Phew, vForum Day One Done!

Well just a quick one as thought it was time for a new entry and having just done day one at vForum at Luna Park it was a good chance for an update. I had the great oppurtunity to present in the EMC session today with Matt Zwolenski, our ANZ SE leader on some of our cool software based solutions.

This 40 minute section covered 4 demos (maybe to many for 40 minutes) that we produced out of the local solution center. I think it could be a week before my sleep catches up for that one. It is interesting just how much time filling a 40 minute segment can take up in preparation. This is amplified by my belief that if I am going to show it, I need to build it and prove it first. All demos I show I also buil and produce myself. Maybe that explains the dodgy Camtasia call-outs.

That said we showed:

• The ViPR Data services
• This is very relevant for VMware as it is now providing the Object Storage Services and the snpashot repository for the Database-as-a-Service offerings in vCloud Air
• VVols with the EMC VNXe
• A demo showing the 4 parts of implementing Virtial Volumes 1) Protocol Endpoint 2) Storage Provider, 3) Storage Containers 4) Storage Policies
• Recoverpoint for Virtual Machines
• Very cool replication technology now available at a VM granular level
• The VMware + EMC Hybrid Cloud
• Showed the vRealize suite servicing Virtual Machines,catalogues (vRealize Automation), VM mobility (vCloud Connector), Cost transparency (vRealize Business),  Storage-as-a-Service (vRealize Automation + ViPR)

As a techie I really do enjoy building this stuff and the technology from both VMware and EMC is very cool. It is hard to put a prep time on the work to produce the demonstrations but it was stretched over weeks. With 3 of the 4 solutions shown, done with release levels still in beta or earlier it did bring on some interesting challenges.

It does go a long way to show how far these technologies have come. The old days of any service management solution being an endless drag on professional services are definitely starting to move behind us.

Anyway day one done, one speaking slot and a live vBronwbag podcast completed. Once the vForum roadshow completes in ANZ I will publish the 4 demos into Youtube.

 

Cool Solution# Hadoop File Services with EMC Isilon

I'm Sold!

First let me say, by my own admittance, I am an infrastructure guy! That said,  I have been lucky enough recently to be given the chance to dive into the world of Big Data and PaaS. As a techie the extensive technology options in this area are very impressive and as a consequence, I have had a lot of fun combined with late nights and heavy learning.

I have always worked on the KISS principle 'Keep It Simple Stupid!' and Hadoop first into that with the exception of its file services HDFS. By having that layer of abstraction to the file system the ability to manage and populate the file system is non existent without specific tools written for the task.

I know DAS and scale-out through the data nodes is great and builds a big pond for your big data by combining the compute and disk resources of a 1000+ server nodes . Yay all good! But putting my EMC and Infrastructure hat on for a moment what about the following:

1. How do I backup my HDFS based data
2. How do you use those other cool storage capabilities such as snapshots, auto-tierring, etc
3. How do I get real-time analysis on data without having to move it into HDFS
4. How could you share the data from within HDFS
5. What if you need more compute resources in your cluster but not storage, or the other way around. 

This is where EMCs Isilon comes to the rescue through its OneFS. The flexible open access into its large single name space is invaluable. All the joys you expect from a true scale-out, enterprise class storage array are there as well as the capability of accessing the same file system in multiple ways at the same time. Think about a web site logging to an NFS mount that is part of the HDFS file system allowing for realtime analytics against it! 

Want to see this in action, look at this demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx9BMzZa8UI

 

Further information can be found at http://www.emc.com/domains/isilon/index.htm

EMC ESI with Microsoft Applications

EMCs ESI, it's FREE!!!!

A few weeks back I recorded a series of short videos that showcase the ease of which you can extend your applications direct from EMCs FREE Storage Integration Suite (ESI). These are short sub 90 second videos that each focus on only one particular feature provided through the ESI console.  As part of our application stack value prop this is a great example of what EMC can provide for a customer and of course, it is FREE!

ESI is like EMCs glue into the Microsoft ecosystem and includes:

• Simple user console for storage, replication and application management
• Support for Windows, HyperV, vSphere and XenServer
• Powershell library with almost 200 cmdlets
• System Center Orchestrator Integration Pack
• System Center Operations Manager Management Pack
• Hyper-V VSS Provider and associated PowerShell library
• Support for Exchange (up to 2013) including Native and Third party replication (enabled by RecoverPoint)
• Support for Sharepoint and SQL Server (SQL AlwaysOn and FC coming in a few weeks)

Storage Provisioning with ESI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9effRPY7uLU

Microsoft Exchange Discovery with ESI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CveZDDBf6pE

Microsoft Exchange Database Provisioning with ESI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVdOA7LsZw0

Microsoft Exchange Database Replication with ESI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vy3uNlAbsc

Microsoft SharePoint Content Provisioning with ESI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_22OiKxsV_Y

You can download it from http://www.emc.com/data-center-management/storage-integrator-for-windows-suite.htm