workloads in order to accommodate a mixed application environment.   That has come through the creation of FAST by EMC.     FAST which is an acronym for “Fully Automated Storage Tiering” actually does what it says on the tin!   

Think about it for a moment.  What if I simply laid my applications out on disk and let the workload dictate what kind of storage my app should live on, and unless I have specific requirements, let my SLA’s really run the show.    This would take the complicated work of ‘figuring it out’ which frankly is an arduous task and leave that up to the deep analytics to figure it out – End result means you have more time to work on other projects and you start to give back and perform like never before.

But that is not to say this is infallible – Storage is almost as bad as the Database world, whereby people not only WANT control over what happens, when and why, but DEMAND it!  And this gives you that power.   I somewhat relate FAST to DRS from VMware – Let the system analyze what IS happening, and based upon past performance and utilization, predict what would be a good fit – And if you agree you can APPROVE the change the system has put forth.   Or if you have reached a point of being comfortable that it’s acting in your best interests – Allow it to automatically move data – People usually start off with DRS in a “Manual” approval mode, and then quickly roll into “automated” because if 99 suggestions the system made were good, there’s a good chance that 100th suggestion will be a good fit as well.

But just like DRS for VMware, there are exceptions: And it is in these exceptions that you have a POLICY defined to ensure that your will is enforced and things you don’t want to happen – DONT!

So lets get down to basics!  What does this mean for you and me?  

• For once in our sad lives, we’ll be able to implement both FLASH and SATA into a traditional FC system and have the right disks spinning for the right apps.
  • Imagine it! Predictable workloads are EASY to assign to the right tier (sort of) but imagine those unpredictable apps, or even Month-end Apps!
    • Whoa! Are you saying I can take my somewhat stable monthly app which hits its Peak for month-end and move it around based upon the applications performance requirements?!   Just think about it – High IOPS, High Throughput, FAST latency response times – all the benefits of FLASH when it’s needed, but the cost of SATA when it isn’t.  
    • Next thing you’re going to tell me, I could be a seasonal business like a retailer or similar and shift my workload over to FLASH disk non-disruptively for the extreme peak workload, and then shift it back off to SATA when it’s not being hit quite so hard. :)
    • Oh and this means so much more, but it’s late and I want to publish this without overflowing you with information ;)

But this is far more than just simply allowing you to manage your dynamic workloads and ensure that the right storage is being used at the right time.  Across the stack this can be an enabler when it comes to times of legal discovery, long term data retention and archival, and fast response in situations of disputes or otherwise.  

Alright, but what does all of this mean, and why should I care? (read: Why are you so excited about it Christopher? :))

Active ESX Cluster Without FAST	Same Cluster with Flash and FAST Policy
384 Fibre Channel Disks 100% FC Disk Disk resources are ~80% Busy	368 FC Disks, 16 Flash Disks 96% FC, 4% Flash 68% less disk I/O contention 2.5% faster disk response time

The little chart above is a basic breakdown of what you can very easily realize.  Those little images are called “HEAT Maps” If you can see the little legend on the left, the more RED something is, the more busy it is which means your disks are getting hit pretty hard (Notice how for the most part all of disks are either HOT or very HOT)  

What does this mean for me from an operational perspective? I didn’t have to get in loads of engineers and architects to sit around and say “How do you think we should lay out the data to best most efficient on these new 16 Flash Drives we added?” No.  The system analyzed the workload and over a couple of days came to a conclusion “This LUN will move from FC to Flash” and all of a sudden our performance started to shine, without having to take any outage, any downtime – Hell we didn’t even need to try to figure out what we should do – We could let it collect data and then advise us (since its algorithms know things about the operation of the system we can only guess about!)

What would have been even sweeter is if this example had SATA in the mix as well – Because then we’d have the question of what should get shifted from where to where! Take a look at this pretty straight forward workload chart showing which LUNs are more active than others

Is this chart a guarantee that all environments look like this? Absolutely not.   I know of one specific heavy SAP environment which has a majority of its disk look like good flash targets and none of them look like a good fit for SATA.  However, a majority of environments DO have some things which likely aren’t on the most ideal of storage – And when you consider consolidation, that story only gets even more compelling.   So, if you have a dedicated frame which is maxed out for a single app – You definitely want to consider FAST in the equation because it can help determine your best fit for FLASH, and if SATA is a player at all (in v1 of FAST) then excellent. v2 of FAST will change all the rules

Though what I’m sure you like just as much as I do – is a real live example, so check out this Video, which was delivered at VMworld 2009!

And here we are, in a new era, a new level of sophistication the likes if you has never been seen before (Oh, there have been ‘attempts’ at producing solutions which are effectively ‘features’ but the full picture and depth of what today brings about – There is not a candle in the industry which can hold to this maelstrom!

Also, for reference – Here is the official Press Announcement from Today!

(One more Video!!!)