Why Your Future Data Center will be “Converged”

August 18, 2014 By Adam Bergh Leave a Comment

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past decade you know that the data center server footprint has been shrinking dramatically. With the advent of server virtualization and individual servers that can now have a TB or more of RAM, it is increasingly common to see what was once rows of traditional servers condensed into a single cabinet. CFOs love the reduced capital costs that server virtualization provides; CTOs love the increased asset utilization.

However, the “miracle” that is data center server virtualization is not without increase: rises in storage and network administration usually follow. In other words, a reduced physical footprint does not necessarily equate to a proportional reduction in IT management personnel. Internal company resources are now demanding faster, more complex, and more automated deployments of resources. In fact, data center virtualization has effectively introduced a whole host of new challenges that include not only the typical management of hundreds if not thousands of easily deployed server and/or desktop operating systems, but also the overlaid applications and physical hosts, along with their corresponding network and storage requirements.

The modern datacenter is a software-defined datacenter; in today’s computing era, it is not only common but expected that a company will make full use of one or more virtualization technologies.

What is “Converged Infrastructure?”

IDC defines converged infrastructure as “the development of a data center (or closet) based on a set of standard elements (e.g., x86 processors for compute, PCI for the system bus, and 10GbE for internode and storage connections). By leveraging hypervisor and storage virtualization software, these “chunks” can then be dynamically partitioned and automatically rebalanced to support a pool of different business applications.”

In simple terms, it’s the marriage of storage, networking, and compute into an elegant, flexible, unified solution. Think if it as an infrastructure building block.

If you haven’t heard of who the major players are in the Converged Infrastructure world, check out IDC’s data below. As you can see this is a trend that is accelerating rapidly and is no small potatoes idea.

Top 3 Vendors, Worldwide Integrated Infrastructure, Q1 2014 (Revenues are in Millions)

Vendor	1Q14 Revenue	1Q14 Market Share	1Q13 Revenue	1Q13 Market Share	1Q14/1Q13 Revenue Growth
1. Cisco/NetApp	$268.4	22.7%	$179.2	25.7%	49.8%
2. VCE	$254.3	21.5%	$176.8	25.4%	43.8%
3. EMC	$179.9	15.2%	$89.9	12.9%	100.2%
All Others	$477.4	40.5%	$251.0	36.0%	90.2%
Total	$1,180.1	100%	$696.8	100%	69.4%

Source: IDC Worldwide Integrated Infrastructure & Platforms Tracker, June 26, 2014

As you can see the Cisco/NetApp collaboration called “FlexPod” is the current market leader. For a quick primer on what FlexPod is, check out this video below:

FlexPod Intro via NetApp’s YouTube Channel

What Are the Benefits of “Converged Infrastructure”

By deploying a converged infrastructure such as a FlexPod that contains unified storage, servers, and networks, an IT organization will see the following benefits:

Reduced risk with proven validated designs from the industry leaders in converged infrastructure.
Massive boosts to operational efficiency and agility to meet key business initiatives.
Lower cost per user without sacrificing scalability
Improved consolidation of storage, server and network resources through the use of 10Gbe, FCoE, virtualization, and highly integrated storage.
Cost reductions through the seamless ability to migrate data resources (servers and storage) non-disruptively
Enable faster, more reliable recovery of data and applications.
Reduce risk of data lost and associated costs.

Considerations in Moving to a “Converged Infrastructure”

For many organizations, moving from a traditional data center architecture to a converged model requires the right partner to help you achieve a successful rollout into the new future of your data center. Netech Corp is an industry leading in FlexPod converged solutions and has many years of successfully deploying this solution in all market verticals.

Check out some references from Netech customers who have implemented FlexPod solutions.

Authenticom:

Please read the Authenticom Case Study

Group Health Cooperative:

Please read the Group Health Cooperative Case Study

Introducing the Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect!

July 15, 2014 By Adam Bergh 1 Comment

Today Cisco has announced the general availability of an all new Unified Computing System Fabric Interconnect, the 6324.

What’s so cool about this new Fabric Interconnect and why should you care?

In a nutshell the new 6324 FI is a converged Fabric Interconnect and IOM in one unit that plugs directly into the UCS 5108 Chassis. This is squarely aimed at the SMB market for environments that will never need to grow beyond 8 blades and/or four C-series servers.

To quote Cisco: “The Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect extends the Cisco UCS architecture into environments with requirements for smaller domains. Providing the same unified server and networking capabilities as in the full-scale Cisco UCS solution, the Cisco UCS 6324 embeds the connectivity within the Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis to provide a smaller domain of up to 12 servers (8 blade servers and up to 4 direct-connect rack servers).”

“The Cisco UCS 6324 is built to consolidate LAN and storage traffic onto a single unified fabric, eliminating the capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx) associated with multiple parallel networks, different types of adapter cards, switching infrastructure, and cabling within racks. The unified ports allow the fabric interconnect to support direct connections from Cisco UCS to Fibre Channel, FCoE, and Small Computer System Interface over IP (iSCSI) storage devices.”

Pricing looks really good on these as well, and should knock a significant chunk of change off a B-Series sale for the SMB market. Really looking forward to getting the word out on these! Going to be a huge hit in the market in my opinion!

Let’s take a look at the new Fabric Interconnect:

As you can see it has four standard SFP+ ports that can be used for network or FC uplinks or for direct attached storage (FC/FCoE/ISCSI/NFS all supported). There is also one QSFP port that supports direct attached C-Series servers or direct attached storage.

Here is how Cisco envisions a design with the 6324 FI:

Here are a couple photos of these bad boys out in the wild! They look great!

Introducing the NetApp FAS2500! Get All Launch Details Here!

June 17, 2014 By Adam Bergh Leave a Comment

Today NetApp is announcing an all new line of hardware for their entry level customers.

Introducing the FAS2520, FAS2552, and the FAS2554!

With these new models NetApp continues to extend their leadership in entry hybrid arrays. These new models deliver superior flexibility and a more powerful unified storage platform.

All three new models include next-gen connectivity through 10GBase-T Ethernet or unified FC, FCoE, and Ethernet (UTA2) ports!

These new models make massive improvements in I/O consistency and enhance flash acceleration greatly over the previous FAS2200 entry line.

All three FAS2550 models will offer 3x memory to enhance the already industry-leading performance and will support even more more flash integration

We will get to the specs but check out the expanded scale-out support allows for clusters of 8 nodes totaling over 2.3PB of raw capacity!

Let’s Check out the new models!

The NetApp FAS2520

The new NetApp FAS2520 is a pretty nice piece of hardware for the entry level/branch office workloads.

It is a 2U box that has some pretty impressive specs.

36GB memory
32GB physical memory + 4GB NVMEM
Four 64-bit cores running at 1.73GHz
Single dual-core processor per controller
Offers low-cost 10G Base-T ports
NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI are supported
GbE management port
Faster install with System Setup
New bezel

Included software

All supported data protocols
Efficiency: FlexVol® volumes, deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning
Availability: Multipath I/O, MultiStore® technology
Performance: FlexShare® storage QoS
Data protection: RAID-DP®, Snapshot™, and Open Systems SnapVault® technologies
Management: System Setup, OnCommand® System Manager, OnCommand Unified Manager

The FAS2520 Rear View:

The NetApp FAS2552

The FAS2552 is also a 2U box that has some pretty impressive specs, similar to the FAS2520

36GB memory
32GB physical memory + 4GB NVMEM
Four 64-bit cores running at 1.73GHz
Single dual-core processor per controller
4 UTA2 Ports that can to 10GBe or 16GB FC
NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI are supported
GbE management port
Faster install with System Setup
New bezel

Included software is the same as the FAS2520

All supported data protocols
Efficiency: FlexVol® volumes, deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning
Availability: Multipath I/O, MultiStore® technology
Performance: FlexShare® storage QoS
Data protection: RAID-DP®, Snapshot™, and Open Systems SnapVault® technologies
Management: System Setup, OnCommand® System Manager, OnCommand Unified Manager

The NetApp FAS2554

The FAS2552 is also a 4U box that has same impressive specs as the other 25xx models.

36GB memory
32GB physical memory + 4GB NVMEM
Four 64-bit cores running at 1.73GHz
Single dual-core processor per controller
4 UTA2 Ports that can to 10GBe or 16GB FC
NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI are supported
GbE management port
Faster install with System Setup
New bezel

Included software is the same as the FAS2520

All supported data protocols
Efficiency: FlexVol® volumes, deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning
Availability: Multipath I/O, MultiStore® technology
Performance: FlexShare® storage QoS
Data protection: RAID-DP®, Snapshot™, and Open Systems SnapVault® technologies
Management: System Setup, OnCommand® System Manager, OnCommand Unified Manager

HA Config	FAS2554	FAS2552	FAS2520

Application environments	Midsize organizations and distributed sites of larger organizations	Midsize organizations and distributed sites of larger organizations that require smaller form factor and lower power consumption		Smaller organizations, remote offices, and local storage
Ideal for	Higher-capacity and performance needs	Higher-performance needs	Value-oriented deployments
Maximum raw capacity[1]	576TB	518TB	336TB
Maximum disk drives	144	144	84
Controller form factor	4U/24-drive	2U/24-drive	2U/12-drive
ECC memory	36GB	36GB	36GB
Maximum Flash Pool^Ô	4TB	4TB	4TB
NVMEM/NVRAM	4GB	4GB	4GB
On-board I/O: UTA 2 (8Gb FC/16Gb FC/FCoE/ 10GbE)	8[2]	83	N/A
On-board I/O: 10GBASE-T	N/A	N/A	8[3]
On-board I/O: GbE	4	4	4
On-board I/O: 6Gb SAS	4	4	4
OS version	Data ONTAP 8.2.2 or later
Shelves and media	See the Shelves and Media page (http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/disk-shelves-and-storage-media/index.aspx) on NetApp.com for the most current information
Storage protocols	FCP, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, FCoE	FCP, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, FCoE	iSCSI, NFS, CIFS
Host/client operating systems supported	Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows Server^Ò 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, Windows XP, Linux^Ò, Oracle^Ò Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Apple^Ò Mac OS^Ò, VMware ESX^Ò

[1] Maximum raw capacity depends on the drive offerings. See the Shelves and Media page (http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/disk-shelves-and-storage-media/index.aspx) on NetApp.com for the most current information.

[2] FAS2552 and FAS2554 on-board ports can be configured as either an 8Gb/16Gb FC port pair or a 10GbE port pair and mixed combinations.

[3] FAS2520 on-board ports are 10GBASE-T only.

Setting Up A NetApp E-Series Array In Under 30 Minutes

April 30, 2014 By Adam Bergh 5 Comments

I wanted to put together a quick guide on setting up an E-Series array with a base configuration to show how fast you can have one of these online. In this example, I will use an EF550 array and demonstrate how we can go from out of box to having a LUN mapped in under 30 minutes.

This Guide Will Cover The Following:

The Software You Need
- SANtricity Storage Manager
- Open DHCP Server
Connecting To The E-Series Array
- Starting Your DHCP Server
- Launching SANtricity Manager
Creating Volumes on SANtricity

The Software You Need

SANtricity Storage Manager

We will need a couple pieces of software on your laptop to get things started. NetApp E-Series runs an operating system called “SANtricity”. You will need to download the SANtricity Storage Manager software from NetApp. In this guide we will be using SANtricity 11.10 which can be downloaded from Netapp HERE

Once downloaded, go ahead and install the software on your machine using all the default settings.

Open DHCP Server

The next piece of software that we will need need is a DHCP server. I run one locally on my Windows laptop. By default the E-Series arrays come preset to DHCP on the management ports. If you are connecting them to a network that has a DHCP server already running, you can skip this set. I prefer to directly connect the E-Series array to my laptop during initial setup. The DHCP server that I run on my laptop is called Open DHCP Server, which can be downloaded from HERE. Open DHCP Server is a light-weight open source DHCP server that can be run on your laptop that works perfect for setting up these E-Series arrays.

Configuring Open DHCP Server is pretty straight forward. I put a static IP on my laptop’s ethernet port of 192.168.1.1. Open the OpenDHCPServer.ini file and make the following changes:

[LISTEN_ON]
#Specify the Interfaces you would like Server to listen
#if you have more than one NIC card on your server
#always specify which cards will listen DHCP/DNS requests
#Requests from diffent Interfaces look for matching DHCP ranges.
#Requests from relay agents look for matching range to relay agent IP.
#upto 125 interfaces can be specified
#Default is All static Interfaces
192.168.1.1

[RANGE_SET]
#This is first and simple DHCP range section example,
#This example may be good enough for simple/home use.
#If you need range filters, look at example below
DHCPRange=192.168.1.2-192.168.1.3
;DHCPRange=192.168.5.1-192.168.5.254
#Following are range specific DHCP options.
#You can copy more options names from [GLOBAL_OPTIONS]
SubnetMask=255.255.255.0
;DomainServer=192.168.55.252
Router=192.168.1.1
#Lease Time can be different for this Range
;AddressTime=360

These settings will tell Open DHCP Server to listen in on your 192.168.1.1 interface and serve up two IPs via DHCP: 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3.

Connecting To The E-Series Array

Starting Your DHCP Server

Connect your laptop to the E-Series management port or ports if you happen to have a switch with you. Launch Open DHCP Server. If all is well you should see output like this below:

As you can see, my DHCP server is supplied 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3 to the management ports.

Launching SANtricity Manager

Now, launch SANtricity Manager. When you launch the software for the first time you will be greeted by the Add Storage Array Dialog Box.

Select Manual and enter the IP addresses your DHCP server gave to the array:

You should now have your E-Series array listed and ready to connect to:

Upon connecting to your array you will be greeted by a dialog box to create your disk pool. With SANtricty version 11.10, we now have the option of creating “Dynamic Disk Pools” instead of complicated RAID groups. This is now the preferred method of pooling your available space. Choose all disks and leave no spares. Super easy! To read more on Dynamic Disk Pools and why they rock, check out this brief white paper HERE.

In this example, my array only has 12 drives. I will add them all to the same pool. You can uncheck the “Allow me to create” check box so that it doesn’t take you to the volume creation wizard. We will do that later.

We now have available space to build volumes (LUNs) on the E-Series array. We should now set up access. If you have a Fiber Channel array you will need to zone it in real quick. My EF550 in this example is an 10GB ISCSI model. I will need to set the IP addresses on the ISCSI interfaces.

This is done from the Setup Tab, “Configure ISCSI Host Ports” button. It will launch a dialog box for you to specify the IP addresses for the HIC ports on the array. Simple enough.

The next order of business if to create a “Host Mapping”. A host mapping is basically inputting the end hosts WWPN or ISCSI IQN. This will give us something to map our LUNs to.

In this example I will be mapping to the ISCSI IQN of my laptop.

To start the host add wizard, go to the “Host Mapping” tab and right click on “Default Group” and Define a New Host.

Type in the name for the host.

Paste in your IQN, give it a user label and click the Add button.

You should now have a host you can map a volume to.

Creating Volumes on SANtricity

This is pretty easy and straight forward. Find your disk pool on the “Storage and Copy Services Tab”, right-click on the free capacity and choose “Create Volume”.