These new standards go by several names: “Converged Enhanced Ethernet,” “Data Center Ethernet,” and the industry-standard term “Data Center Bridging,” or DCB. In this technical brief we provide an overview of the reasons DCB is being developed and how it can improve networking in the data center for applications, servers, and storage.

http://www.equallogic.com/resourcecenter/assetview.aspx?id=8855

Doing a “basic demo” with EqualLogic is very powerful.  I describe a “basic demo” as initializing the EqualLogic Array, walking through Group Manager, setting up and connecting SAN HQ with a walk through, creating Volumes, detailing snapshots and thin provisioning, mounting the Volume to your laptop, copying data, etc.

Now I can demo all of this easily from my Dell laptop running Windows 7 and directly connecting a simple everyday Ethernet cable from my laptop NIC to the Eth0 port on the EqualLogic Array.  However I feel that there is even more to demo and review because EqualLogic is powerful and simple at the same time.

With the help of VMware Workstation 7 my new and improved “basic demo” now includes:

- a Virtual Machine running Windows Server 2008 which better shows the full installation of the HIT, including ASM/ME.  I can review in detail the importance of Remote Setup Wizard, the VSS integration and MPIO setting (Volume Slices anyone).  With ASM/ME I can show the power and simplicity of application integrated snapshots at no additional cost to the customer.  A single EXE does install all that great functionality in the HIT!

- a Virtual Machine running ESXi.  This is great because there are customers that sometimes cannot wrap their heads around how an EqualLogic Volume is a Data Store that is formatted with VMFS.  Now I can show how to exactly enable the iSCSI Initiator, add the Group IP Address, rescan and view the Volumes, mount a Volume as a Data Store. BAM – simple yet powerful.

With a Laptop, an EqualLogic Array, an Ethernet Cable plus a power strip and a projector I am ready to go onsite and WOW our customers on all of the value that EqualLogic can bring!

This is a great post from “2vcps and a truck”

iSCSI Connections on EqualLogic PS Series
http://www.2vcps.com/2010/02/16/iscsi-connections-eq/

After reading the post above please make sure to read:
TR 1049 – Configuring VMware vSphere software iSCSI with Dell EqualLogic PS Series Storage
http://www.equallogic.com/resourcecenter/assetview.aspx?id=8453

For this POC we “front end” the EqualLogic Array with a single physical server running Windows Server 2008 R2 which will be doing the CIFS and NFS for the clients.

The HIT Kit and SAN HQ was installed on this server.  (3) NICs setup for LAN with Teaming enabled.  (3) NICs setup for SAN with standard MPIO using Least Queue Depth since this is a PS5000 which has (3) Gig Ethernet Ports for SAN.  NOTE: We modified Max sessions per volume slice from the default of 2 to 3.

To make sure MPIO is using all (3) NICs for SAN we created a test Volume and used IOMeter which produced around 300MB/sec throughput to the EqualLogic Volume – Rock and Roll!  We also confirmed connections in Group Manager and under the iSCSI Initiator.

Before testing we are allowing the EqualLogic Array to finish building/verifying the RAID and allowing the backup battery’s on the controllers to fully charge.

For the next week and a half the customer is going to heavily test this configuration and we will use SAN HQ to truly understand the performance metrics gathered during this POC.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in a couple weeks.

Next week’s First Ever EqualLogic User Conference is going to be great!

Step 1 – Install SAN HQ
Download SAN HQ, about a 60MB EXE, from the EqualLogic Customer Support Website.  This single EXE can be installed on Windows Server 32bit or 64bit.  Customer can install this on a physical or virtual Windows Server.

Double-click the EXE to start the installation, click next, accept the license, choose where to install.

You will be prompted to select the installation type.  Make sure to select Install Monitor Service and Client.

You are asked if you would like to share the log file folder.  This way you can actually install SAN HQ Client Only on another machine and map to the log file folder on the SAN HQ Server or you can always use RDP.

The complete installation of SAN HQ is under 10 minutes.

Step 2 – Configure your EqualLogic Group to talk to SAN HQ

In Group Manager we need to modify the SNMP and Notification settings found in the Tabs under Group Configuration.

Here I am creating a SNMP Read-only community name called “sanhq”, remember to click the Save Disk in the Upper Right.

Next I would like to view all the Events in Group Manager in SAN HQ, so click on Notifications, enable Send events to syslog servers and add the IP address of your server running SAN HQ.  Make sure to check the informational box for Event Logs so you get everything in SAN HQ.  Remember to click the Save Disk in the Upper Right

Step 3 – Configure SAN HQ to talk to your EqualLogic Group

Now we are ready to open SAN HQ and add our Group.
Click on Next.

Enter in your Group IP Address and the SNMP community name.

Make sure to setup email alerts so all alerts and notifications are sent to you via email, like you don’t get enough emails already.

If needed, modify the Log File Size, read the User Guide for more details.

Next is the summary screen, click on Add Group

If everything goes smoothly you should see the following confirmation that your Group has been added to SAN HQ.

NOTE: SAN HQ will go out every couple of minutes and pull the data from your Group.

All set!  SAN HQ is an invaluable tool and now we can demystify that “black box with flashing lights”.  You will be able to monitor, report and trend on everything that has been happening on the EqualLogic Array(s).

Learn more about Trading-up to Citrix XenDesktop

Links, Videos, News, Forums and more – all about EqualLogic!

Here is the link:
http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/EqualLogic