Performance How a Ski Resort Heightens the Slope-Side Experience with Streamlined Storage for Innovative Social Apps

power solutions 2013 Issue 01 2013 Issue

Your guide to maximizing IT efficiency dell.com/powersolutions 01 Peak performance How a ski resort heightens the slope-side experience with streamlined storage for innovative social apps. Peak performance Plus: Groundbreaking storage solutions that are accelerating business gains around the world.

Storage landscape: Converging networks Advanced networking: Exploring the DPS-201301-STD into an agile, elastic data center fabric Dell Virtual Network Architecture

Intelligent data center: Running data Focus on software: Extending always- centers cost-efficiently at elevated connected capabilities with mobile temperatures device management US$18.95 Can$19.95 US$18.95

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CMY

K 2013 Issue 01

Microsoft Active Directory® directory service Exchange topology VMware vSphere 5.1: vSphere 5.1: vCenter Server domain controller VMware vCenter Server for a for an ESXi cluster hosting ™ MBX2: VMware ESXi cluster hosting management virtual machines Mailbox server role Exchange virtual machines such as Active Directory, MBX1: virtual machine MBX3: Microsoft Exchange Server Mailbox server role Mailbox server role Load Generator (LoadGen), virtual machine virtual machine and Microsoft Virtual machines Exchange Server Jetstress hosting multiple LoadGen Storage landscape instances for end-to-end Exchange application Converged network performance verification 10 Converging networks into an agile, elastic infrastructure: Design framework outcome: data center fabric • Exchange Messaging Application Dell Active System 800–provided virtualized and shared By Tony Ansley, Achmad Chadran, Marc Keating, Programming Interface resource configuration consisting of virtual processors, and Rich Martin • Exchange replication memory, and virtual network adapters Virtualization and consolidation are driving the need • SAN Virtual machine hosting • Virtual machine network Jetstress and Dell EqualLogic to converge networks into a unified, highly efficient SAN HeadQuarters for fabric for large-volume data flow. Dell offers storage verification exceptional network and storage innovations to HUBCAS1: HUBCAS3: optimize bandwidthCollocated for data virtual center machine flexibility. Collocated virtual machine hub transport and client HUBCAS2: hub transport and client Dell EqualLogic™ PS Series storage 15 Optimize virtual infrastructureaccess server roles Collocated virtual machine access server roles hub transport and client through integrated storage management access server roles Exchange mailbox profile: By Vikram Belapurkar, William Urban, and David Glynn • 5,000 end users In highly virtualized environments, integrated • 150 messages/day/end user management tools are critical for optimizing … … • 1 GB mailbox each Database Database Database Database • Two database availability group copies deployments. Dell™ EqualLogic™ Virtual Storage 1 2 3 4 Virtual machine storage Manager for VMware® environments helps simplify Active and passive database copies 41 Solid-state 44 High-performance management, as well as enhance data protection drives that converged and performance. advance workload infrastructure efficiency frameworks

19 Sustain OLTP availability and performance with synchronous replication By Magi Kapoor and Maggie Smith Ensuring high availability of mission-critical OLTP applications is a necessity for many organizations. Dell EqualLogic Synchronous Replication (SyncRep) helps protect data and keep online transactions flowing without compromising performance. 56 A holistic platform 76 How an aviation for connecting end company integrated users to optimized employees into 24 Vail Resorts: Peak performance resources its network To heighten the slope-side experience for visitors in a fiercely competitive market, Vail Resorts offers an innovative, storage-intensive social networking app using Dell Compellent™ storage with automated data tiering and simplified storage management.

Storage landscape 32 24\7 Inteligência Digital: Getting the big picture 27 Solution showcase: Dell PowerVault Digital asset management company 24\7 tape solutions Inteligência Digital swaps out its storage network for a Dell Compellent–based replacement, Customer perspective boosting data-serving speeds while significantly 28 Europcar South Africa: Accelerating reducing processing times—resulting in a dramatic performance through a private cloud revenue increase. Europcar South Africa drives IT agility by building a private cloud that delivers services on the fly and Analyst perspective boosts staff productivity, helping the car rental 34 Data explosion calls for storage innovation company increase customer loyalty and attract new clients. Departments 30 Community Bank & Trust of Florida: Cashing in on virtual infrastructure Editor’s comments Community Bank & Trust of Florida shores up data 6 Catching some fresh air protection while lowering costs by setting up a By Tom Kolnowski virtual infrastructure that provides enhanced data integrity and accessibility for off-site backup Recent citings and recovery. 7 Fortifying IT asset protection

36 Intelligent data center Running data centers cost-efficiently at elevated temperatures

By Paul Steeves, Jon Fitch, and David Moss

Data center operations pose a conundrum for IT staff—incurring the cost for power and then the cost to dissipate the heat it generates. In a live demonstration, Dell advances an effective Fresh Air capability to help avoid conventional cooling costs.

By Arpit Joshipura

Server and desktop virtualization, as well as rising mobility and data volumes, is changing the enterprise networking landscape. The Dell Virtual Network Architecture (VNA) is an efficient, scalable framework designed to support virtual environments.

Intelligent data center Linux 38 Managing I/O-intensive workloads with versatile 65 Optimizing end-to-end application migration solid-state storage and modernization By Andy Tran By Scott Sawyer and Thomas Crowe

41 Enhancing server performance and scalability Focus on software with solid-state drives 68 Extending always-connected capabilities By Steve Weinger, Marc Crespell, with mobile device management and Yogev Shimony By Saranya Babu

44 Advancing operational agility through Customer perspective converged infrastructure 71 Enhancing business operations through By Bala Chandrasekaran and Tom Baumgartner secure networks Advanced networking 74 Koehler Paper Group: A ticket to efficiency 56 Laying the foundation for secure application delivery 76 Menzies Aviation: Virtual payload By Fred Johnson and Andrew Walker Analyst perspective 60 Deploying a virtual distributed switch 78 The second wave of big data: Shifting from to centralize network management services to solutions By Brian Johnson By Evan Quinn

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. dell.com/powersolutions | 2013 Issue 01 3 48 Intelligent data center Capitalizing on the cloud Going mobile? By Janet Bartleson Take us with you IT decision makers can talk to solution experts and Dell Power Solutions— test-drive cloud computing and big data technology your guide to maximizing through the Dell | Intel Cloud Acceleration Program— IT efficiency—offers which offers hands-on or remote access to dedicated the latest in expert advice, solutions, labs and state-of-the-art infrastructure. and technology for the enterprise. The digital edition enables anytime, anywhere interaction from any device supporting the Zinio reader app. For instant access to Dell Power Solutions on Zinio, scan this QR (quick response) code using a mobile device equipped with a camera and QR reader app, or visit zinio.com/powersolutions. Dell Power Solutions Magazine and special edition articles are also available online at dell.com/powersolutions. Check our Web site for early-release articles, how-tos, case studies, best practices, and expert tips you won’t find anywhere else.

Index to featured Dell customers 24\7 Inteligência Digital...... 32 Altru Health System...... 72 Community Bank & Trust of Florida...... 30 Europcar South Africa...... 28 Koehler Paper Group...... 74 Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises...... 72 Menzies Aviation...... 50, 76 Mississippi Department of Corrections...... 73 PSC...... 73 Online exclusive Tiger Brands...... 50 University of South Florida...... 73 Evolving shared Vail Resorts...... 24

infrastructure in large Index to advertisers data centers American Power Conversion Corporation...... 23 Dell Inc...... C2, 5 By Armando Acosta F5 Networks, Inc...... C3 Massive data workloads for high-performance Intel Corporation...... 63 Microsoft...... 47 computing, Web 2.0, big data, and cloud-based Oracle Corporation...... C4 applications call for high-density, power- Red Hat...... 9 efficient scale-out systems. Dell PowerEdge™ Solution showcase C8000 series servers help advance scale-out Dell PowerEdge C8000 series: computing innovation. Flexible, powerful, and efficient...... 51

4 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. You can pay to cool your servers, or get the one that can take the heat.

Dell HP

Fresh Air cooling

Agent-free management

Optimized disk capacity

5x faster deployment†

50% more memory*

More virtualized servers**

Do more with Dell Server Solutions Save money on cooling costs with Dell’s new PowerEdge™ 12th generation servers that operate at higher temperatures with just fresh air cooling. Powered by the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family, they’re the most efficient servers on the planet, and require less cooling capacity than HP’s equivalent systems. The result? You could decrease annual data center operating expenses by up to $750,000.*** Learn More at dell.com/serverinnovation.

†(1) Results based on testing by Dell Labs in February 2012 using Dell PowerEdge R720, R720xd, R710, R610 and PE2950. Actual performance may vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability. (2) Results based on a time and motion study conducted by HP using HP Smart Update and HP Gen8 380 servers. *50% more memory capacity is based on a comparison of the Dell M620 vs. the HP BL460c Gen8. **Comparisons based on February 2012 Principled Technologies extrapolation of 10U worth of Rack servers (5 servers x 4 VMs per server = 20 VMs per 10U or 2.0VMs/U) vs. 10U worth of Blade servers (16 servers x 6 VMs per server = 96 VMs per 10U or 9.6VMs/U). ***Savings assumes $0.07 per KW/hr and/or $.20 per KW/hr. Savings based on power usage calculated based on an average enterprise-sized data center. All Dell PowerEdge 12G rack and tower servers offer a “Fresh-Air” compliant configuration so the server can run beyond the industry standard of 35C/95F (www.dell.com/freshair). ©2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Editor’s comments

Editorial staff Editor-in-chief and publisher Tom Kolnowski Managing editor Debra McDonald Features editor Kathryn White Senior editors Julie Addicott, Dawn Davidson, James Hurd, Catherine Luo, and Terrence O’Donnell Art director and cover designer David Chan Designer and illustrator Cynthia Webb Catching some Circulation and logistics manager Sharon Mendoza Staff writers Romy Bauer, Julie Jervis, Greg Thomas, Cindy Waxer, and Chris Young

Contributing writers Armando Acosta, Tony Ansley, fresh air Saranya Babu, Janet Bartleson, Tom Baumgartner, Vikram Belapurkar, Achmad Chadran, Bala Chandrasekaran, Marc Crespell, Thomas Crowe, Jon Fitch, David Glynn, Brian Johnson, Fred Johnson, Arpit Joshipura, Magi Kapoor, Marc Keating, Rich Martin, David Moss, Evan Quinn, Scott Sawyer, Yogev Shimony, Maggie Smith, Paul Steeves, Andy Tran, William Urban, Andrew Walker, and Steve Weinger

Contributing photographers Tony Bolding, Lee Kirgan, n the snow sports mecca of Vail, Colorado, fresh and cool air is a winter norm. Bryan Kuntz, and Adran Matte

As I write this column in mid-February, skiers gliding down the slopes in Vail are Advertising and sponsorship sales Sales director Kyle Walkenhorst (626-396-9400) experiencing a temperature of 17 degrees Fahrenheit (°F), or –8 degrees Celsius (°C)— Sales manager/Western U.S. and South/Central America sales Shaun Mehr (949-923-1660) with the windchill index reading a nippy 3°F (–16°C). For resort chain operator Eastern U.S. and Canada sales Steve Branda (201-483-7871) I EMEA and APJ sales Mark Makinney (805-709-4745) Vail Resorts, Inc.—with properties in Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, and Keystone Advertising sales assistant Cindy Elhaj (626-396-9400) in Colorado, and in Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood in the Lake Tahoe area—IT Ad coordinator Catherine Luo

innovation is paying off. Visitors have warmed up to Vail Resorts’ storage-intensive social Reader services Subscriptions are complimentary to qualified readers ™ ™ networking app, EpicMix. Read more about its 200 TB Dell Compellent storage–based who complete the online subscription form. To subscribe to hosting environment for this cutting-edge, photo-centric app in our featured customer the regular quarterly edition of Dell Power Solutions Magazine, visit the Subscription Center at dell.com/powersolutions. perspective, “Peak performance,” beginning on page 24. Once there, you can sign up for a new subscription, change your mailing address for a current subscription, At the Dell headquarters campus in Round Rock, Texas, fresh yet somewhat warmer or unsubscribe. Going mobile? Visit the digital edition online at zinio.com/powersolutions. For other subscription air is the norm. On precisely the same date and time in February—as another tour group services, please e-mail our Reader Services team via [email protected]. was preparing to view a demonstration in the Fresh Air Hot House—the ambient air About Dell temperature was a balmy 80°F (27°C). Located just a few hundred feet from the Dell Dell Inc., headquartered in Round Rock, Texas, near Austin, listens to its customers and delivers innovative technology and Power Solutions editorial offices, the Fresh Air Hot House is a living, breathing proof point services they trust and value. Uniquely enabled by its direct for Fresh Air–compliant Dell servers, network switches, and storage. The building has no business model, Dell is a leading global systems and services company and No. 44 on the Fortune 500 list. For more air conditioning; vents in the bottom of the building and a fan in the roof draw in fresh air information, visit our Web site at dell.com.

to cool the equipment. Dell cannot be responsible for errors in typography or photography. Dell, the Dell logo, Dell KACE, Dell Precision, As part of the Fresh Air initiative, Dell systems over the last two generations have been AppAssure, Benchmark Factory, Compellent, Data Progression, Dynamic Capacity, EqualLogic, Fluid Data, developed to endure time-based excursions over a temperature range of 23°F (–5°C) to Force10, Latitude, OpenManage, OpenStack, OptiPlex, 113°F (45°C) and humidity levels from 5 percent to 90 percent. The Round Rock demo PowerConnect, PowerEdge, PowerVault, Quest, Remote Instant Replay, SonicWALL, Storage Center, Wyse, and XPS facility is particularly well sited to exercise the extreme upper end of that temperature range. are trademarks of Dell Inc. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this publication to refer to either the For example, in 2012, the area experienced 70 consecutive days in which temperatures entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and exceeded 100°F (38°C). For more insights from the team behind the Fresh Air initiative, read names of others.

“Running data centers cost-efficiently at elevated temperatures,” beginning on page 36. Dell Power Solutions (ISSN 2325-6281, print; ISSN 2325-6273, Lastly, we enjoyed chatting with many Dell Power Solutions readers in our booth at online) is published quarterly by Dell Inc., Dell Power Solutions, One Dell Way, Mail Stop RR3-68, Round Rock, TX 78682, Dell World 2012 last December. If you were unable to attend the second running of this U.S.A. No part of this publication may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced without permission from the editor- annual event, you can read a wrap-up of the show at qrs.ly/qa2zjg7. We hope to see you in-chief. Dell does not provide any warranty as to the accuracy of any information provided through Dell Power at Dell World 2013. Solutions. Opinions expressed in this magazine may not be those of Dell. The information in this publication is subject to change without notice. Any reliance by the end user on the information contained herein is at the end user’s risk. Dell will not be liable for information in any way, including but not limited to its accuracy or completeness. Dell does not accept responsibility for the advertising content of the magazine or for any claims, actions, or losses arising therefrom. Goods, services, and/or advertisements within this publication other than those of Dell are not endorsed by or in any way connected with Dell Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.

2013 Issue 1

Fortifying IT asset protection Recent citings rotecting endpoint data in the to compliance requirements and ensure workplace is not a trivial matter for appropriate protection for highly mobile data. CIOs, IT decision makers, IT asset IT organizations are also looking for an easy- Pmanagers, or end users. The cost of to-deploy data protection solution that provides replacing a physical device itself may be no holistic protection without impacting end users. more than a few thousand dollars. However, the They need data protection that can be easily value of sensitive enterprise information stored integrated within existing endpoint security on a lost laptop, for example, can dramatically capabilities and does not interfere with existing inflate its average replacement cost—possibly by management processes. To help meet these many more thousands of dollars. demands, Dell acquired Credant Technologies But cost is not the only challenge. The and its leading-edge data protection solution rapid rise in compliance requirements, designed to safeguard individual files and widespread shifts to bring-your-own-device protect enterprise IT assets. This approach helps (BYOD) initiatives, and cloud-based delivery of provide security for data stored on PCs, mobile applications and services add to the complexity devices, and remote hardware. of protecting endpoint data in a big way. In The Dell Credant solution also addresses addition, mushrooming consumer protection IT asset management requirements for laws run parallel with strict compliance comprehensive data protection without requirements across a wide range of industries affecting how end users work or how devices and businesses of all sizes. These challenges are administered. For example, traditional call for a comprehensive approach to endpoint full-disk encryption methods may derail device security that is designed to simplify adherence management applications, significantly swelling

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. dell.com/powersolutions | 2013 Issue 01 7 Recent citings

the number of workloads for IT asset provide advanced Dell security solutions. infrastructure. A slight performance managers and impacting performance for Dell also plans to complement Credant improvement can create a significant end users. Instead, the Credant approach offerings with existing Dell security assets competitive advantage in the HFT arena. enables ongoing use of existing tools including Dell SonicWALL™ software, Dell It enables these organizations to evaluate for managing and administering devices SecureWorks, and Quest™ software. offers quickly, get optimized pricing, and and providing comprehensive coverage “In today’s work environment, data is reduce slippage on trades to compete of organizational data without derailing always in-flight—from work being done successfully in the market. Dell Processor performance or requiring extra end-user on a local PC, sent via e-mail, stored on Acceleration Technology is designed to effort. It is designed to deploy more quickly a USB drive, and saved in the cloud,” says offer HFT organizations the capability to and effectively than full-disk encryption, and it Jeff Clarke, president, End User Computing tune processor performance to the specific provides preset templates that set standards Solutions at Dell. “Each one of those needs of their proprietary algorithms. By to meet compliance statutes. experiences represents a potential security enhancing performance, Dell helps HFT risk. As a result, businesses need a data organizations enhance results from highly protection strategy that is comprehensive, execution-dependent trading strategies. “Businesses need a data flexible, and easy to deploy. The Credant Dell Processor Acceleration Technology protection strategy that assets will complement and extend current enables flexible control of Intel® Turbo Dell device security features to help make Boost Technology on specific Dell is comprehensive, Latitude, OptiPlex, and Dell Precision PowerEdge™ rack server configurations. flexible, and easy to computers some of the world’s most It essentially locks in a high processor secure. And when combined with the frequency by setting the number of active deploy. The Credant change in compute behaviors and data cores on the processor while utilizing all in-flight, Dell can now offer a differentiated available cache—even the cache of the assets will complement security proposition based on its own inactive cores. It also minimizes execution and extend current Dell intellectual property.” jitter caused by the usual transitions of standard turbo mode. device security features Turning nanoseconds HFT organizations can now benefit from to help make Latitude, into big gains configuring consistent, high-performance Dell has earned a reputation for listening settings that help provide enhanced OptiPlex, and Dell to customers, working to understand performance and increased flexibility. Dell their challenges, and using its knowledge Processor Acceleration Technology is Precision computers and experience to provide technologies available on PowerEdge R620, PowerEdge some of the world’s that address their needs. Dell Processor R720, and PowerEdge R720xd servers Acceleration Technology is a stellar example equipped with Intel Xeon® E5-2690 most secure.” of how this focus helps drive innovation processors and the Integrated Dell Remote for Dell. After meeting with several high- Access Controller (iDRAC). The Credant acquisition complements frequency trading (HFT) firms worldwide, existing Dell capabilities in endpoint security Dell engineering applied its deep knowledge Award-winning contributions including multifactor authentication, of processor technology to an innovative to the workplace secure BIOS, and the certified Trusted solution that helps deliver higher frequency Recent Dell end-user computing devices Platform Module. Dell also offers the and more consistent and predictable levels have received a warm reception across Federal Information Processing Standard of performance than ever before. It also the industry. In particular, the following (FIPS) Publication 140-2 Security Level 3 includes a customizable implementation. systems were given high marks from certification for extremely high-level data The essence of HFT is speed—speed of reviewers worldwide: protection on PC platforms including Dell™ execution, speed of calculation, speed Latitude™ laptops, Dell OptiPlex™ desktops, of access to markets. For a competitive • Dell XPS™ One 27: PC Magazine granted and Dell Precision™ workstations. Planning advantage, HFT organizations rely on an Editor’s Choice award for the high- is underway to integrate Dell enterprise the sophistication of their algorithms end, all-in-one design in the XPS One 27. security assets with Credant technology to and any edge they can gain from their In addition to four and one-half out of

8 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. five stars for performance and ease of use, • Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade system Learn more the PC Magazine reviewer remarked, “The and PowerEdge C6220 server: InfoWorld Dell Credant Technologies: Dell XPS One 27 manages to put almost every bestowed “2013 Technology of the Year” dell.com/credant technology and feature we’re looking for in a honors on these PowerEdge systems. Its compact, stylish chassis.”1 reviews noted that the PowerEdge M1000e Dell Processor • Dell Latitude 6430u Ultrabook: LAPTOP “is a remarkably complete and refined blade Acceleration Technology: qrs.ly/g72xtni magazine rated the Latitude 6430u four solution that incorporates many new ideas and stars out of five and praised this Ultrabook innovations,”3 and the PowerEdge C6220 is Dell XPS One 27: for its durability: “The 14-inch Dell Latitude “a shining example of the new breed of high- qrs.ly/ma2xtnj 6430u is built for the rough-and-tumble density, no-frills server.”4 Dell Latitude 6430u Ultrabook: business world.”2 • Dell Compellent storage: When qrs.ly/tk2xtqq Information Week editors polled readers Dell PowerEdge In addition, the following PowerEdge servers on their favorite midrange storage arrays, 12th-generation servers: and Dell Compellent™ Storage Center™ storage Dell Compellent storage was deemed “the dell.com/poweredge area network (SAN) arrays received rave reviews: clear favorite.”5 Dell Compellent Storage Center: dell.com/compellent 1 “Editor’s Choice awards: Dell XPS One 27,” by Joel Santo Domingo, PC Magazine, January 2013, qrs.ly/l82za1q. 2 “Dell Latitude 6430u review,” by Sherri L. Smith, LAPTOP magazine, January 2013, qrs.ly/7g2za1t. 3,4 “InfoWorld’s 2013 Technology of the Year award winners,” InfoWorld, January 2013, qrs.ly/mu2za1y. 5 “Dell Compellent wins our storage evaluation,” by Art Wittmann, InformationWeek Global CIO, May 2012, qrs.ly/jy2za1z.

Converging networks into an agile, elastic data center fabric

By Tony Ansley, Achmad Chadran, Marc Keating, and Rich Martin

Virtualization and consolidation are driving the need to converge networks into a unified, highly efficient fabric for large-volume data flow. Dell offers exceptional network and storage innovations to optimize bandwidth for data center flexibility.

10 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Feature section Storage landscape

ata centers today must have the inefficiencies and limitations of maintaining the DCB-standard extensions1 also enables flexibility to support a rich mix of their legacy networking infrastructure. Dell data center fabric solutions to work high-bandwidth network traffic, To help organizations take advantage better together in a range of topologies Dmoving large volumes of data of a converged network infrastructure such as scale-out, scale-up, and data for applications as diverse as databases, while protecting their investments in center–in–a–box architectures. Dell storage imaging, voice telephony, and video. IT existing data center networking, Dell and networking can also be architected to advances such as virtualization and big data offers a range of open, standards-based support a range of specialized data center analytics and the widespread proliferation Ethernet fabric solutions designed to topologies that leverage advances such as of endpoints have added complexity to support efficient, flexible, and reliable converged 10GbE connectivity efficiently data center networks across industries and network consolidation. Ethernet and cost-effectively. business models. networking–supported protocols such As a result, many organizations have as TCP/IP can provide efficient channels Empowering network convergence come to rely on multiple, discrete networks of communication for moving data The key enabler for any networking that utilize interconnects to storage systems among servers, storage, and the Internet. infrastructure is the switching technology such as Fibre Channel, Internet SCSI (iSCSI), Dell™ server, network, and storage offerings that manages data center traffic. Dell Force10 and InfiniBand to help meet performance leverage open standards, virtualization, data center networking switches enable level and quality of service (QoS) goals. At and workload automation and intelligence converged, intelligent, and scalable switching the same time, these network islands can to help simplify operations, enhance capabilities for 10GbE and 40GbE fabrics. be costly to implement, difficult to maintain, efficiency, and ensure interoperability with Force10 switches comply with Dell and inefficient to operate. existing data center fabrics. VNA standards–based interoperability, Emerging high-throughput fabrics adaptive workload intelligence, and efficient such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) Architecting specialized network scalability,2 and enable organizations and 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GbE) offer a and storage topologies to deploy a single physical network tremendous opportunity for organizations The Dell Fluid Data™ architecture provides a infrastructure that provides deterministic to converge networking into a single, set of capabilities designed to automatically performance and QoS. Force10 switches are multipurpose infrastructure. Ethernet optimize data storage, improve storage specifically designed to work seamlessly with networks can now utilize standards-based efficiency, and enhance IT agility and Dell storage area network (SAN) arrays—Dell advances such as Data Center Bridging business resiliency. Additionally, the Dell Compellent and Dell EqualLogic PS Series (DCB) to help ensure QoS, reliability, and Virtual Network Architecture (VNA) offers storage—and the underlying Dell Fluid Data enhanced bandwidth allocation control. intelligent management and automation architecture to help deliver automated, Emerging standards such as Virtual for data center and branch and campus optimized performance. eXtensible LAN (VXLAN) and Network environments that enable dynamic control Force10 switches are available as either Virtualization using Generic Routing of virtual servers, desktops, and applications discrete components or embedded into Encapsulation (NVGRE) enable virtualization across 10GbE and 40GbE fabrics. VNA also a converged, chassis-based architecture. of multiple network domains within a single virtualizes, automates, and orchestrates They offer an efficient modular design with broadband Ethernet network and seamless network services to enable organizations to built-in Ethernet stacking capability for migration of workloads. be agile in changing business conditions. cost-effective scalability. In addition to the Because of the emerging nature of Leveraging the Fluid Data architecture capability to stack these switches across these capabilities, some organizations and VNA standards, Dell Force10™ data chassis, their switching functionality also may consider waiting for these standards center networking switches and Dell allows for enhancing efficient east-west to mature before embarking on network Compellent™ Storage Center™ and Dell traffic flow while optimizing north-south convergence and data center fabric EqualLogic™ PS Series storage systems uplink capacity. Other features include upgrade projects. However, delaying these offer features such as storage and network flexible connectivity options through enhancements may result in elevated costs virtualization, automatic configuration, and FlexIO modular switch technology that and lost productivity because of the inherent services orchestration. Compliance with help deliver support for 40GbE quad small

1 As of March 1, 2013, Dell PowerVault™ MD Series storage does not support the DCB standard. 2 For more information on software-defined networking and VNA, see “Software-defined networking for the Virtual Era,” by Arpit Joshipura, in Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1, qrs.ly/4n2y82z.

form-factor pluggable + (QSFP+), 10GbE systems and greenfield network technologies; Evolving data center fabrics small form-factor pluggable + (SFP+), and and hypervisor-agnostic support for virtualized 10GBASE-T ports. server environments. Innovation is reshaping IT today, These switches also support and integrate IP but upgrading data center fabrics can challenge IT organizations of storage through a single 10GbE connection for Driving seamless, automated all sizes. Download this solution enhanced efficiency. A performance-optimized storage performance brief to learn more about how Dell is advancing Ethernet fabrics and design helps provide high performance and low Ensuring performance, responsiveness, and enterprise-class storage solutions latency for dynamic workloads and demanding reliability of enterprise storage is an important to help organizations optimize data east-west traffic flow. Additional features include consideration for organizations. As a result, center efficiency. access control lists (ACLs), internal traffic many organizations rely on separate, dedicated qrs.ly/2j2y84i distribution and prioritization, high port density, networks to meet service requirements. and power and cooling optimization. Dell Force10 data center networking Powered by the Force10 OS (FTOS), switches are designed to deliver seamless, Force10 10GbE switches leverage the DCB automated performance and QoS for the standard to help ensure QoS and reliability. full range of Dell storage offerings. On-board DCB enables a lossless Ethernet fabric for intelligence enables Force10 switches to converging multiple networks into a single automatically detect and identify Dell storage common converged network infrastructure systems on the network using the Link Layer (see Figure 1). Force10 switches also include Discovery Protocol (LLDP). The network is then Virtual Link Trunking (VLT), an innovative Layer 2 configured automatically for the optimized data multipath technology that enhances scalability flow requirements of a particular storage system. and control in Layer 2 switching environments. For verification, Dell has tested and certified By leveraging key capabilities of the VNA Force10 interoperability with Dell Compellent such as software-defined networking (SDN), and Dell EqualLogic storage in a variety of data Force10 switches also include open, standards- center application environments.3 Force10 based programmability that enables automation switches are optimized to meet the demands and virtualization; interoperability with both legacy of a range of different network and storage

High-priority iSCSI and Fibre Channel SAN trac

DCB-enabled 10GbE fabric

Unregistered miscellaneous LAN trac

Figure 1. Converging iSCSI, FCoE, and other high-priority traffic on a single Ethernet network

3 Based on testing performed at Dell Compellent labs for Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN arrays and at Dell EqualLogic Storage Infrastructure and Solutions (SIS) labs for Dell EqualLogic PS and FS Series storage.

12 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Feature section Storage landscape

Dell PowerEdge server Dell PowerEdge server

Data center LAN

Dell Force10 Dell Force10 10GbE switch 10GbE switch

10GbE LAN trac 10GbE converged LAN-SAN trac 10GbE iSCSI SAN trac Dell EqualLogic PS Series SAN arrays

Figure 2. Consolidating iSCSI SAN and LAN traffic over a converged 10GbE fabric in a scale-out architecture

topologies, including scale-out and scale-up Force10 switches for data center networking Enabling architectures and converged, chassis-based, data leverage DCB-standard extensions to help multipurpose center–in–a–box infrastructures. ensure that an EqualLogic PS Series–based Ethernet architecture delivers the intended performance Scale-out architecture for storage over a converged 10GbE fabric. This converged The Data Center Bridging (DCB) standard can serve as a vital tool data throughput network scale-out architecture not only helps for consolidating data center traffic Organizations that depend on business agility organizations leverage cost, efficiency, and onto a high-capacity Ethernet fabric. Download this Dell technical often look for ways to maximize return on flexibility benefits of 10GbE, but also helps bulletin to learn more about DCB investment. One way to help accomplish this enhance storage efficiency and streamline and how it excels at classifying and goal for their IT environments is to consolidate management and operations. prioritizing traffic for converged Ethernet fabrics. different types of network traffic onto a single 10GbE fabric without sacrificing performance and Scale-up architecture to maximize qrs.ly/vk2y84g control. A scale-out architecture based on Dell Fibre Channel networking EqualLogic storage arrays and Dell Force10 data Organizations deploying and looking to maintain center networking switches enables consolidation their existing investment in Fibre Channel– of both iSCSI and LAN traffic of storage data on a connected storage systems can scale vertically single 10GbE fabric (see Figure 2). and consolidate network traffic onto a single, EqualLogic PS Series storage features converged 10GbE fabric. A scale-up architecture a frameless peer storage architecture with based on Dell Compellent storage and Force10 multipath I/O technology that is designed to data center networking switches, for example, scale performance and capacity together is designed to deliver dedicated, scalable Fibre to meet increasing demand. Scale-out File Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capability in a System capability can be added seamlessly with converged 10GbE fabric without sacrificing Dell EqualLogic FS Series network attached performance or control (see Figure 3). storage (NAS) appliances without changing the Compellent storage arrays offer innovative management interface. EqualLogic PS Series virtual port technology designed to deliver iSCSI arrays also include features such as storage multiprotocol versatility that enables migration virtualization, automated data tiering, and from any connectivity medium—Fibre Channel, dynamic load balancing to enhance data center iSCSI, or FCoE—to any other connectivity efficiency and scalability. medium. A perpetual licensing model for

Data center LAN

FCoE bridge switch for SAN A

FCoE bridge switch for SAN B Dell Compellent Storage Center array

Dell Force10 10GbE switches

10GbE LAN trac 10GbE FCoE SAN A trac 10GbE FCoE SAN B trac Dell PowerEdge servers 10GbE converged LAN-SAN trac

Figure 3. Maximizing Fibre Channel storage networking over converged 10GbE in a scale-up architecture

software enables organizations to scale up virtualization platforms. Dell Active System Authors hardware without having to obtain new licenses Manager provides an intelligent, intuitive console for existing features. Additionally, Force10 that leverages template-based infrastructure Tony Ansley is a senior storage consultant on the iSCSI Solutions transit rack-based FCoE and Fibre Channel onboarding and configuration. It also facilitates Marketing team at Dell, and has infrastructure integration helps minimize managing common administrative tasks. Force10 over 27 years of experience in the costs and streamlines management through networking optimized for east-west traffic flow computer industry. Follow Tony automated discovery of existing DCB network and leveraging the DCB standard helps deliver on Twitter @EQL_Tony. settings and propagation of those settings to outstanding network performance and reliability Achmad Chadran is a solution downstream devices. within a single, converged 10GbE fabric. marketing specialist in the Dell Storage Marketing Organization. Follow Achmad on Twitter Chassis-based converged data Emerging converged data center @a_SAN_a. center in a box network fabrics Many organizations considering advanced Optimizing data center fabrics is a key goal Marc Keating is an enterprise technologist at Dell specializing application deployments such as private clouds for many organizations with high volumes of in storage. and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can data traffic that is often moved through a mix adopt architectures that consolidate not only of networking islands that cater to different Rich Martin is an enterprise fabrics but also an entire infrastructure into parts of the data center infrastructure. The technologist at Dell specializing in networking. a single chassis. The Dell Active System 800 emergence of broadband fabrics such as 10GbE converged infrastructure offers a preengineered offers a tremendous opportunity to help reduce virtualization platform that combines Dell complexity with robust, unified, high-throughput Learn more PowerEdge™ blade servers, EqualLogic PS networking capabilities for dynamic, high- Series storage arrays, and Force10 data center volume data traffic patterns that are a reality Efficient unified fabric: dellstorage.com/storagenetworking networking into a single, integrated PowerEdge in today’s data centers. Dell offers a range of M1000e chassis. topologies and converged networking fabrics for Converged infrastructure: Designed for virtualization environments, heightened data center traffic throughput that dell.com/convergence Active System 800 includes support for supports modular, scalable, and cost-effective VMware vSphere® and Microsoft® Hyper-V® server and storage infrastructures.

14 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Feature Storage landscape section

Optimize virtual infrastructure through integrated storage management

By Vikram Belapurkar, William Urban, and David Glynn

In highly virtualized environments, integrated management tools are critical for optimizing deployments. Dell™ EqualLogic™ Virtual Storage Manager for VMware® environments helps simplify management, as well as enhance data protection and performance.

irtualization has become many organizations have deployed a storage resources can add substantial a central strategy for data VMware vSphere® virtualized environment, complexity. If not adequately addressed, centers as the underlying which is designed to provide a robust, the lack of comprehensive, integrated tools Vtechnologies mature and reliable platform from the desktop through can complicate deployments and add to organizations realize the profound benefits the data center and out to the cloud. productivity loss and errors. of a virtualized IT infrastructure. Virtualized Not surprisingly, a virtualized storage Comprehensive integration between computing environments help improve infrastructure complements a virtualized storage and the hypervisor plays a key resource utilization, reduce complexity, computing environment by enabling role in optimizing the value of virtualized and lower operational and capital costs. outstanding application performance, deployments. And proper storage Also, organizations that migrate to a scalability, and simplified management. management tools that integrate well with fully virtualized environment typically However, as organizations migrate more the virtualization layer are essential. benefit from enhanced agility and high of their applications into virtualized A highly virtualized data center also availability of mission-critical applications. environments, coordinating virtual requires data protection practices that are To address their virtualization needs, resources with underlying compute and designed for the virtualized environment,

since tools and practices that were in place desktops by avoiding the storage of duplicate Achieving simple, reliable, before virtualization are often inadequate data across desktop virtual machines. and cost-efficient data protection and can further complicate data protection Dell EqualLogic VSM provides Smart Copy, processes. Integrated tools optimized for Managing datastores Smart Replica, and Smart Clone features for virtualization help to efficiently streamline in large-scale deployments VMware vSphere–aware data protection. data protection. Dell EqualLogic VSM offers an integrated Through the creation of a Smart Copy, In addition, consistent performance and wizard that helps administrators quickly VSM helps automate the coordination of service levels depend on how virtual machines provision storage in the virtualized vSphere-based snapshots and array-based behave on the underlying storage platform. environment. They can create, monitor, snapshots taken by the EqualLogic PS Series The tight integration of storage and the and expand VMFS datastores through the SAN (see Figure 2). virtualized environment enables the intelligent VMware vCenter interface. Administrators A Smart Copy can consist of one or automation of tasks and policies required to can use the wizard’s intuitive drop-down more virtual machines or VMFS datastores, maintain performance and service levels. menus and predefined access policies which comprise one or more point-in- to easily set up environments by simply time, space-efficient snapshots stored on Simplifying the management choosing the number of datastores, the EqualLogic PS Series arrays. A Smart Replica of virtualized storage size for each, and the naming convention— is similar to a Smart Copy but differs in For efficient storage management in a saving time and minimizing training needs. where the resulting data is located. A Smart VMware vSphere virtualized environment, In addition, through its multigroup Replica is stored on a different EqualLogic PS organizations can deploy Dell EqualLogic management capabilities, VSM bolsters the Series group, typically at a disaster recovery PS Series virtualized Internet SCSI (iSCSI) ability of EqualLogic storage to support location. A Smart Clone is a full copy of storage area network (SAN) arrays. Included large and demanding environments. the multiple virtual machines or datastores with EqualLogic PS Series arrays is the Dell These capabilities allow data to be spread that are presented to the same vSphere EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager (VSM), a over several EqualLogic PS Series groups, environment. Smart Clones can be used to powerful tool that enables administrators to helping enterprises manage large-scale quickly create copies of virtual machines manage EqualLogic storage from within the deployments that span multiple groups. from templates for production or test use. VMware vCenter™ interface (see Figure 1). VSM is deployed as a virtual appliance through a quick and simple process. The software tool offers several features designed to simplify storage management, optimize data protection, improve storage visibility within vSphere, and optimize virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments. To facilitate management of VMware vSphere Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) datastores on multiple EqualLogic PS Series arrays, VSM guides administrators through the process of provisioning, expanding, deleting, and monitoring the datastores. The VSM Smart Copy, Smart Replica, and Smart Clone functionality allows the creation of snapshots, replicas, and clones for dependable data protection. In addition, tight integration enables VSM to communicate key storage attributes to vSphere for heightened storage awareness. VSM also can assist with simple, space-efficient Figure 1. Dell EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager is integrated with the VMware vCenter user interface to provisioning and management of virtual optimize storage management

16 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Feature section Storage landscape

Smart Copies can be grouped together on volumes according to protection level requirements. VSM maintains a Smart Copy database and is designed to verify each copy for data integrity. The Smart Copy approach to data protection is SAN-based, as opposed to traditional host-based approaches. Because Smart Copies are created by the EqualLogic PS Series array, the host is not burdened with resource-hungry snapshot operations, avoiding impact on critical application performance. Additionally, Smart Copies store incrementally changed information, helping reduce the total storage capacity needed to achieve reliable data protection. VSM provides highly granular control, allowing administrators to easily select a virtual machine, a set of virtual machines, or a datastore to be protected as necessary. In the event of data loss, administrators can use Smart Copies to restore the state to a specific point in time. For example, if a Smart Copy of a datastore of virtual machines was created, administrators can use that Smart Copy to restore an Figure 2. A step-by-step wizard makes it easy to create Smart Copies through individual virtual machine or a set of virtual machines the VSM interface within the datastore. For disaster tolerance, the VSM Smart Replica online data protection of the VMware vSphere function uses EqualLogic Auto-Replication to replicate virtualized environment. appropriate datastores from the primary EqualLogic PS Series group to a secondary recovery group Expanding storage awareness that may be at a geographically remote location. in the virtualized environment Replication between different groups at disparate For further integration with a VMware vSphere locations helps protect against disasters and data loss. environment, Dell EqualLogic VSM leverages the VMware If a volume goes offline, administrators can fail over vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) to allow to the recovery group and recover data from a replica. the EqualLogic array to communicate storage attributes End users resume access on the recovery volume, to vSphere. These attributes—which include drive type, and VSM replicates changes made to the recovery speed, RAID setting, and snapshot reserve space to name volume back to the original volume location when a few—allow vSphere to assess whether a storage array’s it becomes available. Administrators can then fail physical components meet the needs of virtual machines back to the primary group. This powerful replication according to predefined workload profiles. capability is included with EqualLogic storage at This information enables vSphere to determine no additional cost so organizations can simply and the automated placement of virtual machines based cost-effectively replicate their business-critical assets on workload and space constraints and intelligently across locations. migrate workloads across disparate physical resources. Intuitive SAN and VMware vCenter–based As a result, VSM helps achieve policy-driven workload navigation lets administrators easily create and manage automation to optimize latency, performance, and schedules for Smart Copy, Smart Replica, and Smart capacity utilization. This automation, along with Clone operations. Administrators can coordinate alerts and event notifications, further supports the snapshot, replica, and clone creation across the virtual responsiveness and agility demanded by business- data center, leading to fast, reliable, and effective critical tier 1 applications.

Rightsizing virtual As storage I/O requests are generated on Streamlining the deployment desktop deployments the vSphere hosts, MPIO is designed to of virtualized environments Dell EqualLogic VSM also facilitates the intelligently route these requests directly Dell EqualLogic virtualized storage is management of virtualized storage used to the array member best suited to handle designed to help enterprises optimize their in VDIs, which enterprises are deploying them. MPIO enables increased bandwidth, virtual deployments on an infrastructure to support the challenges of modern reduced network latency, automatic that can scale without added complexity mobile client computing. VSM enhances connection management, failover, and as requirements grow and change. productivity by automating virtual machine fault-tolerant load balancing—ultimately The automation and integration of pool creation, virtual machine registration, helping boost storage performance, storage management within the virtual and patch and update management. scalability, and availability. infrastructure, enabled by EqualLogic VSM, By leveraging leading-edge array–based The second tool, the Dell EqualLogic leads to streamlined management, reliable cloning technology, VSM streamlines Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for data protection, and exceptional IT agility. the provisioning of virtual desktops in VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager By offering powerful storage management VMware View™ VDIs. Because EqualLogic (SRM), communicates with SRM through capabilities through the VMware vCenter PS Series thin clones store only incremental vStorage application programming interfaces interface, VSM helps bridge the gap changes to EqualLogic template volumes, (APIs). This combination offers centralized between the virtual-infrastructure they heighten space efficiency by avoiding automated disaster management. administrator and the storage administrator data duplication. This technology minimizes The SRA enables administrators to create to save time and boost efficiency. VDI storage requirements and helps reduce and test recovery plans while avoiding Furthermore, the use of Ethernet-based total cost of ownership. impact to production environments. The iSCSI connectivity and all-inclusive software SRA then utilizes VSM to help ensure virtual features of EqualLogic PS Series arrays Enhancing data availability machine consistency and coordinate enhances performance while minimizing and disaster management replication scheduling. It leverages the resource overhead and total cost. With Dell EqualLogic VSM is a component of EqualLogic SAN-based Auto-Replication EqualLogic PS Series storage powering the Dell EqualLogic Host Integration feature to replicate appropriate data to the VMware vSphere environments, enterprises Tools for VMware, which are available at recovery site. In the event of a disaster, the can build a high-performance, cost- no additional cost to users of EqualLogic predefined recovery plans are executed effective virtual infrastructure that is simple PS Series arrays. The EqualLogic Host for efficient failover to the recovery site. to manage and scale. Integration Tools for VMware include two Also, the proactive failover feature helps other tools that enhance business continuity organizations avoid service and data loss by Authors and support high levels of service. enabling failover prior to a disaster. Dell EqualLogic Multipath I/O (MPIO) Using the failback feature, Vikram Belapurkar is a solutions marketing manager at Dell, focused on storage for VMware enables VMware vSphere administrators can set the system to fail consolidation and virtualization solutions. to intelligently leverage the scale-out back to production. The thin replication Follow Vikram on Twitter @VirtualStorageV. storage architecture of EqualLogic PS feature of EqualLogic storage means William Urban is a technical marketing Series arrays. This architecture is designed only changed blocks will be transmitted, engineer at Dell working on VMware to automatically balance workloads by leading to reduced network traffic and virtualization integration for the Dell EqualLogic spreading data across multiple active expediting the failback. product family. Follow William on Twitter storage resources and optimizing available In traditional SAN environments, the @VirtWillU. network connections, cache, controller cost, complexity, and burden on resources David Glynn is a technical marketing engineer resources, and drives. is often too high for many organizations at Dell focused on EqualLogic storage and its With shared storage, the paths from the to take advantage of replication. By integration with VMware vSphere. Follow David on Twitter @d_glynn. servers to the storage must be redundant leveraging the SRA and EqualLogic Auto- and highly available. MPIO provides Replication—which is also available at no multiple redundant network connections additional cost with EqualLogic PS Series Learn more to storage arrays, as well as storage-aware, arrays—organizations can simply and cost- Dell EqualLogic PS Series end-to-end management of data paths efficiently implement disaster management in a VMware environment: between the host and storage arrays. capabilities that are resource optimized. dellstorage.com/vsphereandequallogic

18 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Feature Storage landscape section

or many organizations, protecting transactional data and ensuring the availability of online transaction Fprocessing (OLTP) applications are crucial for delivering a consistent customer experience and maintaining business continuity. Whether organizations are offering online banking or selling airline tickets, downtime or interruptions can quickly lead to customer frustration and lost revenue. IT groups must make sure that no mission-critical application data is lost and that users can continue to conduct transactions during either planned maintenance or unplanned outages. They need a data protection and recovery strategy that delivers a near-zero, or real-time, recovery point objective (RPO) for mission- critical applications—in other words, the OLTP application must be able to recover without any data loss. At the same time, they require a Sustain OLTP availability fast recovery time objective (RTO) to maintain availability and avoid service interruptions. In many cases, organizations must weigh and performance with the cost of implementing technologies that can deliver a near-zero RPO and a fast synchronous replication RTO with the potential business costs of data unavailability or slow recovery from By Magi Kapoor and Maggie Smith disasters. The technology cost associated with recovery generally decreases the longer an organization can wait for recovery, but Ensuring high availability of mission-critical OLTP the business cost—including productivity, customer retention, and revenue—increases applications is a necessity for many organizations. the longer it takes to recover. The point where Dell™ EqualLogic™ Synchronous Replication (SyncRep) time and cost intersect helps organizations develop an optimal high-availability and data helps protect data and keep online transactions flowing protection plan for mission-critical OLTP without compromising performance. application environments (see Figure 1). Storage-based synchronous replication—which is designed to write data to two separate storage arrays simultaneously—can play an important role Dive deeper in a high-availability and data protection SyncRep allows organizations to protect plan. It offers an efficient, easy-to-use mission-critical application data within a campus approach to delivering high availability environment. In this technical report, get a detailed look at the benchmark testing conducted using and protecting data from loss for mission- SyncRep on Dell EqualLogic PS Series arrays. critical OLTP applications. However, some qrs.ly/sj2y7i7 organizations hesitate to implement

to be kept up-to-date. The result is two

The cost to the organization of data unavailability hardware-independent copies of volume The cost to the organization to recover from disaster data. (For more information about the requirements for setting up SyncRep, see the The optimal data recovery plan, sidebar, “Get ready to replicate.”) in terms of cost and time SyncRep is enabled on a per-volume

Dollars basis. As a result, administrators gain the flexibility to select only certain applications that need synchronous protection—even if those applications are spread across a few volumes—rather than replicating the Time from disaster to recovery entire pool or array. Active volumes are located in the SyncActive pool, to which Figure 1. The costs of a data protection plan balanced with the business costs of data unavailability and slow recoverability the hosts are connected when reading and writing volume data. When volume data is synchronous replication because of capabilities introduced in EqualLogic written to the SyncActive pool, the group is the potentially high cost of the required firmware v6.0. Included with EqualLogic designed to simultaneously write the same software and infrastructure. storage at no additional cost, SyncRep data to SyncRep-enabled volumes in the Others are concerned over the impact enables organizations to achieve the RPOs SyncAlternate pool. of synchronous replication on application and RTOs they need for mission-critical SyncRep avoids the data loss that can performance. If synchronous replication applications without significantly affecting occur even in momentary outages. With of data substantially slows database application performance. SyncRep, the storage group acknowledges response time, it could cause downtime write completion only after data is written to and negatively affect the user experience. Protecting data with both the active and alternate volumes, and Organizations need a cost-effective solution synchronous replication that write is hardened in the protected cache that can meet stringent RPO and RTO SyncRep is designed to write volume data of both systems. By prioritizing the writes requirements while still delivering a suitably simultaneously to two different storage pools over the acknowledgment, SyncRep helps responsive experience to end users. in the same EqualLogic PS Series group (see ensure that no data is lost and that the two Dell EqualLogic PS Series Internet SCSI Figure 2). Whether those storage pools are copies of data are up-to-date at all times. (iSCSI) storage area network (SAN) arrays in the same data center, on different floors The roles of the SyncActive and help organizations address these challenges of the same building, or located across a SyncAlternate pools can be switched. with the Synchronous Replication (SyncRep) campus, SyncRep enables data in both pools Changes made during the switchover are tracked and are used to update the SyncAlternate pool once the two pools are

Client LAN again in sync. The ability to easily switch Microsoft pools helps administrators accommodate SQL Server iSCSI storage SAN planned maintenance and sustain availability, even with the unavailability of an array Pool 1 Pool 2 member or pool.

EqualLogic EqualLogic Administrators also can manually fail over PS Series PS Series member A member X from the SyncActive to the SyncAlternate

EqualLogic EqualLogic pool if the pools become out of sync as a PS Series SyncRep PS Series member B member Y result of a problem with a member, pool, or

EqualLogic EqualLogic the networking infrastructure. Administrators PS Series PS Series member C member Z can resume applications with minimal Group A Building 1 Building 2 interruptions. Data loss is avoided because the new SyncActive pool (formerly the Figure 2. Data replication using SyncRep for campus data protection SyncAlternate pool) accepts writes and tracks

20 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Feature section Storage landscape

Understanding WAN synchronous replication

Discover how Dell EqualLogic Synchronous Network Replication (SyncRep) works to protect data and get best practices for configuring SyncRep with this technical paper. VMware vSphere® ESXi™ 5.0 hypervisor qrs.ly/ek2y7ib Virtual machine Microsoft Windows 2008 VMware vSphere Enterprise R2 OS ESXi 5.0 hypervisor Microsoft Virtual machine Virtual machine SQL Server 2008 ® Microsoft Windows 2008 Microsoft Windows 2008 Enterprise Edition R2 Enterprise R2 OS Enterprise R2 OS

Dell PowerEdge R610 Dell PowerEdge R610 Dell PowerEdge R610 1 km ﬁber-optic interconnect (200 µs latency)

Pool 1 (Simulated local/SyncActive) Pool 2 (Simulated remote/SyncAlternate) Dell Force10 S60 Dell Force10 S60

EqualLogic PS Series group

Pool 1 (SyncActive) Pool 2 (SyncAlternate) Dell EqualLogic PS6100X Dell EqualLogic PS6100X

Building 1 Building 2

Figure 3. Configuration of the test environment for a synchronously replicated campus site

changes made while the original SyncActive Test configuration where concurrent end users execute copy is offline. To test a typical synchronous replication transactions against a database. To measure scenario in a campus environment, the the performance of consolidated OLTP Quantifying OLTP performance team set up two storage pools, each applications, four SQL Server 2008 databases, In July and August 2012, Dell Labs tested using three EqualLogic PS6100X arrays. each totaling 550 GB, were created. SyncRep to demonstrate how using this Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was hosted on The testing team first generated EqualLogic capability in a mission-critical a Dell PowerEdge™ R610 server and was a TPC-C–style database transactional OLTP environment could help organizations connected to the SAN through four Gigabit workload on a single EqualLogic PS Series protect data while maintaining exceptional Ethernet (GbE) network interface cards array without SyncRep enabled. They performance. The primary goal was to connected to a Dell Force10™ S60 switch. then gathered application transactions compare the performance of a Microsoft® The pools were configured to be in the same per second and end-to-end transaction SQL Server® database environment with storage group and were connected by a response time data under increasing user and without SyncRep enabled. To gauge 1 km fiber-optic link, which resulted in a load. Four TPC-C benchmark clients the application performance, the testing measured latency of 200 µs (see Figure 3). simultaneously ran against each of the team recorded application transactions The Dell Quest Benchmark Factory™ for four databases. Multiple virtual machines per second (TPS) and overall application Databases software was used to generate concurrently executed the TPC-C transaction response time. In addition, workloads for the Transaction Processing benchmark at increasing user loads. the team sought to determine whether Performance Council Benchmark C (TPC-C), Next, the test was repeated with performance changed as the user load on a commonly used OLTP benchmark that SyncRep enabled for the storage group the array increased. simulates an order-entry environment using two arrays. The benchmark was run

Get ready to replicate To implement Synchronous Replication (SyncRep), organizations performance, Dell best practices recommend that the pools be need Dell EqualLogic PS Series array firmware v6.0 or higher. Two less than 1 km apart to minimize latency. However, organizations EqualLogic PS Series pools—one active and one alternate—must should account for the fact that latency is not only affected by each contain at least one array member and be within the same distance but also by other factors, such as the number of hops, EqualLogic group. type of networking equipment, and so on. Since the two pools are In addition, SyncRep requires fast, reliable connectivity in the same group, all members must be in the same virtual LAN between the two pools. The tolerance for latency in the network (VLAN)/subnet, and a flat network infrastructure is required. depends on the application using the volume—latency will be the For more information about the technical requirements, gating factor for application write performance. Bandwidth of at download the white paper, “Protecting Microsoft SQL Server least 1 Gbps is recommended between the pools. The pools can be databases with EqualLogic Synchronous Replication,” in distinct buildings, but to help decrease the impact on application qrs.ly/sj2y7i7.

on a single array and writes were replicated OLTP applications. In the travel industry, for SAN arrays, organizations can capitalize on to the second array using SyncRep. example, an airline could help ensure that synchronous replication to avoid data loss and online customers find a flight, buy a ticket, maintain high availability of OLTP applications. Test results select a seat, and make any additional travel Importantly, testing demonstrates that The benchmark tests showed that using arrangements without interruptions or errors SyncRep enables organizations to achieve SyncRep to replicate data to a second that might force them to start over or move zero RPO without sacrificing performance. pool had a negligible impact on the to a competing site. Customers would be And because SyncRep is available as application’s average transactions-per- able to enjoy a rapid response time, even part of the comprehensive software set second performance and the average during busy periods when the number of provided with EqualLogic storage at no response time (see Figure 4). The test also online users increases. additional cost, organizations can avoid showed that the performance impact did licensing costs for synchronous replication not increase appreciably as the user load Balancing data protection capabilities. Adopting SyncRep with increased. Even with a large user load, the and performance EqualLogic storage enables organizations to average response time remained well within For mission-critical OLTP applications, strike the right balance of data protection, an acceptable range for delivering a robust, organizations need ways to protect data availability, cost, and performance for their responsive user experience. from loss and maintain availability as well as OLTP applications. These results have important implications performance. By implementing the SyncRep for organizations using mission-critical capabilities built into EqualLogic PS Series Authors 90 0.5 Magi Kapoor is a senior technical marketing 80 Without SyncRep (TPS) advisor in the Dell Enterprise Storage With SyncRep (TPS) 0.4 Product Group. 70 Without SyncRep (sec) PS) 60 With SyncRep (sec) Maggie Smith is a senior marketing manager (T 0.3 at Dell. She is focused on storage solutions for 50 Microsoft applications and has over 30 years of 40 experience marketing technology products. 0.2 30 Transaction rate Transaction 20 0.1 Average response time (sec) Learn more 10 Dell EqualLogic storage: 0 0 equallogic.com 80 160 240 320 400 480 560 640 720 800 880 960 1040 1120 1200 User load Dell EqualLogic PS Series in a SQL Server environment: Figure 4. Impact of SyncRep on transactions per second and average response time qrs.ly/a22y7ie

22 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. To d ay Tomorrow Introducing scalable Schneider Electric data center facility modules

Now, roll out power and cooling for your Business-wise, Future-driven.TM data center only when you need it. Modularity at the facility level After pioneering modularity within the data center’s traditional IT space, Schneider ElectricTM now brings the modular approach to the facility domains of data center physical infrastructure. This design/build approach transfers the time intensive engineering and pretesting of facility-related data center components to the “factory,” in turn making large data center deployment fast and easy. It also allows right-sized deployment today, while enabling quick capacity changes tomorrow. Our step and repeat approach Now, grow your facility-level power and cooling Fast, easy, cost-effective deployment capacity in 500 kW increments as you need it. Schneider Electric facility modules, which include a power unit and two types > Pretested, prewired, and UL-rated to of cooling (water chiller or air) units, complement IT containers to give companies reduce overall data center design and the complete infrastructure support they need to add capacity to existing data deployment time to weeks centers or to turn available space (e.g., former warehouses or manufacturing > CapEx cost savings range from 10 to 20 plants) into highly available, energy-effi cient, world-class data centers in just percent, and OpEx savings range from weeks. This scalable approach speeds up deployment, lowers costs, and 20 to 35 percent simplifi es the build process. Accordingly, data centers can move at the speed > Rightsizing, or matching power and cooling of business at all times — with the fl exibility to adapt to future business needs. to the exact IT loads, optimizes PUEs The pre-engineered modules can be Schneider Electric data center facility modules represent the future of large data > deployed according to the data center’s centers — delivered today! specific redundancy needs

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Dell-Power-solutions_US_June1_p113v.indd 1 4/26/2012 9:58:21 AM Feature section Storage landscape | Customer perspective

Vail Resorts Peak performance

To heighten the slope-side experience for visitors in a fiercely competitive market, Vail Resorts offers an innovative, storage-intensive social networking app using Dell™ Compellent™ storage with automated data tiering and simplified storage management.

perating resorts that cater primarily to is the EpicMix application. Utilizing personalized downhill skiers, snowboarders, and dashboards, the application offers season-pass other winter sports enthusiasts is a holders a way to track where and when they O precarious undertaking. Unseasonal have skied. The system utilizes radio frequency warm spells and other weather-related factors can identification (RFID) technology inside the pass to make or break the season. And even when the base track statistics such as vertical feet traveled and is deep and the powder is aplenty, the competition enables skiers to earn digital ski pins for milestones among winter resorts can be fierce. With more than they achieve. It can post this information to Facebook 500 ski areas operating in North America, it takes if skiers choose. Families and friends who sign up for creativity and innovation to stand out from the crowd. EpicMix notifications can even use Facebook to track Vail Resorts, Inc.—with ski area properties in where others in their group are on the mountain, Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, and Keystone in simply by viewing which lift they last rode. Colorado, and in Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood in the Lake Tahoe area—is continuously innovating Empowering epic innovations operations to enhance its visitors’ experience on EpicMix is just one example of how Vail Resorts the slopes. One of the resort chain’s innovations began to rely increasingly on technology to

24 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. “A lot of people love the EpicMix photo application. This enhanced customer experience is made possible by our Dell Compellent storage solution.”

—Mike Bahr IT manager at Vail Resorts September 2012

We add data to our tier 1, 15,000 rpm Viewing photos within the SAS drives.” Bahr adds that if the data hour—on a smartphone doesn’t need that level of performance, EpicMix has been a hit with guests since Dell Compellent Data Progression™ storage its launch two years ago. Phase two of the tiering software automatically migrates application’s deployment incorporated it down to the tier 3, 10,000 rpm Serial slope-side photographs into the offering. ATA (SATA) drives. And if the data needs Bahr explains that many ski resorts have increased performance later on, it is photographers on the slopes who take automatically moved back up to tier 1. photographs of skiers and snowboarders. “Performance is very important for our At the end of their day, the photographers virtual environment,” Bahr says. “We’ve got load the images on the computer about 200 virtual machines running off the and process them. When skiers and storage system. If performance starts to lag, snowboarders are done for the day, they a lot of different teams in our company will can go to the resort’s ski shop and look at be affected, either by loss of productivity their pictures. for individual users or inconvenience to the Vail Resorts updated this approach. customer if it affects one of our Web sites. According to Bahr, the photographers We’ve achieved excellent performance now use RFID-enabled cameras. “When with the Dell Compellent SAN; we they take pictures on the mountain, the don’t ever have to worry about the I/O camera scans the skier’s RFID tag and requirements for individual applications on registers who is in the photo,” says Bahr. enhance the customer experience and our virtual platform.” “The photographer wirelessly uploads it gain a competitive advantage. To bolster By utilizing Dell Compellent to our application, and it is tied to the its infrastructure, the company started Dynamic Capacity™ thin provisioning skier’s EpicMix dashboard. Within an virtualizing its back-end applications in a software, Vail Resorts is delaying procurement hour in most cases, the skier can see the VMware® virtualization environment. A key of additional storage capacity in its data tiers. photos on a smartphone. Guests can concern for their virtual platform rollout “Now, a year after implementation of the order full-size hard copies, or they can was replacing an existing storage area storage solution, we’re using 67 percent of share the thumbnails through Facebook network (SAN). After considering several its total capacity. Twenty-eight percent is or Twitter.” alternatives, Vail Resorts chose the Dell allocated but still free, and just under The EpicMix photo application runs Compellent Storage Center™ SAN array. 5 percent is unallocated. If we weren’t using on the Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 “The automated data tiering and thin provisioning, we would essentially be R2 OS and utilizes Microsoft SQL Server® simplified storage management are the two fully allocated, and we would again database, Microsoft Internet Information biggest reasons we chose Dell Compellent be shopping for more disk capacity. We’re Services (IIS), and Microsoft .NET storage,” says Mike Bahr, IT manager at Vail saving money by delaying purchase of Framework software. To roll it out, Vail Resorts. “We really like the idea that we don’t additional storage because we use Dell Resorts required a large amount of have to worry about what data goes where. Compellent Dynamic Capacity,” Bahr says. disk space. “For each picture that our

photographers take, we have an original Streamlining data administration Standout capacity and copies that are rendered,” Bahr says. and protection for innovation “The photo gets rendered with a logo. It Despite its modernized environment The Dell Compellent Storage Center gets rendered into thumbnail-size images. growing twofold compared with its legacy storage area network (SAN) can deliver We end up storing 12 copies of every environment, Vail Resorts continues a platform that scales efficiently photo that is taken on the mountain. We to utilize only one dedicated storage and readily supports a storage- estimated that we were going to need administrator. In addition, Dell Compellent intensive photo-sharing application 30 additional terabytes of storage.” Enterprise Manager software streamlines for skiers and snowboarders visiting system management. “With no increase in Vail Resorts–owned ski areas. staff, we’re managing twice as much space, “With no increase twice as many hosts, and twice as many virtual machines because of the streamlined in staff, we’re administration of our Dell Compellent 67% managing twice as storage,” Bahr says. Vail Resorts also supports its environment Dell Compellent Dynamic much space, twice with SAN-level data protection, replication, Capacity thin provisioning and recovery—capabilities its legacy facilitated Vail Resorts using only 67 percent of its total as many hosts, and environment did not have. It now uses Compellent storage capacity Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay™ twice as many virtual one year after deployment. software for data protection. “We tried to machines because deploy replication using software tools on the server side, but that solution was of the streamlined unable to keep up with our photo volume,” administration of Bahr reports. “We decided to move to Dell Compellent replication. We’re now our Dell Compellent replicating about 30 TB between our SANs. 200 TB storage.” It’s been working flawlessly. Previously, we Vail Resorts expanded Dell used other data protection technologies, Compellent storage capacity to 200 TB in its data center to —Mike Bahr and we were shooting for a recovery time support efficient handling of IT manager at Vail Resorts of 30 minutes to an hour. We’ve practiced its EpicMix app and photo September 2012 restoring a Dell Compellent Replay, and project for enhancing visitors’ we’ve demonstrated that we can now slope-side experience. recover a virtual machine in 5 to 10 minutes.” The company initially considered cloud storage but decided to expand Enjoying technology-driven storage inside its data center. “We knew support on the slopes our Dell Compellent solution could Many Vail Resorts customers use EpicMix handle the photo project,” says Bahr. to track and share their activities on the 5–10 minutes “We weren’t sure how much capacity we mountain. The application generated Recovering a virtual machine would need, but we knew that our Dell more than 1.5 million guest posts to using a Dell Compellent Replay Compellent volume could grow to Facebook and Twitter in a recent ski took 5 to 10 minutes, helping 200 TB if it needed to. When we purchased season. Skiers in droves are also taking Vail Resorts significantly reduce the SAN, we didn’t know how quickly our advantage of the ability to quickly share the 30-minute-to-one-hour data volume would grow or how much their vacation photos. “A lot of people love recovery time it had experienced storage we would really need. We initially the EpicMix photo application,” Bahr says. with non-SAN-level replication. purchased 40 TB. A little over a year later, “This enhanced customer experience is we’re up to 142 TB in our primary SAN and made possible by our Dell Compellent 100 TB in a secondary unit.” storage solution.”

26 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Solution showcase

Dell PowerVault tape solutions

Cost-effective data protection and preservation Organizations need to protect and preserve more Robust data protection data for longer periods of time than ever before. Tape can be moved off-site and stored in a secure location. Encryption helps ensure data privacy while support for ™ ™ Dell PowerVault tape solutions help address WORM tape media is designed to prevent overwriting of storage challenges by offering a robust, reliable, stored data and helps meet regulatory compliance. and cost-effective way to back up and archive Big capacity, small footprint data. Next-generation PowerVault tape solutions LTO-6 technology features a native data capacity capitalize on LTO-6 technology to help increase of up to 2.5 TB per cartridge—helping organizations cost-effectively accommodate large data volumes in capacity, improve performance, and lower TCO. the compact form factor of PowerVault tape solutions. To optimize data protection, PowerVault tape solutions complement Dell disk-based storage. High performance PowerVault LTO-6 tape solutions are engineered to achieve High data transfer rates make tape well suited for data transfer rates of up to 576 GB/hour to minimize large-scale recovery and long-term data archiving. backup windows and accelerate data recovery.

Exceptional dependability and compatibility For more information, visit Designed for a typical shelf life of over 20 years, tape is practical for long-term archiving. Backward compatibility qrs.ly/332i3ff of LTO technology helps preserve investments in prior-generation tape media. Feature section Storage landscape | Customer perspective

Europcar South Africa Accelerating performance through a private cloud

Europcar South Africa drives IT agility by building a private cloud that delivers services on the fly and boosts staff productivity, helping the car rental company increase customer loyalty and attract new clients.

n the car rental business, efficiency is the key to success, enabling competitive pricing and the delivery Iof services that help build customer loyalty. Accordingly, Europcar South Africa has developed a highly efficient business operation by supporting personnel and customers with cutting-edge IT. As Shaun Phillips, general manager of IT operations and infrastructure, puts it, “Our business is incredibly price sensitive, so we have to keep a tight control of costs. And the best way to do that is by driving efficiency through the use of technology.”

Next-generation infrastructure brings efficiency today Europcar had virtualized the majority of its data center using Dell™ technology and Microsoft® software, installing Dell PowerEdge™ servers and Dell EqualLogic™ storage arrays, with the Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 R2 OS and Microsoft Hyper-V® hypervisor delivering the virtual layer. But Phillips envisaged building a private cloud environment to create an IT infrastructure that scaled up and down with business needs. “The idea was to deliver a really agile IT service: one that could meet the requirements of personnel and

Destination private cloud Europcar South Africa looked to get ahead in a competitive market by developing a flexible IT service that could scale in line with demand across the business. By creating an efficient private cloud infrastructure, Europcar was able to boost business agility and enhance customer services. 90% 45% 15 minutes With a productivity boost of Europcar has enhanced business In the event of disaster, the private 90 percent, the company’s IT team agility by cutting the time required cloud enables the IT team to can devote time to projects that to launch a virtual machine by get systems up and running in drive innovation. 45 percent. 15 minutes, down from two hours.

customers at the moment they needed platform running Windows Server 2012, we IT team enjoys enhanced productivity it,” he says. can launch virtual machines in no more When Europcar switched to a virtualized Europcar lost no time choosing a than 25 minutes, whereas it used to take Dell infrastructure, the IT team provider to help build its cloud. “I’ve been 45 minutes.” significantly boosted its productivity and a Dell guy for more than 11 years and have With the release of Windows Server found that it could focus on high-value used its solutions in multiple industries 2012 with Hyper-V, Europcar has been able tasks instead of day-to-day maintenance. around the world,” says Phillips. “Support to virtualize its line-of-business applications. With the development of the private is always excellent wherever you go.” He “All our major business applications cloud, the team has raised its productivity also liked the fact that Dell and Microsoft are in our Dell-based private cloud,” further, so that it can deliver even greater have a strategic partnership. “We get says Phillips. “We’re more competitive, value to the company. “Our IT productivity more than simply end-to-end IT solutions because we don’t need to spend money has gone up by around 90 percent from Dell,” says Phillips. “It also facilitates every time we want to scale or launch a to what it was before we introduced relationships with its strategic partners like new server.” virtualization,” says Phillips. “We can now Microsoft, helping us quickly gain support In the event of service disruption, the focus more time on developing better from the experts we need.” company’s IT team can get systems up IT services for our end users, as a result Phillips had the opportunity to develop and running more quickly than ever, thanks of building our private cloud on Dell and the private cloud infrastructure using to its private cloud—vital for a business in Windows Server 2012.” its existing infrastructure, adding Dell which every minute of downtime represents Phillips believes it will be easy to PowerEdge 12th-generation servers running missed customers and lost revenues. develop the private cloud as the business the Microsoft Windows Server 2012 OS. Phillips says, “Disaster recovery has gone evolves because of the spare capacity down from around two hours to 15 minutes available on the PowerEdge host servers. Virtualization boosts business agility with our private cloud based on Dell and He feels that the cloud infrastructure Among a tough field of competition, Windows Server 2012.” can continue to deliver the same level of Europcar has heightened its agility with The IT team can manually fail over performance for years to come, as a result the deployment of the private cloud, so virtual machines at the primary site to the of working with Dell Support Services. that IT services can be added quickly for secondary site, minimizing disruption to “We have the confidence to keep staff and clients. And by raising the role business activities. Phillips adds, “We can innovating our IT with Dell ProSupport,” of automation in the creation of virtual also perform live migrations of our clustered says Phillips. “The service gives you servers, Europcar has cut the time required environment simultaneously between sites responsive support, but also advice and for launching a virtual machine by about for better business continuity with our assistance in developing your systems in 45 percent. Phillips says, “With our Dell private cloud from Dell.” line with business needs.”

Community Bank & Trust of Florida Cashing in on virtual infrastructure

Community Bank & Trust of Florida shores up data protection while lowering costs by setting up a virtual infrastructure that provides enhanced data integrity and accessibility for off-site backup and recovery.

ost-financial crisis, banks face an assortment of challenges as they deal with economic uncertainty, P demanding customers, and shifting regulations. To remain competitive and compliant, banks need to focus on reducing complexity in daily operations as well as in disaster recovery. “Several years ago, our biggest challenge was fully testing our disaster recovery site: bringing it online, watching it run, and leaving an audit trail for the test,” says Jeff Stafford, senior vice president and senior technology officer for Community Bank & Trust of Florida. “Here in Ocala, hurricanes are a very real threat, so we have to know that our disaster recovery solution works.” However, the bank couldn’t run tests as often as it wanted. “Examiners would like community banks to test disaster recovery multiple times a year and after any major infrastructure change,” Stafford says. “Disaster recovery testing was expensive, so we only tested once a year. In addition, our data center consisted of a bunch of dedicated physical servers with direct attach storage. This infrastructure made disaster recovery very difficult to manage.” For an infrastructure refresh, the bank wanted to get away from physical servers and distributed storage. Stafford adds, “In addition to the disaster recovery challenges, we were spending too much time managing the servers, storage, and other hardware.”

Extra credit Built on Dell servers and storage, the $15,000 70% 5 minutes virtual infrastructure of Community Bank & Since deploying a virtual By using Dell AppAssure The bank achieved a Trust of Florida helped infrastructure, Community deduplication and recovery point objective the company save time Bank & Trust of Florida saved compression, the bank has (RPO) of five minutes for more than US$15,000 a year seen a 70 percent savings of critical data, as well as a and money in today’s on electricity costs alone. storage space required. recovery time objective increasingly competitive (RTO) of two hours. marketplace—while enhancing the availability of critical data.

Stafford and his team selected the our servers, we haven’t had any failures at burned to the ground or were leveled by Dell™ EqualLogic™ PS Series Internet SCSI the SAN or virtual machine level that have a hurricane, we could bring our disaster (iSCSI) storage area network (SAN) for affected our production environment,” recovery site online very quickly and its simplicity of management. “Another Stafford says. “We’ve developed a highly effortlessly,” says Stafford. important factor was the fact that stable environment, allowing us to better The AppAssure deduplication and EqualLogic came with all the functionality serve our customers.” compression functionality reduces we needed,” Stafford says. “Replication, Perhaps most critical for the bank, 13 TB of backups to only 4 TB. “It’s about snapshotting, and thin provisioning are all the virtual infrastructure greatly helps a 70 percent savings on storage,” says included in the purchase price of the Dell simplify disaster recovery. Dell EqualLogic Stafford. “Our data gets to the disaster EqualLogic arrays.” Auto-Snapshot Manager automates recovery site in a reasonable time, and SAN-level replication between the bank’s we’re saving money on storage capacity Investing in data protection data centers. “The SAN-level replication is for our backup systems. We also have Stafford and his team launched the seamless,” Stafford says. less data passing through the pipe to VMware vSphere® virtualization platform our secondary data center.” Consequently, on a Dell-based infrastructure that Working better together the bank has achieved a recovery point included Dell PowerEdge™ servers and The bank implemented Dell AppAssure™ objective (RPO) of five minutes for critical Dell EqualLogic PS Series SANs. They then software for fast restores. AppAssure creates data, and a recovery time objective (RTO) began virtualizing business-critical systems. snapshots and replicates them to a Dell of two hours. “The first benefit we noticed was a huge PowerVault™ MD1000 storage array in the For its servers and EqualLogic SANs, reduction in our consumption of power and bank’s primary data center while replicating Community Bank & Trust of Florida uses cooling, plus savings on floor space and each virtual machine to the bank’s disaster Dell ProSupport. “Dell ProSupport has rack space,” Stafford says. “Compared recovery site. Critical data is replicated always been excellent,” Stafford says. with our legacy environment, we’re saving every five minutes. “With AppAssure, we “The large product offerings and great over US$15,000 a year on electricity, and can bring a virtual machine online and technical support are the primary reasons we’ve reduced our cooling needs by have full access to it within just a couple we work with Dell. Any time we’ve had 25 percent. We’ve also seen increased of minutes,” says Stafford. an issue, Dell has been there for us. efficiency in systems management. Storage To bring the entire disaster recovery We’re in a great position for compliance administration takes about 75 percent less site online, the bank uses VMware® because of how Dell EqualLogic storage time than it did in our legacy environment.” vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager (SRM) and Dell AppAssure work together. When Availability has also increased. “In the along with Dell EqualLogic replication. “We everything is working this well, why would three years since Dell helped us virtualize are confident that if our main data center we change?”

24\7 Inteligência Digital Getting the big picture

Digital asset management company 24\7 Inteligência Digital swaps out its storage network for a Dell™ Compellent™–based replacement, boosting data-serving speeds while significantly reducing processing times— resulting in a dramatic revenue increase.

torage is serious business for 24\7 Inteligência Digital (24\7id), a pioneer of digital asset management in Brazil. The company offers strategic consulting services, brand management, and postproduction touch-ups S of images, as well as aspert\, a Web-based system for clients to store image, audio, and video files. When 24\7id launched, it purchased a storage area network (SAN) and gateway as storage for its large volume of digital media files. Unfortunately, rollout proceeded poorly: after a year, performance still wasn’t sufficient to meet the company’s needs. “The copy processes never ran faster than 20–30 Mbps,” says Marco Pozam, CIO at 24\7id. “Performance is a critical factor for success in our business and to support our customers, because we have in a typical day’s operation more than 47 TB in high-scale files. If this scenario does not operate with great performance, customers will decide not to use the 24\7id business applications in their daily core business.” “The deployment went smoothly, and everything The company evaluated alternatives from several storage vendors. “As we was delivered within the promised time frame. did our due diligence, we were impressed with the presales process at Dell,” The solution was fully functional in just 40 days, says Pozam. “The Dell Compellent technical team asked us about our needs and compared with the year we spent trying to make the developed a solution for us based on that needs assessment.” legacy SAN solution work.” The company required high data-access speeds, and the Dell Compellent The performance of Storage Center exceeded Storage Center™ SAN array fit the bill. “Dell Compellent was the only solution we expectations. “Just the transition from the 8 Gbps evaluated that was able to provide this level of performance,” says Pozam. Fibre Channel of the third-party SAN to the 10 Gbps Internet SCSI (iSCSI) of the Dell Compellent solution Accelerating deployment and performance has provided a noticeable performance gain,” Pozam The company worked with Dell Implementation Services to deploy Compellent says. “This alone has increased the performance of storage with 12 Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disks and 36 nearline SAS disks. For file data access by 25 percent.” serving, it deployed Symantec™ FileStore software on a pair of Dell PowerEdge™ Dell Compellent Data Progression™ software R610 servers. Two Dell PowerConnect™ 8024F switches tie the storage to the automatically moves important and frequently company’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) network. accessed files to the fast tier 1 SAS disk. “We improved Dell Implementation Services installed and configured all the hardware. performance more than tenfold by moving our data “We were very pleased with the quality of Dell Compellent services,” says Pozam. to Dell Compellent,” says Pozam. “With our previous

Screenshot

Drawing on the returns The Dell Compellent Storage Center array enabled 24\7 Inteligência Digital (24\7id) to achieve a 57 percent increase in revenues—a figure accompanied by equally impressive time savings and performance gains. 80% 10x 29% Generating movie previews The company’s previous After installing Storage using the Storage Center– storage moved data Center, 24\7id saw a based environment took at 30 Mbps, whereas 29 percent reduction in less than 20 percent of the Storage Center reaches time spent on internal IT time needed in the previous around 450 Mbps— staff operations. SAN environment. a tenfold improvement in performance.

storage solution, our copies moved at customers, the 57 percent increase in our “The decision to standardize with Dell 30 Mbps, at most, while the new solution revenues in 2011, and 29 percent time was based on our experience with a lot of reaches around 450 Mbps.” savings in our internal IT staff operations.” IT companies in the last three years,” says The faster storage solution is having a Pozam. “Dell was the only supplier capable direct impact on the business. Maintaining high availability of understanding and delivering this holistic “For example, in our previous SAN The company has Dell ProSupport Mission and agnostic vision of IT technologies, environment, generating movie previews Critical with four-hour on-site response providing a correct understanding about under normal circumstances took for its servers and Dell Compellent Copilot what, why, when, where, who, how, and 23 hours of processing time for a client Support for the SAN. “Having access to how much we need.” with high volumes,” Pozam says. “This Dell Support Services gives us a lot of Within a connected world where task takes about 4 hours using our confidence,” Pozam says. “But in the eight business organizations cannot be far new Dell Compellent–based storage months that this solution has been live, we removed from their customers, 24\7id infrastructure. That’s a reduction of haven’t yet had to call for support.” believes that its successful relationship with more than 80 percent. The impact in Not only are all hardware purchases Dell is based on maintaining trust and a business operations can be seen in at 24\7id standardized with Dell, but the positive and profitable relationship to both the improvement of the total cost of firm acquires its VMware®, Microsoft®, and companies, rather than simply buying and ownership in the digital assets of our Symantec licenses through Dell as well. selling products.

utilization and simplify management, Data explosion calls among other operational efficiencies. ESG’s research shows that unified storage for storage innovation is well received, and it has the potential for widespread adoption. oday’s organizations face a such as scale-out and unified storage, are When evaluating storage products, constant struggle to manage and emerging to address those needs. The many organizations consider total cost protect data. In fact, Enterprise challenge for organizations is to contain of ownership (TCO) as a major factor. T Strategy Group (ESG) research costs while adopting advanced storage Over half (65 percent) of the respondents shows that 90 percent of organizations technologies to manage data growth. indicated that capital expenditure— surveyed are increasing or maintaining More than one-quarter (28 percent) specifically, the cost of the storage their spending on storage infrastructure.1 of respondents are currently using unified infrastructure—was the most important cost The volume of data continues to expand storage, a technology that consolidates consideration.3 Because intelligent storage drastically as organizations gather increasing file-based network attached storage (NAS) is designed to optimize the utilization of amounts of information and rely on and block-based storage area networks existing capacity, it helps rein in storage digital processes to run their businesses. (SANs).2 By combining NAS and SAN, costs and enables businesses to defer Technologies such as virtualization and cloud unified storage helps improve capacity capital expenditures on storage. computing also demand scalable storage 1 “Research Report: 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey,” by Bill Lundell and John McKnight with Jennifer Gahm and Kristine Kao, resources that are centralized and shared. Enterprise Strategy Group, January 2012, qrs.ly/qx2z6av. 2,3 “Research Report: 2012 Storage Market Survey,” by Bill Lundell and Mark Peters with Jennifer Gahm, Enterprise Strategy Group, Now, intelligent storage technologies, November 2012, qrs.ly/hf2z6ay.

Biggest storage challenges In general, what would you say are your organization’s biggest challenges in terms of its storage environment? (Percent of respondents, N = 418)*

Rapid growth and management of unstructured data 40%

Hardware costs 39%

Data protection 39%

Running out of physical space 25%

Need to support growing virtual server environments 25%

Data migration 25%

Sta costs 20%

Management, optimization, and automation of data placement 19%

Lack of skilled sta resources 19%

Discovery, analysis, and reporting of storage usage 17%

Device management 17%

File system expansion 17%

Poor performance (throughput) 15%

Poor performance (I/Os) 15%

Power and cooling costs 14%

Lengthy implementation time 12%

Poor storage hardware utilization 11%

Di culty supporting desktop virtualization environment 9%

Lengthy storage provisioning time 9%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% *Figure based on research that appears in “Research Report: 2012 Storage Market Survey,” November 2012, qrs.ly/hf2z6ay.

Storage-specific investments over the next 12 months In which of the following data storage infrastructure areas will your organization make the most significant investments over the next 12 months? (Percent of respondents, N = 296, five responses accepted)*

Data protection 44%

Storage virtualization 30%

Data replication solution for o-site disaster recovery 28%

Purchase new SAN storage systems 25%

Tiered storage 24% Advanced ﬁle storage/ﬁle system technology 22% for rapidly growing unstructured content

Data deduplication technologies/systems 22%

Purchase new NAS storage systems 22%

Storage encryption solution 21%

Use public cloud storage services as way to source 21% storage capacity without buying new infrastructure

Uniﬁed storage systems 15%

Increase use of solid-state storage technologies/systems 14%

Converged data and storage networking 12%

Application- or workload-speciﬁc storage systems/appliances 11%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

*Figure based on research that appears in “Research Brief: 2012 Storage Infrastructure Spending Trends,” March 2012, qrs.ly/512z6az.

Important cost considerations for storage Current usage of unified storage systems TCO calculation Does your organization use unified storage systems that consolidate Which of the following cost considerations that factor into a TCO file-based and block-based access in a single storage platform? calculation would you consider to be the most important? (Percent of respondents, N = 418)* (Percent of respondents, N = 271)*

Reduced power and Other, 1% cooling requirements, 3% Yes, 28% Don’t know, 1% Reduced data center ﬂoor space requirements, 5%

Reduced IT sta –related costs, 25%

Reduced cost of storage No, 72% hardware and software, 65%

*Figure based on research that appears in “Research Report: 2012 Storage Market Survey,” November 2012, *Figure based on research that appears in “Research Report: 2012 Storage Market Survey,” qrs.ly/hf2z6ay. November 2012, qrs.ly/hf2z6ay.

T organizations have been wrestling for years with a thorny catch-22. First they pay to power the data center. Then Ithey pay again to dissipate the heat generated by the very same power. New environmental regulations and rising energy costs only exacerbate the problem. Today, organizations need to squeeze the utmost performance from every watt of energy their data centers use, and yet they have to do so within constrained budgets. Dell helps IT organizations meet these challenges through leading-edge research and development that enhances many Dell™ systems components to help improve power consumption, cooling, and airflow.

Minimized cooling requirements The Fresh Air initiative at Dell offers a working response to energy consumption and cooling cost challenges that Running data centers organizations often face for their data center operations. Modern data centers are typically run at much lower temperatures cost-efficiently at than are necessary. The Fresh Air capability for cooling servers is designed to allow elevated temperatures organizations to minimize—or even eliminate—cooling requirements within By Paul Steeves, Jon Fitch, and David Moss their data centers. It enables organizations to take advantage of cool external temperatures, bypassing the need for Data center operations pose a conundrum for IT staff— compressor-based cooling for entire incurring the cost for power and then the cost to dissipate portions of the year. In some climates, the fresh air cooling helps avoid the need for the heat it generates. In a live demonstration, Dell advances compressor-based cooling altogether. an effective Fresh Air capability to help avoid conventional Over the last two generations, Dell systems have been developed for time-based cooling costs. excursion operation over a temperature range of 23 degrees Fahrenheit (°F) or minus 5 degrees Celsius (°C) to 113°F or 45°C1 and allowable humidity from 5 percent to 90 percent.2 This level of design robustness has been validated by tests indicating that the components can tolerate

1 “Advanced thermal control: Optimizing across environments and power goals,” by Paul Artman and Chris E. Peterson, Dell technical white paper, February 2012, qrs.ly/jw2z80k. 2 “Fresh air cooling research,” Enterprise Reliability Engineering presentation, April 2012, qrs.ly/co2z7y2.

up to 900 hours of 104°F—or 40°C—operation per Dell is expected to run the following three year and up to 90 hours at 113°F—or 45°C. Fresh Air–certified Dell PowerEdge™ servers in Deploying Fresh Air–compliant Dell servers, the initial installation: a PowerEdge R720 server, network switches, or storage provides enhanced a PowerEdge R620 server, and a PowerEdge flexibility for the operational temperature in R710 server. Fresh Air–compliant configurations the data center, which is a best practice that are available for both PowerEdge 11th- and A breath of helps increase energy efficiency and decrease 12th-generation servers. fresh air for Dell operational costs. These tolerance levels not only PowerEdge servers help reduce everyday cooling costs, but they also Real-time systems management Discover the inspiration behind the offer significantly bolstered ride-through time to Because not everyone can come to Texas Dell Fresh Air Hot House. View this help protect mission-critical data in the event of a to see the Fresh Air Hot House in action, video to hear Brian Payne, executive director, Dell PowerEdge server cooling system failure. Dell is deploying the Dell OpenManage™ marketing, describe the origins of Running Fresh Air–compliant systems in a data systems management suite to monitor power the Fresh Air capability in PowerEdge center can result in more than US$100,000 of consumption in each of its servers. Dell plans servers as he demonstrates the Fresh Air Hot House at Dell World 2012. operational savings per megawatt of IT equipment to display status on a physical monitor in the per year. In climates that can run chillerless Fresh Air Hot House and on a public Web site qrs.ly/q52xxpf cooling, the cost to build a chiller plant as part of that details how the servers are handling daily the data center facility can be avoided, resulting in temperatures. Dell OpenManage works in a cost savings of approximately US$3 million per conjunction with Intel® Node Manager power megawatt of IT equipment. management firmware to closely monitor and control the thermal status and power usage of Innovative data The Fresh Air Hot House in action the servers and their components. center cooling Although many organizations do not intend or are hesitant to subject their production systems An open window to cost-effective cooling Organizations that leverage fresh air cooling in their data centers can to the extreme limits of the tolerances specified The Dell Fresh Air initiative opens up realize cost reductions even in their in the Fresh Air initiative, Dell has set its sights opportunities for IT organizations to dramatically own locales rather than situating data centers in specially selected on demonstrating this capability. IT managers enhance energy efficiency cost-effectively. northern climates. Download this and professionals can then understand that a Even organizations with conventional data white paper to learn how Dell next- generation servers offer the Fresh Air noteworthy barrier has been crossed and discover centers utilizing chiller facilities can apply air- capability for enhanced efficiency. how they can run their systems cost-effectively side economization, or free cooling, simply by at high temperatures. They can also learn that turning off their chiller and using outside air qrs.ly/uz2xxpg running their data centers without air conditioning to cool the data center. This approach helps for an extended period of time is now possible. avoid costly chiller- and compressor-based Toward that end, Dell has constructed the cooling when climate conditions are favorable. Fresh Air Hot House, a live demonstration of its The number of free cooling hours that an commitment to using fresh air for cooling a organization can take advantage of is determined Authors data center. The Fresh Air Hot House is an by the climate where the data center is located. outbuilding—8 feet by 10 feet—situated in It also depends on the temperature and humidity Paul Steeves is a senior marketing the parking lot at Dell headquarters in Round operational window, which is determined by the manager for the Dell Enterprise Solutions Group. Rock, Texas. It has no air conditioning; fresh temperature and humidity range of the hardware

air simply flows from vents in the bottom up inside the data center. As this window widens, Jon Fitch is a principal reliability through a fan in the roof. And Texas provides an increased hours of free cooling energy are engineer with the Dell Enterprise Solutions Group and responsible apt testing environment because brutal Texas available to the data center. for fresh air cooling research summers can bring extreme temperatures. and development. For example, in 2012, Round Rock experienced 70 consecutive days in which high temperatures Learn more David Moss is a power and cooling engineering strategist with the were over 100°F—almost 38°C—including a Dell energy management: Data Center Cooling Infrastructure record high of 112°F—more than 44°C. dell.com/freshair team at Dell.

Managing I/O-intensive workloads with versatile solid-state storage

By Andy Tran

In many IT environments, swift transactions and analyzing ollaboration, database, and other business-critical volumes of data in real time require high performance applications that process high and low latency. Dell™ PowerEdge™ Express Flash Cvolumes of data are creating solid-state drives offer flexible, durable, and efficient intensifying performance demands for many enterprise IT environments. Enhanced storage for demanding workloads. performance can boost the efficiency of online transaction processing (OLTP), online analytical processing (OLAP), real-time application processing for data reads and writes, and other I/O-intensive applications. Heightened levels of performance can also be particularly important when deploying collaboration applications or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to boost productivity. In addition, many transactional and database applications require low latency to help achieve high-availability, reliability, and serviceability goals. Along with the deluge of data that many industries experience, performance and latency concerns are compelling organizations to advance innovation that can narrow the gap between server and storage performance. While local storage and storage interconnects have evolved considerably, mechanical movement and disk rotational speed limitations in conventional hard disk drives (HDDs) can restrict their capability to meet these high- performance demands and contribute to back-end storage bottlenecks. Solid-state storage offers an innovative, nonvolatile alternative for local storage because it utilizes integrated circuits rather than rotating magnetic media for storing data. Devices that implement solid-state technology such as solid-state drives (SSDs) are compatible with traditional Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), Serial ATA (SATA), and Fibre

38 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Intelligent data center

Serviceability on the fly A high priority for many IT organizations operating with limited offline to add or remove a PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe-SSD. budgets and time-strapped IT staff is implementing innovative, Instead, they simply plug the device directly into the preconfigured durable components that help improve the efficiency of their data 2.5-inch bays in supported PowerEdge 12th-generation servers. centers. Like other IT innovations, Dell PowerEdge Express Flash PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe-SSDs also leverage specialized PCI Express (PCIe) solid-state drives (SSDs) are designed to simplify NAND management technologies designed to provide robust lifetime installation and configuration tasks. wear leveling and data protection. Because NAND-based SSDs have Hot-pluggable PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe-SSDs are a snap a finite number of program and erase cycles, Dell provides for a to install and configure, and they require no software downloads or maximum amount of data—in bytes—written to PowerEdge Express firmware updates. Hot-pluggable capabilities help minimize the risk Flash PCIe-SSDs. The SSD monitors these cycles, and Dell management of downtime because administrators do not need to take a server software notifies administrators prior to when the limits are reached.

Channel device interfaces for enhanced PowerEdge servers equipped with of power goes unconsumed because of versatility. Recent advances allow solid- both PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe-SSDs inefficiencies around when and where it is state storage devices to connect directly and traditional HDDs offer versatile generated. For example, power generated to server PCI Express (PCIe) slots without deployments for handling specific application far from where it will be used experiences requiring intervening host bus adapter (HBA) workloads. In a typical database application, some loss during its transmission. connectivity or interface controllers such for example, frequently accessed log files The emergence of Smart Grid technology as SAS and SATA. Dell PowerEdge Express can be stored on a PowerEdge Express applies automation to collecting data and Flash PCIe-SSDs utilize NAND flash solid- Flash PCIe-SSD, and data files can be stored the capability to act on the information it state memory and can be directly plugged on an HDD. PowerEdge Express Flash provides to help improve the efficiency of into the PCIe bus, offering organizations a PCIe-SSDs, built with single-level cell (SLC) electricity generation and distribution. Smart cost-effective, power-efficient alternative to NAND flash technology, are designed to Grid operators need an efficient process for conventional HDD storage. deliver enterprise-class storage reliability and identifying and assessing the health of the serviceability in a hot-pluggable, standard grid distribution system in real time. Smart Flexible solid-state drive performance 2.5-inch form factor (see the sidebar, Grid technologies generate tremendous Dell PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe-SSDs “Serviceability on the fly”). amounts of real-time data operators can use are designed to provide flexible, high- to adjust power generation levels and analyze performance storage in Dell PowerEdge Effective Smart Grid data analysis patterns of consumption. And they can use 12th-generation servers. PowerEdge Express By breaking through the I/O bottlenecks historical and archived data to predict future Flash PCIe-SSDs are well suited for write- that can impact latency-sensitive consumption patterns. intensive applications that require high write applications, Dell PowerEdge Express Dell developed the Dell Smart Grid Data endurance and read/write performance. Flash PCIe-SSDs are designed to excel Management (SGDM) solution to help utility Organizations can deploy PowerEdge in environments that require analysis of organizations and grid operators manage Express Flash PCIe-SSDs either as a storage near-real-time data on the fly and with Smart Grid data efficiently and address the cache or as a tremendously fast storage zero latency. Electric utility companies, power distribution and waste challenges tier for frequently accessed—or hot—data. for example, can benefit immensely by of managing electrical grids. SGDM applies The storage cache capability is suitable for deploying servers equipped with high- Dell enterprise hardware, services, and page files or as a second-level database performance, innovative, and durable independent software vendor offerings to buffer cache. Storage tiers can be beneficial PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe-SSDs for automate the collection and use of Smart for handling high I/Os per second (IOPS), operating and maintaining electrical grids. Grid data. At the same time, collecting and increased numbers of end users, and rapid Electrical grids must remain up and storing vast amounts of Smart Grid data can response times, particularly in OLTP and running 24/7 and always energized with pose enormous challenges. The deluge of OLAP. Fast storage tiers are also well suited more power than is being consumed to data and information utility companies face for data access in virtualized environments prevent the occurrence of brownouts. As demands immediate analysis, synthesis, and and for collaboration applications. a consequence, a considerable amount action. Failure to act fast can easily lead to

10GbE impressive amounts of random I/O disk reads ™ Dell Precision T5500 sustained by SSD technology in addition to a workstation running a Dell PowerEdge R720 server PS System analytical running PI System Web services nominal write load. Theoretical IOPS capacity workstation Dell Force10™ S4810 and a PI System object linking 10GbE switch and embedding database measured by Iometer resulted in noteworthy

10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) amounts of raw IOPS with relatively short I/O queues for the SSDs, which provided near- 10GbE 10GbE linear scalability of IOPS against queue length. Two Dell PowerEdge R720 servers running PI System collective system 2012 Efficient management Dell PowerEdge R720 server primary servers running a PI System of high-volume data GbE asset framework server Applications that handle dynamic, high- Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) volume data for analysis and management

Two Brocade FC8 switches require high-performance local storage Dell PowerConnect™ with low latency. Organizations that deploy GbE switch OLTP, OLAP, VDI, collaboration software, and other I/O-intensive applications are looking beyond traditional HDDs to the versatility, reliability, and serviceability SSDs Two Dell PowerEdge R610 servers running PMU simulator Dell Compellent SAN virtual machines and PI System interface virtual machines with 20 TB storage can provide. Electrical utility companies and grid operators, in particular, can utilize flash Figure 1. The Dell SGDM reference architecture technology in SSDs to enhance near-real- time data collection, storage, and analysis spikes or surges throughout a grid, as well as equipped with 350 GB PowerEdge Express plus information delivery. brownouts or even widespread blackouts. Flash PCIe-SSDs designed to process PMU Dell PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe- SGDM provides a reference architecture data. Compellent storage included 200 GB SSDs are designed to deliver high IOPS that enables electrical utilities and grid Enterprise SSDs and 300 GB 15,000 rpm performance and low latency that utility operators to effectively manage grid SAS drives for storing historical data collected organizations and grid operators need performance (see Figure 1). Within the within 30–60 days. And to archive up to for collecting, analyzing, and managing infrastructure, machines called Phasor one year of data, the Compellent storage high data volumes in near real time. Measurement Units (PMUs) generate also included low-cost 2 TB 7,200 rpm Dell developed the SGDM reference near-real-time data that can be monitored SAS drives. PI System provides a real-time, architecture to help these organizations and historical data that can be utilized to enterprise-wide infrastructure for collecting, meet the challenges of high-velocity spot trends. Using this data, grid operators storing, analyzing, and delivering information power generation, consumption, and can make intelligent decisions about how to worldwide grid operators. Note: management of Smart Grid data. PowerEdge much power to generate. These decisions Additional Compellent storage can be 12th-generation servers and Dell Compellent include determining the right place and added to scale archiving up to seven years. storage equipped with SSDs facilitate rapid, the right time to generate power. This PMU In September 2012, OSIsoft engineers near-real-time data analysis to enhance intelligence enhances power distribution performed benchmark testing on PI System power generation and distribution. efficiency and cost-effectively minimizes performance for storing and handling data the likelihood and impact of outages. from PMUs within the Dell SGDM reference Author The SGDM reference architecture architecture.1 Results demonstrated three consists of Dell PowerEdge 12th-generation key PI System performance aspects for Andy Tran is the solutions architect at the Dell Solution Center that focuses on delivering servers, tiered storage in Dell Compellent™ high-speed management of high-frequency industry solutions. storage area network (SAN) arrays, and data from PMUs—write throughput, read leading-edge PI System software from throughput, and overall scalability. In the OSIsoft. The PowerEdge servers were area of read throughput, results showed Learn more

Dell PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe-SSDs: 1 “PI Server 2012: Smart Grid high-speed data management on Dell reference architecture,” technical white paper, OSIsoft LLC, September 2012. qrs.ly/3t2z7y1

40 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Intelligent data center

Enhancing server performance and scalability with solid-state drives

By Steve Weinger, Marc Crespell, and Yogev Shimony

Performance and scalability are key considerations for ptimizing application performance is an organizational data centers that span remote or branch ongoing priority for diverse offices. Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers equipped with Samsung Oorganizations of all sizes. For solid-state drives help advance application workload example, retail firms, financial institutions, manufacturers, and other organizations efficiency and scale for growth. rely on IT to provide the resources necessary to handle heavy data volumes for online transaction processing (OLTP). At the same time, IT groups within these organizations are expected to bolster employee productivity by delivering robust system performance for messaging, document collaboration, and other business applications. As these organizations deploy servers in remote offices and branch locations, and as they refresh their primary data centers, they need ways to deliver this strong application performance while also ensuring scalability for future growth. However, IT groups often cannot simply install additional servers to accomplish those goals. Instead, they need to look for opportunities to maximize the utilization of each server to keep costs in check. Addressing the challenges of performance, scalability, and cost is also particularly important for IT organizations deploying a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). To realize the opportunities and benefits VDI offers, IT groups need to provide Solid performer a responsive desktop experience for a

Dell commissioned Principled Technologies to evaluate the capability potentially large number of end users while of Dell PowerEdge 11th- and 12th-generation servers with Samsung minimizing the cost of the host infrastructure. SSDs. View this video to see a concise summary of these tests, Deploying Dell PowerEdge servers with including the scalability benefits IT organizations can gain to enhance application performance and better support end users. Samsung enterprise multilevel cell (eMLC) SM825 solid-state drives (SSDs) helps qrs.ly/6l2y7l4 organizations overcome these challenges. By offering high-performance local storage,

these Samsung SSDs are designed to deliver helps organizations keep data secure environment. The Login Consultants Virtual exceptional performance for virtual desktop while power-loss protection helps Session Indexer (VSI) benchmark was environments and other key business strengthen reliability. used to simulate typical desktop office applications without requiring organizations activities—including the use of Microsoft to add servers or use expensive external Agile scalability for virtual Office, multimedia applications, and a Web storage. These Samsung SSDs also desktop environments browser—for 60 end users. enhance scalability to help deliver strong To measure the performance and scalability The PowerEdge server equipped performance to a large number of end of a Dell PowerEdge 12th-generation with Samsung SSDs easily supported users while simultaneously providing the server equipped with Samsung SSDs as 60 virtualized desktops running moderate opportunity to expand for future growth. the foundation for a VDI implementation, workloads and with substantial resources Dell commissioned testing by Principled to spare, while helping deliver acceptable Energy-efficient performance Technologies in October 2012. The goal was response times based on Login VSI Samsung eMLC SM825 SSDs, available as to evaluate whether servers equipped with benchmarks. Processor, memory, and an option with Dell PowerEdge 11th- and SSDs help IT organizations deliver strong storage utilization remained significantly 12th-generation servers, play an important desktop performance and support a large low throughout the duration of the test role in helping deliver the performance number of end users on a single server. (see Figure 1).3 and scalability needed for business Processor, memory, and disk utilization levels These results suggest that a single applications and desktop virtualization were evaluated to assess the VDI hosting server may be sufficient to implement a VDI environments. These Samsung SSDs platform’s capacity to scale.2 solution, particularly for remote offices or are designed to perform random The test configuration included a single small and medium businesses. By deploying read/write operations substantially Dell PowerEdge R720 2U rack server multiple PowerEdge servers equipped with faster than conventional 15,000 rpm powered by two 8-core Intel® Xeon® Samsung SM825 SSDs, larger organizations Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard disk E5-2680 processors and running the can scale these benefits, launching VDI drives (HDDs). As a result, the SSDs are Microsoft® Windows Server® 2012 environments while using a consolidated well suited for large, write-intensive Datacenter Edition 64-bit OS with hardware infrastructure that conserves data workloads in OLTP, VDI, database, and the Microsoft Hyper-V® hypervisor. The center resources. other application environments. server was equipped with four 300 GB Because these SSDs are based on eMLC 15,000 rpm SAS drives and six 200 GB Enhanced productivity for flash technology, they can also provide a Samsung SM825 SSDs. In addition to collaboration applications significantly longer life span than many other Hyper-V, the Microsoft Remote Desktop In September 2012, Dell commissioned SSDs. Samsung SM825 SSDs offer up to 100 Services (RDS) server role in Windows testing by Principled Technologies to times better write endurance than standard Server 2012 was used to build the VDI evaluate performance for three commonly MLC-based drives.1 These SSDs are also part of the Samsung Green Memory line of 100 Processor utilization products, which help organizations conserve (percentage average/minute) 80 Disk utilization (percentage energy. Samsung SM825 SSDs have no average/minute) Memory (percentage average/minute) moving parts; therefore, they consume 60 significantly less energy than typical HDDs. 40 Samsung SSDs help provide the scalability for change and the data 20 Utilization percentage protection needed for critical data. 0 Samsung SM825 SSDs are available in 1 301 601 901 1,201 1,501 1,801 2,101 2,401 2,701 multiple capacities, so organizations can Time (seconds) scale server storage to meet current and Source: “Dell PowerEdge R720 server solution with Samsung SSDs and Windows Server 2012: Supporting virtual desktops in remote oces,” by Principled Technologies, commissioned by Dell Inc., October 2012. future needs. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit encryption Figure 1. Resource utilization: Supporting virtualized desktops with substantial resources to spare

1,2,3 “Dell PowerEdge R720 server solution with Samsung SSDs and Windows Server 2012: Supporting virtual desktops in remote offices,” by Principled Technologies, commissioned by Dell Inc., October 2012, qrs.ly/vc2y7ks.

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1.0 In all the simulations, power utilization 0.9 250 users for each server increased only slightly 500 users 0.8 compared with the server’s idle state, 0.7 demonstrating strong energy efficiency 0.69 0.6 even when handling large workloads. 0.59 0.5 PowerEdge servers equipped with 0.4 Samsung SSDs not only help provide Milliseconds 0.3 0.35 outstanding performance for key business 0.2 0.24 applications—they also help ensure 0.1 scalability for future growth without 0 having to deploy numerous servers or rely Read latency Write latency on external storage. Source: “Remote o ce server performance: Dell PowerEdge R720 server with Samsung solid-state drives and Windows Server 2012,” Principled Technologies, September 2012. Optimized data center performance Figure 2. Exchange Server latency: Achieving response times below industry-standard thresholds Organizations deploying servers in remote or branch offices, launching VDI, used business applications: Microsoft The test recorded end-user response or refreshing data center infrastructure Exchange Server messaging, Microsoft times and the number of database orders need innovative ways to enhance SharePoint® Server collaboration and per minute. performance and scalability while documentation management, and In simulations for both 250 and 500 controlling costs. Deploying Dell Microsoft SQL Server® database software. end users, Exchange Server response PowerEdge 11th- and 12th-generation The goal was to determine whether servers times were below industry-standard servers equipped with Samsung SSDs configured with SSDs could comfortably thresholds for acceptable performance. enables organizations to address these support a large number of users while For the simulation of 250 end users, needs. By selecting PowerEdge servers delivering acceptable response times.4 read latency and write latency were well with Samsung SSDs, organizations can This test configuration included below 20 ms. Latency was only slightly cost-effectively consolidate applications two Dell PowerEdge R720 2U rack higher in the simulation for 500 end onto fewer servers while achieving the servers, each powered by two 8-core users than in the scenario for 250 performance they need to help boost Intel Xeon E5-2680 processors and end users (see Figure 2).5 end-user productivity. running the Microsoft Windows Server The SQL Server implementation 2012 Datacenter Edition 64-bit OS with demonstrated acceptable performance the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor. Each for orders per minute in both scenarios: Authors

server was equipped with two 146 GB 1,472 orders per minute for the simulation Steve Weinger is director of NAND flash marketing 15,000 rpm SAS drives and eight 200 GB of 250 end users and 2,899 orders per at Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. Samsung SM825 Serial ATA (SATA) SSDs. minute for the simulation of 500 end users. Marc Crespell is a global alliances manager at Dell One server ran Exchange Server 2010; the Acceptable performance was defined as with extensive experience in storage technologies. other server ran SharePoint Server 2010 90 percent of the theoretical maximums— and SQL Server 2012. which are 1,350 and 2,700 orders per Yogev Shimony is a business development manager in Global Partner Development at Dell. To evaluate the performance of these minute, respectively—for the 250 and 500 applications in a virtualized environment— end-user simulations. The SharePoint Server an increasingly common scenario in many implementation supported 249 tasks per Learn more organizations—a distinct virtual machine minute in the simulation for 250 end users hosted each of the three applications. and 496 tasks per minute in the simulation Samsung SSDs for servers: dell.com/business/ssd/server Testing simulated first 250 and then 500 for 500 end users. Both results surpassed

end users simultaneously using e-mail, acceptable performance in which users Samsung Green Memory and SSDs: accessing the database, and collaborating. might perform one task per minute.6 samsung.com/us/dellcio/index.html

4,5,6 “Remote office server performance: Dell PowerEdge R720 server with Samsung solid-state drives and Windows Server 2012,” by Principled Technologies, commissioned by Dell Inc., September 2012, qrs.ly/ic2y7l0.

Advancing operational agility through converged infrastructure

By Bala Chandrasekaran and Tom Baumgartner

Convergence streamlines delivery and management of infrastructure, application workloads, virtual desktops, and IT services. Dell™ Active Infrastructure solution reference architectures offer high-performance frameworks for efficient operations.

ynamic operations in today’s quickly at low total cost of ownership (TCO) IT systems to help reduce power and cooling business environments call from a single procurement source and with costs, accelerate deployment, and deliver for heightened performance, a single point of support. Central to Active services that support rapidly changing Dscalability, and agility in System 800 is Dell Active System Manager business demands. organizational data centers. The capability to 7.0, which provides advanced automation support fluid processes effectively through to help simplify administrative tasks in a Flexible modular infrastructure innovation that improves efficiency, resiliency, converged environment.1 Dell Active System 800 is an integrated and reliability can play a key role in helping Active System Manager 7.0 is designed and optimized modular infrastructure organizations remain competitive and achieve to simplify complex infrastructure and within the Dell Active Infrastructure family. profitability. As a result, many organizations workload management activities. It It offers extensible hardware and software are looking to leverage modular systems automates many tasks that would otherwise stacks and leverages converged Internet that are designed to transform data centers be prone to error when performed SCSI (iSCSI) storage area network (SAN) and streamline operations. manually, which helps administrators save and LAN resources into a single 10 Gigabit By converging servers, networking, time and reduce the risk of introducing Ethernet networking fabric that leverages storage, and unified management in innovative errors. A single user interface helps simplify the Data Center Bridging (DCB) standard. configurations, IT organizations can convert and automate management, enabling Active Infrastructure is available either as a technology silos into highly adaptive resource IT administrators to respond rapidly to preintegrated system or through purpose- pools that can be shared by applications business needs while increasing data center built solution reference architectures. and optimized for efficient management. efficiency and strengthening the quality of Preintegrated systems offer comprehensive Converged infrastructure also often IT service delivery. Active System Manager infrastructure for quickly and easily deploying supports cloud computing and virtualization also streamlines activities such as discovery, preengineered, preassembled, pretested, technologies for these integrated IT resources. inventory, deployment, configuration, and and optimized workloads. Solution reference Modular systems offer tremendous flexibility ongoing monitoring and management. architectures enable rapid integration to to meet the often demanding requirements Virtualized environments help organizations speed up infrastructure rollouts of consistent of dynamic workloads, without the deliver collaboration applications and IT services and highly available configurations designed complexity often inherent in customized, as business needs change and as employees for optimal performance and reliability. proprietary environments. increasingly rely on expanding access points These solution reference architectures The Dell Active Infrastructure family of through personal devices to enhance their facilitate efficient, rapid deployment of converged infrastructure solutions offers productivity. And for organizations planning applications, virtual desktops, and private turnkey systems, such as the Dell Active a private cloud environment, a converged clouds. They offer IT organizations a range System 800. This system can be set up infrastructure can replace slow and inefficient of frameworks to help them plan, architect,

1 For more information on Active Infrastructure and Active System Manager, see “Optimize IT with converged infrastructure,” by Brent Collins, Marc Stitt, and Benjamin A. Tao, in Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 4, qrs.ly/t32y7l7, and “Accelerating data center operations,” by Aaron Prince, Angela Qian, and Sudhir Shetty, in Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 4, qrs.ly/4a2y827.

44 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Intelligent data center

HUBCAS1: HUBCAS3: Collocated virtual machine Collocated virtual machine hub transport and client HUBCAS2: hub transport and client ™ access server roles Collocated virtual machine access server roles Dell EqualLogic PS Series storage hub transport and client access server roles Exchange mailbox proﬁle: • 5,000 end users • 150 messages/day/end user … … • 1 GB mailbox each Database Database Database Database • Two database availability group copies 1 2 3 4 Virtual machine storage Figure 1. Exchange Server 2010 ecosystem within Active and passive database copies Active System 800

deploy, and support collaboration application, Active Infrastructure solution reference To help reduce dependencies on the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and private architectures for collaboration applications underlying infrastructure from a sizing and cloud computing deployments that can be build on application and virtualization best deployment perspective, Dell methodology tailored to meet specific organizational needs. practices and use VMware vSphere® and abstracts the application in the virtualized VMware® vCenter™ Server virtualization pool of resources consisting of memory, Productivity-enhancing capabilities. These solution reference processors, and virtual network adapters. collaboration applications architectures are designed to improve the The configuration also consists of an Collaboration applications continue to ease of management of underlying hardware appropriate number of virtual machines transform the business landscape. Microsoft® resources and, by utilizing virtualization, that correspond to various server roles. This Exchange Server messaging, Microsoft enable the coexistence of different tiers of derived application resource configuration SharePoint® Server collaboration and enterprise applications on the same hardware. helps ensure availability, enhance document management, and Microsoft Lync® In addition, solution reference performance, and simplify the management instant messaging applications, for example, architectures present rules that allow of the converged infrastructure ecosystem. allow organizations to put powerful tools virtual machines running applications to be Active Infrastructure solution at end users’ fingertips. Increasingly, these deployed and managed without having to reference architectures for collaboration productivity-boosting applications require IT tie them to individual physical servers. They applications provide frameworks for administrators to address the challenges of require the deployment of fine-grained virtual resource allocation and utilization, deploying, maintaining, and managing suitable resource management tools that enable and they can establish proof points for environments to help ensure high levels of advanced management of application collaboration application deployments. performance, flexibility, and reliability. resources. Resource requirements should Such frameworks demonstrate best These key enterprise applications be accurately defined and application best practices and configurations that can can be moved onto virtualized servers practices maintained while ensuring that support verified performance and availability to support important business drivers. the performance of Microsoft collaboration to determine steady state and failure- However, many approaches require a applications is within the thresholds scenario performance characteristics. dedicated set of hardware resources to specified by Microsoft. Active Infrastructure For example, engineers at Dell Global help ensure performance and availability. also provides dedicated storage resources Solutions Engineering Lab conducted a Dedicated hardware can create resource for application data designed to ensure study to design and verify implementation silos for specific applications and increase adequate and reliable storage performance of Exchange Server 2010 in a VMware IT management complexity. to meet growing application data needs. virtualized environment on Active System

800 for 5,000 end-user mailboxes (see helps reduce complexity and cost, while The Dell Active Infrastructure family Figure 1).2 This implementation offers expanding the flexibility of the infrastructure. leverages Dell’s extensive enterprise guidelines for supporting the flexibility experience, knowledge, and relationships necessary as application data grows, I/O Cost-effective private with virtualization providers in preintegrated, loads increase, and the workforce expands. cloud computing packaged approaches to converged A private cloud creates a layer of abstraction infrastructure that deploy rapidly and Accelerated virtual over pooled resources that can transform efficiently. They also facilitate collapsing desktop deployment capabilities for delivering and using IT and automating key administrative and End users today demand enhanced services. The private cloud model provides maintenance tasks that help free up IT staff for flexibility at their jobs. They are bringing much of the efficiency and agility of cloud strategic projects that foster business growth. laptops, tablets, smartphones, and computing along with the increased control The range of Dell-provided solution other thin clients to the workplace in and customization achieved through reference architectures utilizes the Dell rising numbers. Virtualization provides a dedicated private resources. For organizations Active System 800 infrastructure to provide foundation for streamlining administrative considering moving to a private cloud comprehensive, balanced frameworks for and management tasks for end users’ environment, Dell Active Infrastructure can be collaboration applications, VDI, and private desktops, no matter which device they deployed as a flexible infrastructure foundation cloud services. Organizations can integrate use. In turn, VDI facilitates rapidly adding, and coupled with cloud automation software converged infrastructure with existing removing, upgrading, and patching for prompt and easy deployment. resources to meet specific business needs applications, as well as centralizing Dell offers a private cloud solution based without the cost and complexity often management to support efficient and rapid on Active Infrastructure and the Microsoft required in custom integration projects. security and data backup applications. Private Cloud Fast Track Program that Through the centralized management provides a reference architecture for building Dive deeper of virtualized desktops in VDI, systems, private clouds customized to the specific applications, and data are available to business needs of an organization. The The Dell Active Infrastructure family helps IT organizations rapidly respond to dynamic business authorized users regardless of the hardware reference architecture combines Microsoft demands, maximize data center efficiency, and capabilities of the remote device. Mobile software, consolidated guidance, and verified strengthen quality of IT service delivery. Download a series of white papers that provide frameworks and remote access to these mission-critical configurations with Active Infrastructure, and and best practices for designing and implementing enterprise applications and data enhances is designed to provide an overview of Dell and productivity-enhancing Microsoft collaboration applications on Active Infrastructure solutions. worker productivity and business agility. Microsoft guiding principles and design criteria Dell provides a reference architecture for for this solution. In addition, it illustrates how a qrs.ly/z82y828 qrs.ly/m32y82p VDI that helps IT administrators understand private cloud can conform to these principles. qrs.ly/6q2y82s the design elements and hardware and software components as well as the overall Converged IT initiatives architecture of the solution. for agile data centers Authors

Dell DVS Enterprise – Active System 800 Business priorities constantly shift. IT Bala Chandrasekaran is a systems engineer in is designed and prevalidated by Dell Desktop performance and service delivery need the Enterprise Solutions Group at Dell. Virtualization Solutions (DVS) Engineering to keep up with new requirements and Tom Baumgartner is a solutions marketing for desktop virtualization. While its modular increasing demands. A turnkey approach to manager in the Enterprise Systems and Solutions design facilitates a quick and easy installation, preconfigured, converged infrastructure helps organization at Dell. it also can be configured to meet individual improve performance and flexibility to meet business needs for swift integration into the these demands while minimizing infrastructure Learn more data center infrastructure. TCO. In addition, local control over data For organizations planning to implement and operations allows IT organizations to Dell converged infrastructure: VDI, Dell Active Infrastructure combined with dynamically pool, allocate, and manage dell.com/convergence

VMware vSphere provides an end-to-end resources and deploy key applications and Dell active solution architectures: network architecture. This networking design services delivery rapidly and consistently. dell.com/activesolutions

2 Based on tests performed in December 2012 by Dell engineers at Dell Global Solutions Engineering Lab. For test configuration, methodology, and results information, see “Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 implementation on Dell Active System 800v: A design and implementation guide for Exchange Server 2010 on Active System 800 with VMware vSphere,” Dell Global Solutions Engineering, 2012, qrs.ly/z82y828.

46 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell recommends Windows.

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Capitalizing on the cloud

By Janet Bartleson

IT decision makers can talk to solution experts and test-drive cloud computing and big data technology through the Dell | Intel Cloud Acceleration Program—which offers hands-on or remote access to dedicated labs and state-of-the-art infrastructure.

wo hot topics in computing today are cloud and big data—and for good reason. T Around the world, decision makers are dealing with rising IT costs and an onslaught of data. To address overarching challenges—from deploying on-demand, instantly scalable compute resources to gaining big insights for a competitive advantage—business and technology leaders are looking to cloud- scale solutions for help. But how can they determine the best way to capitalize on an investment in cloud computing and big data initiatives? Dell has teamed with Intel to offer the Dell | Intel Cloud Acceleration Program, which gives IT decision makers a firsthand opportunity to see and test cloud and big data solutions—leading to a deep understanding of what these solutions can do. (For more information, see the sidebar, “Discover the difference inside.”) The program helps accelerate the path to the cloud by providing hands-on, leading-edge technology for demos and proofs of concept.

Test before investing Through the Dell | Intel Cloud Acceleration Building a data center, in minutes Program, IT decision makers can

The Dell Solution Center in Austin, Texas, is home to one of the most efficient experience several next-generation cloud data centers in the world. Through time-lapse video, view how the Dell Data and big data solutions in Dell Solution Center Solutions group built this Dell Modular Data Center in record time for Centers around the world: the Dell | Intel Cloud Acceleration program.

qrs.ly/sq2z6am

48 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Remote control

Experience an online demonstration at the Dell Demo Center. The Demo Center provides anywhere, anytime access to a suite of hosted demos on a range of products, including Dell EqualLogic™ and Dell Compellent™ storage, the Dell Management Console, and the Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager. Contact Dell for more information.

• Stand up a Dell™ OpenStack™ cloud in hours instead of days with the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution • Leverage the Dell | Cloudera solution to process massive amounts of diverse Dell Solution Center locator data types Explore a wide range of emerging Europe: • Avoid the guesswork in building and technology alternatives and • Bracknell, United Kingdom running efficient public and private carry out industry-specific proofs • Frankfurt, Germany clouds with the turnkey Dell Cloud of concept on-site at a regional • Limerick, Ireland Solution for Web Applications Dell Solution Center or remotely • Paris, France through secure virtual private Participants get an up-close look network (VPN) access. Asia and the Pacific: at how these solutions can quickly • Shanghai, China and easily launch cloud services—and Americas: • Singapore help turn massive amounts of data into • Austin, Texas, United States • Sydney, Australia a competitive advantage. They have • Chicago, Illinois, United States • Tokyo, Japan the opportunity to experience how • New York, New York, United States applications work with the solutions • Silicon Valley, California, New Dell Solution Centers before investing and determine potential United States are opening on a regular basis. time and money savings enabled by Dell • Washington, D.C., United States For more information, visit cloud and big data solutions. • São Paulo, Brazil dell.com/solutioncenter.

Discover the difference inside In Dell Solution Centers worldwide, IT decision makers can evaluate the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution, the Dell | Cloudera solution, or the Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications as part of the Dell | Intel Cloud Acceleration Program. The centers provide a close-up view of the breakthrough performance of Dell PowerEdge™ C Series servers powered by Intel® processors, which form the heart of the demonstration clusters. PowerEdge C Series servers with Intel processors are designed to surmount scale-out data center challenges with problem-solving innovation, streamlined feature sets, and extensively field-tested performance and efficiency. These servers are tailored to the needs of cloud builders, high-performance computing clusters, telecommunications companies, hosters, content delivery networks, and organizations running Web 2.0 and big data applications.

Fast-track proof-of-concept demonstrations IT decision makers can test-drive cloud and big Explore Dell Solution data solutions at Dell Solution Centers in more than a dozen cities around the world. (See the Centers in action sidebar, “Dell Solution Center locator.”) This Tiger Brands, the largest food network of technical centers provides access manufacturer in South Africa, needed to Dell technology in dedicated, hands-on a single platform to support the environments equipped with state-of-the-art company’s multinational approach labs. Participants can also experiment with and improve visibility across the cutting-edge Intel compute, storage, and organization. The company also networking technologies. wanted to enhance system uptime The centers are staffed by teams of solution and guarantee services by moving experts, who have worked with thousands of from an environment focused organizations to help accelerate their journey to on disaster recovery to a high- the cloud through proof-of-concept engagements, availability environment. architectural design sessions, and technical IT leaders from many industries have Tiger Brands worked with Dell briefings. (See the sidebar, “Explore Dell Solution taken advantage of the opportunity to create a test environment at the Centers in action,” for more information on how to get into the driver’s seat at a Dell Solution Center in Limerick that several organizations have utilized the centers.) Dell Solution Center. With the help included Dell PowerEdge servers Dell helps organizations schedule blocks of of solution experts, decision makers powered by Intel processors. “We time—up to two weeks long—on large-scale clusters can effectively evaluate and optimize didn’t know how our platform for a demonstration or proof of concept. Whether architectures on Dell infrastructure might scale, and we wanted to in person or remotely through secure virtual before moving to a production, measure performance against known private network (VPN) access, participants can internal, or cloud environment. benchmarks,” says Rajesh Sewraj, talk with solution architects, see the technologies Menzies Aviation leveraged the CTO at Tiger Brands. “So we went in action, and obtain direct knowledge of Dell capabilities of the Dell Solution to Limerick to run our own data and solutions. This experience is designed to help Center in Limerick, Ireland, for see how the solution would perform inform purchase and implementation decisions, a two-week proof of concept compared to our existing system.” enabling organizations to zero in on solutions on a virtualized environment Darryl Thwaits, CIO at Tiger Brands, that meet their specific needs. replicated over two data centers says, “We were extremely satisfied with with failover capabilities. the results. In real-world tests, this Author “I asked our Dell account team configuration nearly always matched Janet Bartleson is a director in Dell Enterprise to work with us to put theory into or substantially beat the competition— Solutions, a group that designs servers, solutions, practice,” says Justin Apps, global always using nonproprietary, and services for hyperscale environments. lead systems architect at Menzies standards-based technology.” Aviation. “It was a first for all of us. Learn more Working with the Dell Consulting Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution: team to prove that our vision could dell.com/openstack succeed was the key to the whole Dell | Cloudera solution: project.” After the proof of concept, dell.com/hadoop Menzies and Dell deployed identical Dell-based infrastructures at two Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications: dell.com/dcswa Menzies locations in the United Kingdom, which enabled the company Dell Modular Data Center: dell.com/mdc to protect business continuity through mirrored, virtualized environments. Dell PowerEdge C series: dell.com/poweredgec

50 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Solution showcase

Dell PowerEdge C8000 series

Flexible, powerful, and efficient

Constantly changing workloads demand the right Mix-and-match design mix of resources, with the maximum performance The PowerEdge C8000 chassis packs up to eight PowerEdge C8220 single-wide compute, ™ ™ per unit of rack space. The Dell PowerEdge four PowerEdge C8220X double-wide compute C8000 is the first and only 4U shared infrastructure coprocessor, or four PowerEdge C8000XD that allows the mixing and matching of compute, double-wide storage sleds in any combination for high server and storage density. coprocessor, and storage sleds in one chassis— enabling organizations to easily reconfigure, Outstanding performance ® ® refresh, and scale out as needed. The PowerEdge Compute sleds are powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family, which helps C8000 series is well suited for high-performance boost server performance up to 80 percent over computing, big data, and hosting workloads. previous-generation processors.

Reduced total cost of ownership Compute, compute coprocessor, and storage sleds share chassis, power, and cooling, helping Quick resource locator save on the total cost of ownership. dell.com/QRL/Server/ PEC8000 Advanced networking

Software-defined networking for the Virtual Era

By Arpit Joshipura

Server and desktop virtualization, as well as rising mobility and data volumes, is changing the enterprise networking landscape. The Dell™ Virtual Network Architecture (VNA) is an efficient, scalable framework designed to support virtual environments.

High-performance he Virtual Era has brought about a of network traffic patterns—requiring organizations enterprise networking computing landscape of virtualized, to rethink their approach to networking. At cloud, and converged infrastructures the same time, organizations face aggressive Dell has unified its networking offerings with the Virtual Network that help boost operational efficiency efficiency initiatives aimed at reining in power, Architecture framework for efficient T and streamline IT environments for many space, and computing costs. IT and workload intelligence. Discover the wide range of organizations. A hallmark of the Virtual Era is While infrastructure components such as capabilities provided by the real-time information exchange, which presents servers have become virtualized and automated, comprehensive Dell networking portfolio to suit diverse server and challenges for organizations trying to meet the traditional networking solutions are built using workload deployments. access demands of an increasingly mobile workforce. legacy equipment and methodologies that are qrs.ly/9m2y855 The need for real-time information, often ill-suited to meet the networking requirements combined with rapid data growth, is dramatically of modern data centers and enterprises. Legacy changing the volume, nature, and predictability network infrastructures may lack the flexibility

52 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Advanced networking

Dive deeper Physical view Logical view Software Open innovation in the server and software industries has led to tremendous Public Enterprise IT services Campus Data center cloud technological progress through the Internet networking Hypervisor OpenStack and into the cloud. Learn how the Dell Virtual Network Architecture framework helps bring Connection abstraction layer networking into the Virtual Era. Automation, Virtual network orchestration, and fabric qrs.ly/n32y84u and policy control management Blade Rack SDN controller infrastructure infrastructure Network services SDN data plane needed to efficiently and cost-effectively Security WAN/core handle the volume and dynamism of WAN optimization Aggregation/top-of-rack Virtual Era workloads, and are typically Load balancer Access/wireless not designed to handle the high levels of Custom application Virtual switch automation and application integration Converged infrastructure Physical and virtual networking resources required of a virtualized environment. Public and private cloud infrastructures, for example, generate different traffic patterns Figure 1. Physical and logical views of the Dell Virtual Network Architecture than traditional client-server architectures. Furthermore, desktop virtualization, combined A converged infrastructure can encompass external networking functionality. VNA with bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives, key elements—networking, servers, storage, incorporates the OpenFlow protocol for can significantly increase the volume and software, and services—into a single, networking as well, enabling organizations unpredictability of network traffic and conceptual whole that is powered by to pursue advanced software-enabled policies. The bandwidth requirements to software and is not constrained by legacy automation and integrate with emerging handle expected data growth may be a technology. Network virtualization—that is, OpenFlow-based technology. burden on the networking infrastructure abstracting network functionality from the VNA features robust workload intelligence that cannot be handled solely by moving to underlying physical resources and making that enables networks to dynamically and higher network speeds. it available programmatically through rapidly respond to changes in workload software automation—is essential to demands. Embedded intelligence and Virtualization for intelligent driving great flexibility and agility in easy-to-use software tools allow organizations networking converged infrastructures. to virtualize, automate, and orchestrate In response to these trends, many networking functions and services. VNA networking vendors are seeking to apply Open, flexible framework also helps optimize price, power, and technologies that have driven tremendous To help organizations meet the dynamic space efficiency. Elements are designed advances in server efficiencies—such as network requirements of the Virtual Era, for minimal power consumption and data virtualization and open, standards-based Dell has developed an innovative, workload- center footprints to boost energy and space interfaces—to the networking realm. centric approach to networking called the efficiency. Discrete, scalable elements Simultaneously, convergence is bringing Dell Virtual Network Architecture (VNA). enable organizations to buy only what they traditional networking functionality into VNA enables organizations to retain existing need and scale to meet demand. data center elements such as servers. These network technology while introducing next- VNA is engineered to integrate key advances, combined with existing server-based generation innovations (see Figure 1). concepts of software-defined networking virtualization initiatives, have the potential to For example, as legacy network vendors (SDN), a method of network development deliver tremendous flexibility, scalability, and make network functionality available through that enables advanced network virtualization. efficiency to the modern data center. application programming interfaces (APIs), By helping provide networks with real-time As a result, many organizations are VNA elements can be programmatically intelligence, deep application integration, starting to view networking not as integrated with them. VNA is also designed and high levels of automation, SDN has the an independently purchased external to be hypervisor neutral—so organizations potential to help enterprises achieve high resource but as an integral component of can leverage hypervisor-based network levels of IT agility while minimizing both a virtualized, converged infrastructure. optimization technologies in concert with capital and operational overhead.

Hypervisor Foundational overlay • Network virtualization overlay gateway for element for VMware®, Microsoft®, and OpenStack environments

enterprise Dell software-deﬁned networks networking Trends such as cloud computing, • OpenFlow protocol server and desktop virtualization, • Legacy interoperability • Open automation • Open and differentiated infrastructure convergence, and workforce mobility controller are placing resource and management Legacy Greenﬁeld and demands that legacy networks are environments cloud environments often hard-pressed to handle. To help organizations meet dynamic Virtual Era network requirements, Figure 2. An innovative, open approach toward software-defined networking the Dell Virtual Network Architecture

(VNA) provides an open and flexible VNA is designed to provide cutting-edge enterprise and branch environments, networking framework for efficient capabilities by taking architectural innovations enabling secure productivity and mobility. IT infrastructure and workload from the latest SDN applications and At the data center level, VNA components intelligence. VNA is designed to be delivering them across trusted platforms and such as Dell data center switches both innovative and practical: technologies. Specifically, VNA provides an deliver efficient, scalable, and intelligent open, standards-based framework for SDN networking designed to support enterprises • Architected for the software- that enables interoperability with legacy of all sizes. Dell data center switches are defined Virtual Era: Enables systems, overlay networks, and greenfield available as an embedded component of a flexibility and agility through and cloud environments (see Figure 2). converged infrastructure system or as discrete software automation, components for cost-effective scalability. network virtualization, and From campus to cloud For example, Dell data center networking intelligent management. The Dell VNA portfolio comprises both technology is available fully embedded in • Interoperable with legacy products designed to support campus, a Dell PowerEdge™ M1000e chassis for a networks: Helps organizations branch, and mobile networking needs and converged, data-center-in-a-box solution retain the value of existing robust, scalable data center fabrics, switches, that delivers plug-and-play operation with investments while embracing and services (see Figure 3). The portfolio spans no external network—well suited for small- advanced technology. the enterprise to deliver comprehensive, scale deployments. Embedding networking • Based on leading-edge scalable, end-to-end networking. functionality into the blade chassis avoids innovation: Incorporates At the workgroup, branch, and campus the need for a top-of-rack switch; east-west technology such as the OpenFlow levels, for example, Dell campus switches network traffic is switched locally. Dell data network protocol and other deliver plug-and-play ease of use combined center switches also can be deployed as emerging, open standards. with minimal total cost of ownership discrete components in blade and rack (TCO) relative to a traditional network environments of data centers to deliver VNA provides a networking stack. Dell campus switches can be easily enterprise-wide scalability. foundation that powers demanding combined and scaled to support end-user Dell data center switches leverage organizations worldwide, enabling communities ranging from tens of users to distributed core fabric technology to deliver them to optimize cloud computing thousands in campus LAN environments. extremely high-density networking in a much for enterprise workloads. Dell campus wireless access points and smaller form factor than a traditional network controllers extend the enterprise network chassis—leading to outstanding efficiencies beyond the data center and into distributed in power, space, and cost.

54 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Advanced networking

Small oce/home oce End-user Data center Small networking networking

Dell PowerConnect™ Blade server fabric Top-of-rack fabric 2800 switch Internet Force10 Force10 S4810, MXL 10/40G S60, or S55

PowerConnect W-Series 10s instant access 10s Servers/virtual point (W-IAP) End users machines

Workgroup Medium Dell PowerVault™ Force10 S4810 with virtual link trunking storage Dell PowerEdge Dell EqualLogic™ server storage

PowerConnect 8100, 8024, or 7000 Internet Force10 Force10 S4810, MXL 10/40G S60, or S55 Power-over- Ethernet 10s–100s 10s–100s Servers/virtual W-IAP End users machines

Wireless LAN: PowerVault Branch PowerConnect EqualLogic Large W-Series PowerEdge W-IAP Force10 Z9000 spine

PowerConnect W-3x00 or W-6xx controller PowerConnect 5500 Internet/ WAN PowerConnect W-Series PowerConnect Force10 Force10 access point (W-AP) 8100, 8024, or 7000 MXL S4810 leaf leaf 1000s 1000s PowerConnect Servers/virtual 6200 or 7000 End users machines

Wireless LAN: Extra large Campus PowerConnect Internet/ W-Series WAN W-AP Force10 Z9000 distributed core ™ Dell Force10 Spine C150 or C300 PowerConnect switch W-3x00, W-6000, or W-6xx controller Leaf PowerConnect 5500

PowerConnect Force10 Force10 W-AP 8100, 8024, or 7000 MXL S4810, 10/40G S60, 1000s+ or S55 To data center 1000s+ Servers/virtual PowerConnect 6200 or 7000 End users machines

Figure 3. VNA reference architectures that scale to fit business requirements

VNA components are easily managed and management and automation to the data center, Author automated with a range of management branch, and campus environments by enabling Arpit Joshipura is the vice and software automation tools such as dynamic control of virtual servers, desktops, president of product management Dell OpenManage™ Network Manager and office software. (For more information, and marketing for Dell Networking. and Dell Fabric Manager. see the sidebar, “Foundational element for Previously, he served as the chief marketing officer for enterprise networks.”) Force10 Networks. Blueprint for the Virtual Era Moreover, VNA is designed to virtualize, The prevalence of virtualized, cloud, and automate, and orchestrate network services converged infrastructures—combined with to adapt to changing business conditions. Learn more rising data volumes and the use of mobile VNA components integrate with other Dell Dell Virtual Network Architecture: endpoints—means that there is more reliance enterprise solutions—including servers, qrs.ly/je2y859 on the enterprise network than ever before. storage, converged systems, software, Dell VNA helps organizations reduce the strain and services—to work better together by Dell networking: qrs.ly/py2y85f on the network while maximizing the efficiency design, enabling organizations to improve IT of the virtual infrastructure. VNA brings intelligent efficiencies and economics.

Laying the foundation for secure application delivery

By Fred Johnson and Andrew Walker

Application delivery to any device anywhere amid rising vulnerabilities is forever changing the IT landscape. F5 Networks offers a holistic platform of strategic awareness points for connecting end users to optimized resources on Dell™ infrastructure.

obility, social networking, and other control, enabling important opportunities progressive technologies swell to simplify end-user management, enhance the rising tide of personal laptops, application performance, and increase availability. M tablets, and smartphones that At the same time, the ever-present threat employees bring to the workplace. Embracing landscape—which is exacerbated by mobility personal mobile devices in professional settings and further complicated by the cloud—is rapidly can bring significant productivity and flexibility changing in ways that were unimaginable just a benefits for organizations. It also means that few years ago. Enterprise computing relies heavily workers now have tremendous influence over on Internet technologies that routinely interact which devices and personal and professional with social media, advertisement sites, and other applications exist in the organizational sources that may beckon trust vulnerabilities. Web infrastructure. This development is driving sites that employees visit can be complex systems enterprises to manage more endpoints, delivery built on myriad development frameworks and models, and applications across more locations interconnections. These systems can be difficult than ever before. to track and update when attempting to mitigate The shift to a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) vulnerabilities, stop unauthorized access, and policy creates new management, security, and protect end-user devices against malicious attacks. application delivery challenges that intensify IT Traditional application management solutions requirements to deliver application data securely may perform poorly with today’s complex to mobile end users. In addition, substantial application delivery models. Standard firewalls and changes are occurring in many data centers. simple application delivery controllers (ADCs) may IT organizations are transforming application no longer solve problems for IT administrators infrastructures from static, less-efficient or providers who need to apply advanced entities encumbered with manual processes to security, performance, and availability policies highly consolidated, dynamic, and automated for applications inside and outside the data environments. Traditional data center boundaries center. To help address the changes affecting IT are blurring as administrators move workloads organizations, an advanced, highly sophisticated from one physical location to another based on model is required. business demand. Meanwhile, innovative cloud F5 Networks offers a comprehensive platform computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) that utilizes strategic awareness of applications, applications are coming under IT organizational end users, and resources to help IT organizations

56 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Advanced networking

Dell servers, networking, F5 Networks storage, software, security, Physical Intelligent Services cloud, and services Platform

Connect any device Virtual Storage for any end user from anywhere to well-suited application resources that are independent of the infrastructure.

Cloud

Any device, any service, Intelligent Dynamic, agile, and anywhere and ﬂexible

Figure 1. F5 Intelligent Services Platform capabilities running on integrated Dell infrastructure

optimize application delivery in today’s or software—deploys F5 virtual Clustered dynamic business environments. The Multiprocessing™ (vCMP®) technology F5® Intelligent Services Platform solution is to support virtualized instances of the F5 designed to seamlessly integrate infrastructure BIG-IP® suite running on purpose-built including the comprehensive portfolio of hardware. The software-only version, BIG-IP Dell servers, networking, storage, software, Virtual Edition, facilitates running add-on security, and services for connecting mobile software modules on virtual appliances end-user devices to highly dynamic, agile, and and supports flexible licensing models, adaptive resources. many widely used hypervisors, and the Dell vCloud® public cloud solution. Managing end users and devices As application, end-user computing, from anywhere data center management, security, and The F5 Intelligent Services Platform controls other IT landscapes continue to evolve, application delivery in the evolving world of the F5 Intelligent Services Platform on-premises and off-premises applications offers robust F5 support and technology. accessed by multiple end-user devices Offerings include an extensive community (see Figure 1). The platform is designed to of developers, application programming manage end users from any location on any interfaces (APIs), scripting languages, and device, apply application delivery policies to templates that help deliver programmability, all application requests in both directions, unified services, and application fluency and connect end users to optimized and scale (see Figure 2). They also application resources regardless of where enable IT organizations to meet dynamic those resources reside. business needs efficiently. The platform’s Dell and F5 work closely together programmability stack includes the to offer a comprehensive ecosystem following resources and components: for enterprise software provided by vendors including Citrix, Microsoft, • Community: The F5 DevCentral™ online Oracle, SAP, SunGard, and VMware that community includes more than 100,000 help organizations meet their business registered users and developers across needs. The highly flexible Intelligent 191 countries. The site provides a rich Services Platform—available as hardware resource dedicated to publishing, sharing,

infrastructure to provide real-time visibility Programmability into the entire application delivery network Built-in customization with an extensible DevCentral and programmable architecture based on iRules iControl iApps open APIs, templates, and scripting An F5 core strategy builds on the belief that well-suited mobile device management Uniﬁed services Fast Dynamic application delivery services from and application management occur Available the data center to the device simultaneously by deploying an integrated F5 Secure Application ﬂuency and scale Intelligent Services Platform that acts as a full Flexible platforms and the F5 Trac Management proxy between end users and applications. Operating System® (TMOS®) for adaptability TMOS to shifting performance requirements and application and end-user needs Hardware Software Leveraging consolidated firewall services The increasing sophistication, frequency, Figure 2. Unified ADC services platform enabling programmatic extensibility, services, and performance and diversity of cyberattacks today can potentially overwhelm conventional, stateful and engaging in real-time application A proxy turns a two-party session into security for devices at the edge of the data delivery solutions. a four-party session, and the two parties in center. Because their inability to detect • APIs: The F5 iControl® API offers an the middle emulate the two real hosts. The and survive complex attacks often leads to open Simple Object Access Protocol integrated application, end-user, and resource business disruption, these systems can pose (SOAP) and XML–based interface that awareness capabilities come together at a significant liability. Hackers are aware of enables applications to work in concert this point to provide application delivery these weaknesses, and modern attacks are with the underlying network based on awareness at the strategic point of control. designed to exploit them. software integration. The F5 full-proxy architecture comprises the Traditionally, administrators have • Scripting: The F5 iRules® scripting following strategic awareness control points deployed separate point solutions intended language utilizes an easy-to-learn Tool on the integrated Intelligent Services Platform: to mitigate these wide-ranging threats by Command Language (TCL) scripting using specific approaches to address each syntax and enables customization to • Application awareness: Insight into attack type divided into logical groupings— intercept, inspect, transform, and direct how the application is supposed to look for example, network, application, and application traffic on the data plane. on the network distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. • Templates: Customizable F5 iApps™ • User awareness: Ability to see which These disconnected approaches, often configuration templates help end users are trying to access which from multiple vendors, tend to increase administrators significantly reduce applications from which devices overall management complexity and costs deployment times, complexity, and errors • Resource awareness: Integration of while adversely impacting performance and during application implementations. all pieces in the application delivery end-user experience.

Implementing strategic awareness control points The F5 BIG-IP platform functions as a full proxy that maintains two separate F5 Networks Client/server Intelligent Services Client/server pieces of data for every session between Web application Platform Web application a client and an application—one on the Application Application client side and one on the server side. This Session Session functionality effectively provides an air gap Network Network or isolation layer between the two sides Physical Physical that is internal to the proxy (see Figure 3). This separation enables administrators to apply focused profiles specifically to address problems that are unique to each side of the traffic flow or conversation. Figure 3. Full-proxy architecture providing an isolation layer

58 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Advanced networking

Next-generation firewall F5 application delivery firewall Separate firewall functions

End users Servers Common Internet, networking, and messaging protocols

Organization Internet data center

Figure 4. Application delivery firewall for protecting applications in an Internet data center

In contrast, the F5 approach to the during an attack. As a result, IT staff can Authors firewall problem leverages F5 Intelligent concentrate their defenses at the F5 single Services Platform capabilities by unifying point of control. Fred Johnson is a partner engineer at F5 Networks dedicated to Dell Labs, sales, security and traffic management services and Dell technology services. into a single set of ADCs that administrators Deploying holistic, scalable can place at the edge of the data center application delivery Andrew Walker is a solutions design engineer at F5 Networks focused on Dell technology (see Figure 4). A recent data center The F5 Intelligent Services Platform services worldwide. architecture based on the ICSA Labs– provides a foundation for delivering holistic certified application delivery firewall services1 and scalable application systems that of the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ are designed to enable IT administrators Learn more (LTM®) ADC is designed to effectively fend to meet the many challenges posed by off advanced attacks. At the same time, deploying innovative technologies in today’s F5 Networks presentation: qrs.ly/nx2z6a0 it helps improve efficiencies gained from data centers. Based on the F5 BIG-IP ADC

using the highly consolidated system. full-proxy architecture, this highly scalable, Application delivery firewall paradigm: BIG-IP LTM enables this architecture application-fluent, and extensible approach qrs.ly/gv2z6a9 through its native firewall services, which helps maximize and simplify management High-performance DNS services: can provide network-layer protection with as it integrates leading-edge application qrs.ly/r82z6ab a much higher connection capacity than delivery, monitoring, and context-based traditional firewalls.2 policy enforcement. Protecting against large-scale cyberattacks: qrs.ly/oy2z6ah An approach using F5 technologies is The comprehensive Dell portfolio of end- designed to consolidate security services to-end infrastructure offerings—from servers, ICSA Labs – F5 BIG-IP family: for an outstanding defense against attack networking, and storage to software, security, qrs.ly/hm2z6aj types that threaten networks, sessions, and and services—integrates with the Intelligent applications. Having fewer high-capacity Services Platform. This comprehensive devices than in conventional firewall approach to application delivery helps deployments helps reduce complexity, organizations intelligently manage minimize attack surfaces, and decrease application traffic and protect key resources the number of configurations to manage inside and outside of the data center.

1 For more information on ICSA Labs, visit icsalabs.com. 2 For more information on managed Web application firewall (WAF) security services for the BIG-IP platform, see “Rock-solid protection for Web application delivery,” by Fred Johnson, Allen Vance, and Andrew Walker, in Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 3, bit.ly/RItz5M.

irtualized environments continue to evolve organizational operations in profound V ways designed to simplify management, improve quality of service (QoS), and enhance security. These environments also require increasingly sophisticated networking to keep pace with workload and I/O resource-sharing demands that collaboration applications, virtual desktop infrastructure, private clouds, and other systems require. Having virtualized their servers, many organizations are now virtualizing their networks to expand dynamic resource management capabilities and enhance flexibility at the data center level. Organizations planning large-scale VMware vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus implementations running on Intel® Xeon® processor–based Deploying a virtual Dell™ PowerEdge™ 12th-generation servers with Intel Ethernet Converged distributed switch Network Adapters (CNAs) can meet resource management objectives by using the VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) feature. to centralize network Prior versions of vSphere require administrators to configure a virtual network management using multiple VMware vSphere Standard Switches (VSSs), or vSwitches, which may By Brian Johnson lead to human error. VSSs also require static allocation of bandwidth, which may impinge on flexibility and performance. The Legacy networks and inflexible resource allocation hinder opportunity to configure a single VDS instead of multiple VSSs is an important advance that ® large-scale virtualization. Pairing the VMware vSphere helps simplify implementation dramatically Distributed Switch feature with Intel® Virtualization while enabling organizations to improve network flexibility, agility, and performance. Technology for Connectivity optimizes management of storage and virtual networks. Virtual network connectivity at the multihost level Simple server consolidation using virtualization replaces individual, dedicated servers with virtual machines, many of which can reside together on a single physical host. A software-based virtual switch such as the VMware® VSS can route traffic among the virtual machines, acting analogously to the top-of-rack

60 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Advanced networking

Management plane Data plane

VMkernel interfaces

Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Storage VMware Management machine machine machine machine vMotion 1 2 3 4 TCP/IP stack

Virtual VMkernel NIC NIC

Virtual port

Port group A Port group B Storage VMware vMotion Management port group port group port group

VMware vSphere Standard Switch (VSS) Uplinks

VMware vSphere 5.1

Dell PowerEdge server Virtual machine Dell PowerEdge servers NIC

Physical switch

Figure 1. Virtual networking through VMware VSSs

switch in a nonvirtualized environment. The VSS Ethernet network adapters. The VDS also allows Dive deeper allows the environment to dynamically assign virtual machines to maintain consistent network network resources as needed for increased agility configuration as they migrate across multiple Download the white paper “Simplified, high-performance compared to physical components. However, the hosts in the vSphere environment. 10GbE networks based on a single limitations of physical networking still constrain virtual distributed switch, managed by VMware vSphere 5.1” to learn the communication between virtual machines Heightened bandwidth per port more about deploying VMware on different hosts, because communication must Today, in data centers that consolidate virtualized and Intel technologies that pass through the core network and switch. server deployments, network connections to together can optimize virtualized, large-scale networks. To address the limitations placed on virtual physical hosts function as switch uplinks that carry networks by physical segmentation between traffic from a large number of virtual machines. qrs.ly/v42y7ih hosts, which characterizes the VSS model, Therefore, the network connections on physical VMware vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus provides hosts should use the same type of configurations advanced VMware VDS technology. VDS is that switch uplinks use—typically 10 Gigabit designed to create a higher level of abstraction Ethernet (10GbE) connections. Enhancements with virtual interconnections among virtual and optimizations of the VMware VDS technology machines that span across hosts in contrast to the originally available in VMware vSphere 5.0 offer per-host model that VSS provides. an open, big-pipe model in which each port uses Because it operates as a single virtual switch 10GbE bandwidth. across all associated hosts, the VDS functions as vSphere 5.1 offers advanced capabilities for a network switch for both internal and external virtual networking that take advantage of the network connectivity. It handles network traffic virtualization features built into Intel Ethernet at the multihost level, routes traffic internally CNAs. Version 5.1 can support up to eight physical between virtual machines, and links to an 10GbE ports, which helps to take advantage of external network by connecting to physical the processing headroom of servers such as Dell

Management plane

VMware Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Storage vMotion Management machine machine machine machine 1 2 3 4 TCP/IP stack

Distributed virtual Distributed virtual Storage VMware vMotion Management port group A port group B port group port group port group

VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS)

Distributed virtual VMware vCenter Server uplink port group

Data plane Data plane Data plane

VMware VMware VMware Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Storage vMotion Management Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Storage vMotion Management Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Storage vMotion Management machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machine 1 2 3 4 TCP/IP stack 1 2 3 4 TCP/IP stack 1 2 3 4 TCP/IP stack

Distributed virtual Distributed virtual Storage VMware vMotion Management Distributed virtual Distributed virtual Storage VMware vMotion Management Distributed virtual Distributed virtual Storage VMware vMotion Management port group A port group B port group port group port group port group A port group B port group port group port group port group A port group B port group port group port group VDS

Distributed virtual Distributed virtual Distributed virtual VMware vSphere 5.1 uplink port group VMware vSphere 5.1 uplink port group VMware vSphere 5.1 uplink port group

Dell PowerEdge servers

Physical switch Figure 2. Virtual networking through a VMware VDS

PowerEdge 12th-generation servers based on the specify port configuration for each member Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family. As virtual port. The corresponding entity on a VDS is a capability of vSphere, these ports can provide the distributed port group, which spans multiple up to four Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) hosts and defines how connections are made adapters, eight Internet SCSI (iSCSI) adapters, and through the VDS to the network. four VMware vSphere vMotion® technology paths. Using a VSS-based configuration, one or more The VDS helps simplify the management port groups connect to virtual machines through of these types of large-scale resources. This a virtual network interface card (NIC) (see Figure 1). combination of technologies enables enhanced On the other side are virtual uplink connections flexibility from the virtual networking environment to physical Ethernet server adapters that allow while maintaining high availability and QoS. the virtual machines to connect to the physical environment. Virtual switch uplinks can connect Virtual distributed switching for elastic to more than one physical Ethernet adapter to network management enable NIC teaming. NIC teaming means two or Unlike VMware VSSs that allow administrators to more physical adapters share the traffic load or manage resources only at the per-host level, using failover capabilities if a physical adapter fails or a the VMware VDS feature enables IT organizations network outage occurs. VMkernel NICs connect to treat the virtual network as a single aggregated services such as iSCSI or VMware vSphere resource. This resource can be centrally managed vMotion to the physical network. using the VMware vCenter™ Server virtualization Each VSS port group is assigned a network management platform. label, which is specified when attaching a virtual Many of the concepts associated with NIC to a port group. All port groups in a data configuring VSSs also apply to configuring the center that are able to pass data to one another VDS feature. For example, port groups in a VSS are assigned the same network label, which

62 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. allows technologies such as vMotion or functions such as access to IP storage to occur within a port group, but not among multiple port groups. In this way, port labels enable interoperation while also enabling data isolation as required. When deploying a VDS, both the virtual switch and distributed port groups—including distributed virtual port groups—span multiple physical hosts (see Figure 2). Distributed port groups aggregate multiple ports across physical hosts under a common configuration and provide a stable anchor point for virtual machines connecting to labeled networks. The VMware virtual switching layer provides a set of features similar to those in traditional physical switches, including virtual LANs (VLANs), traffic shaping, and monitoring. The scope of traffic-shaping policies that can be configured in distributed port groups is a key area in which use of a VDS helps improve on the corresponding capabilities for port groups with the VSS. The VSS supports policies for outgoing virtual machine–to–network traffic shaping only. The VDS adds support for inbound network–to–virtual machine traffic shaping as well. Ethernet. Configuration considerations also differ for the VDS feature. Network resource pools are used to configure the priority that different network traffic types are given on a VDS, by setting bandwidth parameters for physical adapters. Configuration settings Unbound. such as traffic shaping, teaming, and load balancing, as well as port security, are configured through distributed port groups. This Intel® Ethernet Converged approach helps ensure configuration consistency for virtual machines Network Adapters and and virtual ports necessary for live migration using vMotion. Network Daughter Cards for Dell™ PowerEdge™ Servers NEW! Intel® Ethernet Virtualized I/O resource sharing Network Daughter Card X520-DA2 / I350-T2 Another key requirement for expanded virtualization is the effective Each one is designed to make (SFP+) allocation and sharing of I/O resources (see the sidebar, “Controlling your transition to 10 Gigabit shared resource allocation”). Three primary sharing models have Ethernet easier, featuring emerged: software-based sharing, hardware-assisted sharing, and advanced I/O virtualization, hypervisor-bypass offload. iSCSI and Fibre Channel over The software-based sharing model requires the processor Intel® Ethernet to handle the network traffic routing and management, with Ethernet—at no additional Network Daughter Card X540-T2 / I350-T2 the possible result of limiting virtual machine performance and cost, even in the most (10GBASE-T) scalability. In hardware-assisted sharing, VMware NetQueue— demanding cloud and data enabled by Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq), a component center environments. All of Intel® Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (Intel VT-c)— backed by Intel’s 30-year helps reduce latency significantly and increase the throughput record of reliability. capability of a virtual switch. Hypervisor-bypass offload makes use Release your network’s potential. Intel® Ethernet of the PCI-SIG Single Root I/O Virtualization and Sharing (SR-IOV) Network Daughter Card Read the article on page 60 or visit 10G X520 KR specification supported in VMware vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus. This ( ) www.IntelEthernet-Dell.com Mezzanine Card approach can greatly increase the usefulness of direct assignment by allowing multiple virtual machines to bypass the hypervisor using a single port (see Figure 3). Both 10GbE Intel Ethernet CNAs and vSphere 5.1 support network resource sharing with VMDq and SR-IOV. Because the Intel® Ethernet 2013 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel and the Converged Network Intel© logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Adapter X520-DA2 Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States (SFP+) Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. and other countries. Advanced networking

Controlling shared resource allocation The VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) feature supports • Limit the bandwidth usage of specific resource pools to vSphere Network I/O Control (NetIOC). NetIOC provides for avoid jeopardizing performance for other flows going the use of limits and shares parameters to control the allocation through the same points of contention. of shared physical network resources that are in contention • Set the corresponding resource-pool shares to the for bandwidth by multiple traffic types on the same network predefined default shares value for VMware Fault Tolerance, pipe. This powerful feature can make vSphere deployments because fault tolerance is a latency-sensitive traffic flow. particularly suitable for I/O-consolidated data centers. The • Use load-based teaming (LBT) as the VDS teaming policy while following best practices help optimize the use of NetIOC: using NetIOC to maximize networking capacity utilization. • Employ the VDS feature port groups as a means to apply • Utilize bandwidth shares instead of hard limits for bandwidth configuration policies to different traffic flow types, and to allocation, because the shares enable greater flexibility than provide additional bandwidth controls through the use of the limits for unused capacity redistribution. traffic shaping.

Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual Virtual VMware VDS can dynamically allocate resources with VMDq but machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machine Virtual NIC not SR-IOV, it is the recommended default choice for network I/O VMware DirectPath resource sharing. At the same time, VMware DirectPath I/O with I/O ﬁlter direct assignment SR-IOV enables virtualization of workloads that could not otherwise be virtualized, which makes it a valuable special-case technology. Virtual port

1 2 3 4 5 6 Dynamic data center network management Trac Bidirectional tra c shaping shaping Organizations adopting technologies and approaches to enhance Packet networking performance, maximize server consolidation, and switching Forwarding engine virtualize all workload types can utilize advanced VMware VDS Teaming algorithms Teaming engine capabilities in VMware vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus and related tools. SR-IOV–enabled virtual functions The VDS enables network architects to dynamically allocate network Egress trac management Network I/O control resources and provide excellent support for enterprise requirements.

VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) The VDS facilitates managing physical and virtual networking resources from a single VMware vCenter Server management Uplinks console, and extends centralized management of virtualized resources using vCenter Server to include virtual machines on many Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Intel VT-c with VMDq Virtual Ethernet bridge Virtual Ethernet bridge Virtual Ethernet bridge Virtual Ethernet bridge physical hosts in a single pool. Dynamic, data center–level resource Intel Ethernet plus Intel Ethernet plus Intel Ethernet plus Intel Ethernet plus Intel VT-c with VMDq Intel VT-c with VMDq Intel VT-c with VMDq Intel VT-c with VMDq management executed in this manner represents a significant advance over per-host management and static bandwidth allocation

Virtual between hosts. machine NIC Author

Brian Johnson is a solution architect in the networking division at Intel for Figure 3. Virtual networking using Intel VT-c and VMDq, with VMware networking and virtualization technologies. DirectPath I/O and SR-IOV for special-case workloads Learn more

VMware and Intel technologies: vmwareintelalliance.com

64 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Linux

Optimizing end-to-end application migration and modernization

By Scott Sawyer and Thomas Crowe

The time is ripe for organizations to migrate business-critical applications from legacy UNIX® and RISC–based systems to x86-compatible platforms. Dell and Red Hat offer modernization and open-standards innovations for efficient application migration.

dvanced, industry-standard proprietary platforms by migrating to cost- Linux support problems that are reported to systems address a broad range effective systems can heighten efficiency Dell Support are resolved in-house without of infrastructure and application and agility and enable organizations to escalation to Red Hat.1 Aprocessing requirements in embrace emerging technologies. Years of experience have led Dell Services’ many of today’s enterprises. Yet, many Dell and Red Hat have collaborated to experts to develop and refine the following of these same organizations continue help organizations simplify and streamline five best practices that help simplify seemingly to rely on proprietary UNIX and RISC– the migration of business-critical applications complex modernization initiatives: based environments to support certain from UNIX and RISC–based systems to business-critical applications. And even open, x86-based systems, such as Dell™ 1. Assess existing applications and interfaces though running essential applications on PowerEdge™ servers. By utilizing this up front proprietary systems can be costly and approach, organizations can achieve low total 2. Develop a comprehensive, accurate require specialized expertise, organizations cost of ownership (TCO) and gain a flexible IT business case may be reluctant to migrate from the legacy infrastructure that scales with business growth. 3. Leverage migration expertise and proven systems that have supported the backbone methodologies of their operations for years. Best practices for application migration 4. Work with an expert solution provider to Because legacy UNIX and RISC–based Red Hat provides enterprise-class, open- address a range of applications without infrastructures represent a significant sunk standard environments that enable smooth disrupting operations investment for many enterprises, budget- application deployments. More than 2,000 5. Start with simple and/or high-return tasks constrained IT organizations may feel vendors offer more than 10,000 software to build migration momentum compelled to live with costs already incurred. applications as part of the Red Hat® Original hardware costs and years of accrued Enterprise Linux® independent software By following these best practices, maintenance fees can be so large that vendor (ISV) ecosystem. Dell provides organizations can minimize disruption and displacing technology representing such comprehensive application modernization reduce overall man-hours during a migration a substantial presence in the organization services that include extensive engineering project, helping to ensure a successful outcome. can be difficult to envision. However, of Linux-based solutions to streamline the many organizations are now experiencing migration process for IT organizations. Assess existing applications increasing pressures to upgrade IT systems The Dell and Red Hat partnership also and interfaces up front to comply with regulations and to take features an original equipment manufacturer An IT portfolio may have a complex chain advantage of emerging technologies (OEM) arrangement in which Dell provides of dependencies, and many organizations such as cloud computing, virtualization, organizations with a one-stop shop for lack full transparency into their applications mobile devices, and big data. Modernizing hardware, software, and services. In addition, and hardware assets. A solid migration plan application environments and eliminating up to 99.9 percent of Red Hat Enterprise should not only identify palpable and hidden

1 Results based on 2012 internal Dell testing.

application-server dependencies, but it should interdependencies. This comprehensive hardware platforms. This situation leaves also anticipate the impact on operations and assessment process provides a clear little time to plan and execute a platform software assurance processes. understanding of how applications are migration. Some organizations may also Measuring and tracking communication used to achieve business objectives and lack the available resources and in-house among servers is integral when planning a how to conduct a migration project without skills necessary to accomplish migration migration. For example, an administrator disrupting operations. and modernization in a timely fashion. In shutting down a Lightweight Directory these cases, third-party service providers Access Protocol (LDAP) server that is Develop a comprehensive, and ISVs can assist with the transition to providing authentication for several services accurate business case new environments. may inadvertently render those services Migration can be a complex undertaking Many service providers and ISVs unavailable during a transition, potentially that requires substantial resources, offer comprehensive sets of tools to leading to problems and lost revenue. leadership focus, and interdepartmental assist IT organizations in the migration of Applications may also depend on cooperation. It can be successful only if applications from UNIX and RISC–based middleware that runs on particular servers. IT there is sufficient support from upper-level systems to x86-based servers. Dell provides organizations need to accurately document management, which typically is obtained a wide range of services that include the such dependencies to help them understand through a solid business case. following offerings to guide IT organizations the order in which applications should be At the outset, an organization should through the migration process: migrated. Otherwise, they run the risk of explore whether the target architecture a miscalculation derailing the migration it envisions will provide the desired cost- 1. Selecting and prioritizing the applications process. For example, if encryption and effective benefits or if there may be other to be migrated other security measures in place are not alternatives to consider. For example, some 2. Determining new hardware requirements accounted for in the migration plan, there organizations may want to implement the 3. Identifying and resolving problems is no guarantee that such a service would smaller parts of a migration first. However, through a pilot process immediately be restored when an application significant return on investment (ROI) can 4. Migrating applications and data is redeployed to a new platform. be acquired by shutting down high-cost, 5. Conducting testing and quality assurance Organizations that have undergone high-volume servers in a timely fashion. 6. Performing production cutover mergers, acquisitions, or other significant Delaying more expansive parts of a migration 7. Providing training and knowledge transfer changes offer another potential scenario. in favor of small increments may actually to existing operations and development They have likely added an influx of new extend the operation of costly legacy servers, teams in the new environment systems and applications to the mix, and which can mitigate potential savings. may not have a clear picture of the current Dell Services is not only capable of Dell Services helps organizations state. In this case, an internal assessment executing large-scale migrations, but it implement an efficient and effective should be performed or an experienced can also provide business cases and cost- modernization plan that gives IT staff the third-party solution provider brought in benefit analyses to help estimate ROI for flexibility to continue driving innovation before embarking on a migration and particular scenarios. This assessment helps and supporting day-to-day operations for modernization initiative. identify the migration priorities that may their organizations. In its workshop, assessment, design, foster maximum ROI in a short amount and implementation (WADI) methodology, of time. It also allows organizations to Work with an expert solution provider Dell Services offers a migration strategy justify initial investments in hardware and to address a range of applications that comprises discovery, analysis, and services, which can be a key first step in Much of the ROI in a migration comes execution. This model helps ensure no obtaining buy-in and commitment for the from shifting to new servers and shutting application or service is overlooked and engagement from organizational leadership. down the old ones, which helps reduce provides experienced engineers a way to energy requirements, data center space conduct migrations in a logical progression Leverage migration expertise and consumption, and annual maintenance that minimizes downtime. Utilizing fit-for- proven methodologies costs. Any migration that is delayed or purpose migration technology, Dell Services Many organizations may be fully utilizing all incomplete can mitigate these cost benefits. collects and analyzes information on source available assets to support the steady-state Organizations should therefore avoid a code assets, data structures, and functional maintenance of existing applications and strategy that completes only part of the job.

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Dell Services can assist in assessing Tier Third-party Complexity Impact on migration readiness. This assessment not services application examples and effort level migration effort only identifies which applications should be Infrastructure File and Domain Name System (DNS), Low Migration should be network core Dynamic Host Configuration straightforward unless migrated first—along with identifying potential services Protocol (DHCP), LDAP, and an organization deploys costs and cost savings—but also which IBM® WebSphere MQ exotic, third-party applications. applications should not be migrated based

Presentation Web, cache, Apache™ HTTP Server, Low Migration should be on cost, complexity, and/or other timing and proxy IBM HTTP Server, and straightforward, although considerations. In addition to application servers Oracle iPlanet Web Server validation needs to occur with the application layer. modernization services, Dell can assist IT organizations with power and thermal Databases Information Oracle Database, MySQL, Low Migration should be evaluations and virtualization assessments repositories IBM DB2, and IBM Informix straightforward; however, database software excessive use of stored along with infrastructure design, deployment, procedures can increase the difficulty of the and implementation. migration. Applications Engines or IBM WebSphere; Oracle Mid Application size can Cost-effective solutions logic layers to WebLogic; mainstream, make a difference in the modify data third-party applications; migration effort. for modernization and C/C++ Application migration and modernization initiatives may seem daunting to an Packaged Large, complex, SAP Business Suite, Oracle Mid Migration difficulty applications third-party PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business ranges from easy to hard organization with entrenched UNIX and applications Suite, and Oracle’s Siebel depending on the amount RISC-based assets. However, moving to Customer Relationship of customization. Management applications open, industry-standard platforms can bring substantial benefits. Organizations looking to safely cross the chasm and take Figure 1. Migration complexity by workload advantage of industry-standard x86-based Dell platforms running Red Hat Enterprise For example, a third-party vendor may broaden Dell expertise in migrating custom Linux can capitalize on comprehensive have the expertise to successfully migrate code and legacy mainframe applications. application migration expertise and services an Oracle® database from a UNIX-based resulting from a deep Dell and Red Hat platform to a Linux-based platform, but Start with simple and/or high-return tasks alliance. From this relationship, enterprises it may not have the expertise to address to build migration momentum can implement open, cost-effective front-end applications. Many organizations To sustain upper-level management migration and modernization solutions that still rely on customized legacy code commitment for a migration endeavor, include a wide range of hardware, software, that may have been written in-house by meeting short-term milestones or services, and support offerings to help developers who are no longer employed producing tangible savings results optimize their IT environments. by the organization. A migration service quickly is important. Through its years of provider should have the experience to experience, Dell helps organize a UNIX- Authors handle homegrown, in-house assets that to-Linux migration project into a series Scott Sawyer is a global practice executive for can be re-architected to an industry- of progressive stages. By first selecting Linux migrations in Dell Services at Dell. standard platform. applications that can be easily transitioned The Dell Services team has experience to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment Thomas Crowe is the senior architect for IT modernization within the Global Solutions and and knowledge spanning a wide range of and/or selecting workloads that can provide Strategy Office at Red Hat. applications including Oracle Database, Oracle rapid return, momentum and executive E-Business Suite, Oracle PeopleSoft, support for a transition can be maintained Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle WebLogic, (see Figure 1). Structuring projects into a Learn more

SAP® Business Suite, JBoss Enterprise series of successive phases helps build and Application modernization: Middleware Suite, and other applications. refine skills in situations where organizations dell.com/appmod

Well-established application re-architecting want to dedicate some in-house resources The Dell and Red Hat alliance: and application rehosting practices further to the migration process. dell.com/redhat

Extending always-connected capabilities with mobile device management

By Saranya Babu

Consumerization of workplace devices can heighten worker productivity, but also it raises the stakes for application and data security. Dell KACE™ K3000 Mobile Management Appliances offer an easy-to-use, cost-effective way to manage mobile devices.

cross a wide range of industries, At the same time, IT departments must today’s on-the-go workers increasingly respond to significant management and prefer to use their own laptops, security challenges posed by the proliferation A tablets, and smartphones. By of consumerized devices and applications leveraging the opportunity to support always- in bring-your-own-device (BYOD) workplace connected employees who have the freedom environments. Because many personal computing to bring their own devices into the workplace, devices were not built to be enterprise-ready, IT organizations are enjoying elevated productivity, departments must find a way to securely manage business agility, and efficiency as they integrate and effectively control access to critical enterprise technology advances comfortably into individual applications and data from these devices. To help work environments. achieve that goal, IT teams must extend systems

68 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Focus on software

management capabilities by building out an infrastructure designed to manage mobile devices. Apple iOS and Google Android Dell KACE Appliances Dell Wyse Cloud Manage servers, desktops, and Client Manager mobile operating systems in particular laptops alongside organization- and end-user–owned mobile devices. have driven standardization of mobile Servers and PCs: Utilize a uniﬁed console designed for device management (MDM) and mobile • Dell Kace K1000 Management Appliance MDM securely managing both organization- • Dell Kace K2000 Deployment Appliance and MAM and end-user–owned thin clients and application management (MAM). mobile devices as well as their access to Mobile devices: Apple iOS organizational applications. These operating systems offer a • Dell Kace K3000 Mobile Management and Google Android Appliance defined set of controls around which Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, management vendors can build an and Linux infrastructure for MDM and MAM. Originally, MDM focused on managing Appliance-based SaaS-based mobile devices and their attributes, management management such as installed applications, software, settings, end-user information, and security. In contrast, MAM focused on Figure 1. Implementing an end-to-end approach to managing mobile devices in organizational managing mobile applications and their IT environments attributes including settings, security, the device on which they are installed, and Mobile Management Appliances help Customizable cloud- or the end users who access them. organizations build out efficient on-premises–based deployment Over time, MDM and MAM have MDM through integrated systems In general, organizational requirements merged to offer similar functionality. As management, customizable cloud- or determine the next step toward MDM— a result, a management infrastructure on-premises–based deployment, and either a cloud computing–based, that supports mobility has become layered protection technology. software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment commoditized to the point that or an on-premises deployment. Selecting virtually every approach offers basic Integrated systems management one option over the other often depends features for device and application Many approaches to MDM offer rich on the specific budget constraints of an management. Because vendors functionality. However, a siloed approach organization, its preference for a cost differentiate themselves through advanced that uses separate point solutions for structure based on capital expenses or features and usability, understanding managing desktop systems, virtual operating expenses, security requirements, these differences helps IT organizations machines, and mobile computing and the availability of IT staff with evaluate options and select a mobile devices can create inefficiencies, specialized training. device and application management degrade the end user’s IT service SaaS systems avoid installation approach that is appropriate for their experience, and hinder the application requirements and are accessible business needs (see Figure 1). of security policies consistently across from anywhere through cloud-based all IT assets. computing. However, they provide Building out comprehensive mobile An IT team that already manages no visibility into the location of an device management desktops, laptops, servers, and virtual organization’s sensitive business data, The Dell KACE Family of Systems machines can benefit from using an which may pose a security risk. In Management Appliances offers an integrated approach to managing addition, SaaS systems depend on easy-to-use and cost-effective approach these devices along with laptops, tablets, network bandwidth for performance, and for managing a mix of enterprise and and smartphones across many platforms. they often require a support call to the personal devices on platforms running Dell KACE K Series Appliances utilize service provider for every problem that Microsoft® Windows®, Apple Mac OS X, an integrated approach, enabling IT arises. For cloud-based deployments, Apple iOS, Ubuntu, Novell SUSE® administrators to manage these assets the Dell portfolio of mobility solutions Linux® Enterprise, and Google Android from a central location that enhances includes Dell Wyse™ Cloud Client Manager, operating systems. Dell KACE K3000 efficiency and helps reduce costs. a SaaS-based MDM approach.

An organization that has critical security The Dell portfolio of mobility solutions requirements and an IT staff with specialized helps IT teams protect enterprise content from training may benefit from on-premises unauthorized mobile devices and unsecured deployment of MDM. Installation and data access points. By utilizing a multilayered storage are often controlled entirely in-house. approach to security, IT organizations can deploy On-premises deployment enables IT organizations a secure organizational container designed to to triage any issues that arise without having to protect valuable data not only on data center make support calls to a service provider. And servers, but also on mobile devices in the field despite initial up-front costs coupled with ongoing and at remote locations. support costs, on-premises MDM deployments are designed to be increasingly cost-effective over Managing mobile devices on premises time. Dell KACE K Series Appliances, including Dell KACE K3000 Mobile Management Appliances the Dell KACE K3000 Mobile Management deliver an on-premises approach to leading-edge Appliance, are available as both physical and systems management technology for managing virtual appliances to offer organizations a variety BYOD environments. This robust approach to of deployment options. integration, deployment, and security helps IT organizations integrate management of PCs, Layered protection technology servers, mobile devices, and other end-user Securing enterprise content on personal devices devices while helping simplify complex and Learn more in the workplace is particularly challenging repetitive systems management tasks. because mobile devices pose an intrinsically With support for Apple iOS and Google Dell KACE K3000 Mobile higher risk of being lost or stolen than traditional Android platforms, Dell KACE K3000 Mobile Management Appliance: kace.com/products/mobile- desktop computers. Mobile devices also Management Appliances provide both MDM management-appliance function outside the controllable confines of and MAM capabilities. Integrating these the organizational network. Although many offerings with Dell KACE K1000 Systems Dell KACE systems management: kace.com/products/overview security technologies are available to address this Management Appliances, which support problem, none alone can ensure that enterprise Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux Safe and secure BYOD: content is completely safe. Several layers of operating systems, enables IT organizations to qrs.ly/732yony security are typically required to build effective accurately and efficiently track, monitor, and protection. In addition to network encryption, manage servers and desktops together with virtual private networks (VPNs), and firewalls, diverse mobile devices. IT organizations can control access through To help enterprises fully realize the potential virtualization or containerization. benefits of BYOD workplace environments, Dell Virtualization allows access to enterprise enables IT organizations to extend their systems content through virtualized desktops and management capabilities and embrace mobile applications, offering a seamless experience devices. Dell KACE K3000 Mobile Management across all devices and helping ensure that Appliances offer a simple and cost-effective way sensitive data is never stored locally on mobile to help IT organizations protect mission-critical devices. However, virtualization does not offer applications and data—helping to avert security offline access, and the end-user experience risks from a deluge of consumerized mobile can be limited by network bandwidth. devices and applications flooding into today’s Containerization creates a secure repository enterprise workplace. for enterprise content that resides on mobile devices, helping ensure that sensitive data is safe Author while offering offline access. When an employee leaves the organization, however, administrators Saranya Babu is the senior product marketing manager for the Dell KACE K1000 Management must take positive action to remove local data Appliance and the Dell KACE K3000 Mobile from the device. Management Appliance.

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Enhancing business Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises 4 operations through 99.9% Using Dell SonicWALL firewalls, the restaurant secure networks group boosted its availability, experiencing an uptime of 99.9 percent.

Internet-connected organizations Altru Health System 4 have industry-specific needs for network security that are driven by law, customers, and the IT environment. 5,000 A single Dell SonicWALL Aventail E-Class Secure ™ ™ Dell SonicWALL products help Remote Access (SRA) appliance enabled concurrent organizations of all sizes manage and access for up to 5,000 of Altru’s remote and mobile staff. protect remote and local networks. Mississippi Department of Corrections 4

irtualization, cloud computing, and mobile technologies have changed the way organizations 100% conduct business, providing real-time information, The department saw a 100 percent reduction Vinteractive collaboration, rich media, and much more. in attack penetration after deploying a Dell At the same time, security threats have emerged to exploit the SonicWALL Network Security Appliance (NSA). opportunities presented by these technologies, and rising network traffic taxes the bandwidth requirements for mission-critical PSC applications. In addition, organizations across many industries 4 are subject to regulations designed to ensure the security and privacy of data and resources. The success stories featured here demonstrate how 16x organizations have deployed Dell SonicWALL solutions to help Using Dell SonicWALL Next-Generation Firewalls, protect their networks from both internal and external attacks the waste management company experienced up to and application vulnerabilities while facilitating remote access and 16 times increase in bandwidth. regulatory compliance. SonicWALL products include hardware, software, and virtual appliance-based security solutions that are part of the Dell Software portfolio. University of South Florida 4 Whether they are serving meals, supporting physicians, protecting public safety, processing hazardous waste, or researching diseases, these organizations are able to reduce 2/3 risk and complexity by integrating automated dynamic security capabilities within their IT infrastructures. The Dell SonicWALL Email Security Appliance (ESA) Series enabled the university’s pediatric epidemiology center to cut spam by two-thirds.

Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises: Altru Health System: Cultivating business efficiencies Enhancing records access Established in 1971, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, Inc., Altru Health System is a community-owned, integrated health- operates approximately 85 restaurants across the United States, care system serving over 200,000 residents at 20 locations including R.J. Grunt’s in Chicago and the Eiffel Tower Restaurant in North Dakota and Minnesota. To manage its electronic in Las Vegas. To support its business, the company required a medical records (EMR), Altru migrated to an upgraded Epic EMR network that enhanced connectivity for employees, protected application. “The movement to EMR drives a need for us to credit card transactions, and delivered high availability for provide access to this information from many different places,” processing customer loyalty and gift card transactions. says Matt Schumacher, manager of technical support at Altru. The company deployed Dell SonicWALL network security “And we need to do it securely.” appliances to achieve a centrally managed virtual private network Altru required the bandwidth and the infrastructure to (VPN) infrastructure that helps protect credit card transactions and support many different types of information while complying facilitates adherence to Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards. with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act “Dell SonicWALL segments the network, so a guest wireless (HIPAA) mandates. user in a restaurant cannot access financial traffic, and our events To help secure both remote access and local traffic, Altru staff can give a third-party client portal access without affecting our deployed Dell SonicWALL E-Class firewalls and Dell SonicWALL PCI compliance,” says Steve Alessia, system engineer at Lettuce Aventail E-Class Secure Remote Access (SRA) appliances. Entertain You. “Network security is much easier to manage and less “What ultimately makes us more successful is the ability for us vulnerable than our previous solution.” to connect to all the remote branches or home users and get The SonicWALL appliances also deliver load-balancing and high- them connected securely,” says Eric Hoffner, technical analyst at availability capabilities that enhance performance. “Our uptime has Altru. “Dell SonicWALL gives us more options, more features, and increased to 99.9 percent,” says Alessia. “Dell SonicWALL has done the flexibility to simplify management by consolidating different wonders for us to speed up performance.” types of remote access products into one platform.”

72 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Mississippi Department of Corrections: PSC: Cleaning up on bandwidth Locking down threats and reliability boosts The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) provides and Based in Houston, Texas, PSC is a waste management company promotes public safety through efficient and effective custody, care, that processes hazardous environmental waste and provides control, and treatment of offenders. Its network has approximately industrial cleaning and maintenance services. Previously, PSC relied 1,600 users who depend on access to the department’s mission- on individual T1 connections to its distributed locations over a critical application resources. Multiple Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network, but the company MDOC saw an increase in application-based attacks that its experienced unacceptable downtime. existing firewall was unable to counter—making it difficult to maintain To enhance network bandwidth and reliability, PSC deployed compliance with state regulations. Also, the department needed secure more than 90 Dell SonicWALL Network Security Appliance (NSA) and access to internal resources for remote and mobile staff and officers. TZ Series firewalls across its enterprise network. The firewalls have By deploying a Dell SonicWALL E-Class Network Security Appliance helped increase bandwidth availability. “We increased the amount of (NSA) E5500 firewall and a Dell SonicWALL Aventail E-Class Secure bandwidth almost everywhere, with bandwidth increases in many Remote Access (SRA) appliance, the department was able to gain the locations from double to 16 times,” says Jim Burns, CIO at PSC. application visibility and control required to maintain compliance. “The PSC also experienced heightened reliability. “The virtual private NSA E5500 gives us complete insight into the traffic. It gives us the ability network (VPN) connections are rock solid,” says Burns. “We to go in and monitor the application layer,” says Jerry Horton, MDOC improved quality and reliability because of Dell SonicWALL’s ability to network systems manager. “We have seen a 100 percent reduction in detect that the primary is down and roll it over to the secondary in attack penetration, and we have eliminated BitTorrent traffic.” under eight seconds.” Burns adds, “We were spending US$1.2 million Moreover, secure remote access helps boost staff productivity and Dell SonicWALL let us cut that in half so that we are saving and reduce costs. Remote and mobile users can access resources US$600,000 a year. We took some of the savings and rolled those from anywhere, and IT fields fewer support calls. into secondary connections and other projects.”

access to sensitive clinical data except the researchers who will actually be working on it,” says Gomes. As the center analyzed growing volumes of big data, it needed to upgrade the processing capacity of its firewall to secure the corresponding increase in network traffic. The center deployed Dell SonicWALL SuperMassive Next-Generation Firewalls to help securely and efficiently transfer the big data. “Our performance has increased tenfold,” says Pablo Ruiz, the center’s IT manager. University of South Florida: Spam had been another major issue for the center, which Securing big data receives up to 20,000 e-mails a day on average. By replacing its The University of South Florida Pediatric Epidemiology Center previous e-mail security device with a SonicWALL Email Security comprises a diverse team of biomedical, health, and computer appliance, the center is able to cut about two-thirds of the spam it science experts. The center facilitates knowledge exchange between used to receive. physicians and patients throughout the world. For Joe Gomes, the center’s director of systems and Learn more technology, the challenge is in keeping the network secure and Dell SonicWALL: protected against malware. “We do not want anyone to have sonicwall.com

Koehler Paper Group A ticket to efficiency

Through deploying an innovative Dell–SAP database infrastructure, Koehler Paper Group cuts its business warehouse costs while boosting staff productivity.

ermany-based Koehler Paper Group, a world leader in specialist paper manufacturing, sells 500,000 tons of paper each year. It employs around 1,800 staff and reports an annual turnover of G more than €700 million. Karl Schindler, head of IT at Koehler, says, “We use state-of-the-art technology to produce a range of technical and graphic paper types. But we also depend on technology to ensure that our business runs as efficiently as possible. We need it to be quick and easy for our employees to access and analyze data on everything from order processing to plant machinery downtime.” Because efficient enterprise resource planning (ERP) is central to the company’s success, Koehler decided to implement a cutting-edge database infrastructure with existing technology providers Dell and SAP. Dell handled hardware setup and SAP conducted a sizing assessment. Both companies advised Koehler’s in-house team how best to complete the database migration. The entire implementation took only three days. Koehler replaced its relational database setup with two Dell™ PowerEdge™ better-informed decisions faster. Procurement data R910 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors running an SAP® HANA™ in-memory with millions of data sets can now be analyzed and database. Schindler says, “We were already using SAP NetWeaver® Business broken down into single reports.” Warehouse (BW) Accelerator, which delivered fast query and search response Because of its ease of use, the Dell–SAP system times, but SAP HANA on the Dell servers has taken things even further. It takes enables employees to create reports without just 5 seconds to activate data with SAP HANA. With BW Accelerator, it used involving the IT team. “Now, users can search for to take 330 seconds with the conventional database. And data modeling and and cross-reference any type of data—whether it design is at least 30 percent quicker, too. involves sales, inventory management, financial “Users get the results they need in seconds, which means they can stay accounting, or research and development—without focused on the task at hand instead of having to come back to it once a IT staff having to spend time determining input report has been generated. Giving staff faster access to data on inventory criteria up front,” says Schindler. management, sales, technical performance, and financial accounting has And thanks to efficient processes, IT staff had a real impact on day-to-day productivity.” has freed up time to work on high-value tasks. Schindler says, “We’ve improved efficiency Reporting made easy across the organization. Where SAP BW The Dell–SAP infrastructure has dramatically simplified reporting and analysis. Accelerator helped us to create reports more Schindler says, “The new reporting infrastructure helps our employees make quickly, SAP HANA optimizes the entire dataflow,

Paging innovation Manufacturing company Koehler Paper Group wanted to replace its conventional database environment with a more efficient infrastructure. The company worked with Dell and SAP to introduce a cutting-edge database solution in just three days.

5 seconds 1/3 30% The SAP HANA system Dell PowerEdge servers Since deploying the enabled Koehler to cut running SAP HANA helped Dell–SAP infrastructure, data activation times Koehler lower the total the company has seen a from five minutes to cost of ownership for its 30 percent reduction in five seconds. business warehouse system time required for data by at least one-third. modeling and design.

from producer to actual user. These “Soon, it will help us accelerate system, which has been running 24/7 with efficiencies have reduced the burden complicated tasks such as processing no downtime ever since,” says Schindler. “I on the IT team. The introduction of SAP and analyzing bulk data from our plant know from experience that if we come up HANA on the Dell PowerEdge servers equipment in our process management against any issues, Dell will fix them straight has seen us reduce the total cost of system—something that’s practically away. I’ve never had any negative feedback ownership of our business warehouse impossible with conventional technology. about Dell support—I’d be the first to system by at least one-third.” We’ll be able to boost efficiency even hear about it if my people had something further by preventing standstill times to complain about. Paving the way of plant equipment and planning “What I really like about Dell is its direct Using its advanced database system, maintenance more effectively.” contact, personal advice, and end-to- Koehler can gain enhanced insight into the To help keep the system running, end services. Most other suppliers have business and a clear view of day-to-day Koehler adopted SAP Enterprise Support, as an intermediary company to deal with activities. Schindler says, “The Dell–SAP well as Dell ProSupport with Mission Critical, medium-sized companies such as us. environment is future-oriented. Not only which offers 24/7 support and on-site But with Dell, we feel like we’re in a real does it help us use data in more innovative assistance within four hours. “In a successful partnership, and we get a certain continuity ways than our original setup, but it also project a few years ago, Dell implemented of service that other companies simply puts us at the forefront of our field. a virtualized infrastructure for our SAP ERP don’t provide.”

Menzies Aviation Virtual payload

Menzies Aviation boosts business agility and streamlines the integration of new employees into its corporate network—thanks to a virtualized infrastructure based on Dell™ hardware running the Microsoft® Windows Server® 2012 OS.

enzies Aviation provides passenger, ramp, ground- handling, and cargo-handling M services to airlines worldwide. A fast-growing company, Menzies Aviation operates at 136 airports in 32 countries, bringing in annual revenue of more than US$1.1 billion and employing around 18,000 people. Best-in-class safety and security, as well as great customer service, are central to its success. Because even minor service disruptions can have a detrimental effect on passengers and on cargo transport, Menzies Aviation constantly looks for ways to boost efficiency and keep operations running smoothly. Increasingly, the company sees IT as the catalyst in achieving these business goals and invests heavily in developing its infrastructure. “IT is transforming businesses worldwide, and it’s no different at Menzies Aviation,” says Martin Gallington, senior vice president of IT at Menzies Aviation. “We work more closely with personnel than ever before, and the company looks to us for solutions for continued growth and development.” The company wanted to make it easy to integrate acquired businesses into the corporate network and give new employees access to Menzies Aviation applications. With the need to comply with strict aviation

and government regulations on data access, our domain services—making it easier to content through the wide area network. the IT team couldn’t simply streamline the integrate new personnel and improve our Plus, advancements in Active Directory existing integration process because of the business flexibility,” says Apps. services make it easy for IT administrators security risks. Much of the information held to lock down employee mobile devices. is highly confidential and must be protected Driving growth through IT Gallington says, “We can develop our for the safety of passengers and crews. Menzies Aviation can now grow without mobile working strategy with the support a corresponding expansion in its IT of Dell solutions and Windows Server 2012. Heightening agility with virtual infrastructure, because the Dell PowerEdge It will enable personnel to work effectively domain services servers, combined with Windows from more locations and ultimately deliver With the assistance of Dell, Menzies Aviation Server 2012 with Microsoft Hyper-V® greater services.” joined the Microsoft Windows Server 2012 virtualization, enable extremely high virtual After the success of RDP, Menzies Rapid Deployment Program (RDP), which machine density. “The density of the Dell Aviation began a refresh program for its is designed to obtain feedback on software PowerEdge servers will have a direct active-active data centers. “We saw that before its release to market while helping impact on the future of our company,” says the best way to support the business was companies prepare for future migrations. Apps. “We’ll be able to roll out Windows to continue our relationship with Dell,” Menzies Aviation worked with a Microsoft Server 2012 and Hyper-V, maximizing the says Gallington. Menzies Aviation ordered strategist from Dell to virtualize its Microsoft Active Directory® system with Windows Server 2012 and help simplify “Using Dell 12th-generation servers running the identity management system. “We completed research and development for Windows Server 2012, we could successfully our Windows Server 2012 RDP 50 percent virtualize our domain services—making it quicker with Dell, because it had direct access to Microsoft,” says Justin Apps, easier to integrate new personnel and improve head of enterprise architecture at Menzies our business flexibility.” Aviation. “In fact, our Microsoft strategist from Dell really made it a success.” —Justin Apps As a result of the RDP, Menzies Aviation Head of enterprise architecture at Menzies Aviation proved that it could accommodate rapid November 2012 growth using Dell hardware and Windows Server 2012. Apps and Dell created a lab virtualization capabilities. The firm’s IT now Dell PowerEdge R620, PowerEdge R720, environment featuring a Dell PowerEdge™ has the agility to deliver new services in and PowerEdge R820 servers, as well R720 server running a virtualized instance line with demand. At the same time, the as Dell EqualLogic™ PS6100 storage of Active Directory Domain Services in physical footprint of the data center won’t arrays. The company also plans to Windows Server 2012. They took a snapshot increase, keeping down costs.” Apps also deploy Dell PowerVault™ MD storage of the company’s production data, moved liked that the PowerEdge 12th-generation arrays, Dell PowerVault TL tape libraries, it to the lab environment, and ran it against servers could run at higher temperatures and Dell PowerConnect™ 7048 switches. the virtual domain services software. than previous generations. “IT can help drive business growth at Apps also saw that access across the Using Windows Server 2012 running Menzies Aviation with the refresh of our business worldwide could be centrally on a Dell platform, the business can push data centers using Dell 12th-generation managed, which helps avoid security the development of mobile and remote servers,” says Apps. “They will provide breaches as the company added personnel working. Because of the enhanced greater density and virtual server capacity, and computers to the network. “Using Dell software code in the Microsoft system, so that the business can expand and we can 12th-generation servers running Windows staff members operating remotely have deliver more services without increasing our Server 2012, we could successfully virtualize excellent access to rich graphics and 3D data-center footprint.”

The second wave of big data: Shifting from services to solutions

By Evan Quinn

Think of 2013 as a year of transition, as IT decision makers consider the trade-offs of moving from services-led engagements toward appliances and preconfigured hardware that are designed to simplify the implementation of big data solutions.

or many big data buyers, 2012 costs than are typically incurred from was the year of services-led mainly custom efforts. engagements. Suppliers with Counter to much of the hype Fwell-tuned professional and surrounding big data, Enterprise Strategy educational services units, such as Dell, Group (ESG) has fresh evidence to IBM, and Opera Solutions, helped many support the notion that although big early adopters achieve results. Apache™ data investments during 2013 will be Hadoop™ distribution providers, including healthy, they will not be over the top: Cloudera, Hortonworks, and MapR, also business intelligence (BI)/analytics took part. But as organizational profiles spending, while above average for IT shift from early adopters to early majority, initiatives, sits in the third tier of initiatives discretionary budgets for big data are in ESG’s 2013 IT spending intentions expected to be slimmer on average, research survey.1 When asked “Which of and the number of highly customized, the following business initiatives do you risk-taking projects may diminish. believe will have the greatest impact on Most true believers in data science your organization’s technology spending have already made some kind of decisions over the next 12 months?” big data investment; in fact, they 44 percent of respondents to the needed little convincing. However, question cited cost-reduction the second wave of big data buyers initiatives. Security and business wants an approach that is not primarily process improvement each came in at customized and is easy to implement. 31 percent; multiple selections were They look for all-encompassing allowed. BI/analytics initiatives fell into solutions—infrastructures, platforms, a group in the 21–25 percent range, productivity tools, and even big data which included compliance, mobile applications—with lower apparent computing, and collaboration.

1 “Research report: 2013 IT spending intentions survey,” by Bill Lundell and John McKnight with Jennifer Gahm, Enterprise Strategy Group, January 2013, qrs.ly/ah2z6ao.

78 2013 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2013 Issue 1. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Focus on software | Analyst perspective

What are the most signiﬁcant data processing and analytics challenges your organization faces with its largest data set? (Percent of respondents, N = 399, multiple responses accepted)3

Data security 34%

Data integration 30%

Data quality 29%

Data cleansing tasks 28%

Business’ expectations on how long 27% it takes for tasks to complete

Data synchronization 25%

Storage costs 24%

Master data management 22%

Lack of skills 21%

Data set sizes 20%

Data governance 20%

Data analytics application 16% software license costs

Database software license costs 16%

Data center ﬂoor space costs 9%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Figure 1. Data processing and analytics challenges

In fact, ESG saw the coming of the second continues to grow for using the cloud for parts of wave in the latter half of 2012; Figure 1 is taken big data, many organizations still prefer to opt for from a survey ESG conducted regarding big infrastructure where they exercise control—but data.2 The primary concerns include security, not to the point where they want to spin up their integrating data, cleansing data, and ensuring own clusters. And unless the organization is a analytics performance does not disappoint users. Web 2.0–style company, ESG does not generally To ESG, these primary concerns clearly reflected recommend a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to an enterprise-class set of needs. The notion of an spinning up and managing big data hardware and experimental, throw-money-at-the-problem big infrastructure for two main reasons. data approach was already losing its luster. First, few IT shops and almost no lines of business possess the big data expertise on staff to Recognizing the appeal of appliances architect, design, spin up, and manage their own and preconfigured hardware infrastructure for a full-scale and rapidly growing Given healthy, albeit not extravagant, budgets production environment. Those that take that risk for big data and buyers who are not quite at the without the requisite skills may quickly head over cutting edge, where will big data buyers invest? the edge of their own economic and delivery cliff. ESG believes many of these buyers will increasingly Those willing to hire DIY big data skills should show interest in appliances and preconfigured expect to pay well more than average for relevant hardware for big data solutions. Though interest IT and data-science expertise.

2,3 “ Research report: The convergence of big data processing and integrated infrastructure,” by Evan Quinn and Bill Lundell with Brian Babineau, Enterprise Strategy Group, July 2012, qrs.ly/tp2z6as.

Second, organizations are overly to revolutionize operational analytics. providing basic BI to its executives? Many optimistic if they believe chief marketing Dell also brings a set of well-versed SAP companies are in between. But in nearly all officers and lines of business will chip in solution experts to the table and has cases, to make progress they must adapt massive amounts of budget for capital or even created a set of services specific to their infrastructure to the needs of big data operational expenditures that go toward big harnessing and managing the in-memory– solutions and augment their expertise to data projects with an unpredictable return powered speed of HANA. some degree. on investment (ROI). The business may Much has been written about the provide somewhat of an investment, but Meeting enterprises where they are three Vs of big data—referring to the fact the serious projects—not the experimental The year 2012 also saw an immense that big data often involves more data, or ones—still answer to the chief financial amount of investment from venture volume; more types of data, or variety; and officer (CFO), just like any other IT-oriented capitalists in early-stage big data solution a faster influx of data, or velocity, than in project, regardless of budgetary source. ESG providers. Unfortunately, 2013 begins the past. ESG believes that organizations believes, therefore, that serious projects the days of reckoning for some of those should focus on six rather than three Vs, should, if they plan to be successful, allocate investments. ESG, therefore, really likes adding veracity, to help ensure analysts a healthy, predictable, and dependable either the established, larger, and well- are working with clean data; visualization, portion of budget for infrastructure. known solution providers that work well to provide end users with rich, flexible, Appliances and preconfigured infrastructure with others in the complex big data graphical tools to tap into the power of big fit those criteria. solution space, or those relatively data; and value, to help the CFO ensure The trick in these cases is to offer an new solution providers that specialize that the organization realizes more benefit appliance or preconfigured hardware tuned in a clear niche. And the smart solution from big data than the investment being for a particular big data software solution. providers from the latter category made in big data. To date, ESG has not seen a successful understand they need to work with In 2013, the idea of let’s put up a few generalized big data infrastructure with trusted providers like Dell to reach clusters, download Hadoop, throw some universal appeal, and does not expect interested but careful big data customers. data at the clusters and MapReduce, and one to appear in 2013 or probably ever. Dell formed partnerships with several see what we can find is not going to cut Instead, from a success perspective, big data solution specialists during 2012, it. This approach no longer defines big when applicable it’s important to have big such as Datameer, ParAccel, and Pentaho. data this year or going forward. Rather, data software solution and infrastructure These vendors offer holistic BI/analytics organizations are demanding well-thought- providers walking hand in hand to help solutions that span core BI/analytics with out and proven infrastructures; software their customers with big data projects. That a good dose of big data for medium-to- solutions that enable quick results; and second wave of big data buyers wants the large companies, as offered by Pentaho, services that help define realistic projects help and assurance from all the primary to the blazing-fast massively parallel and results and deliver the combined big vendors involved, whether hardware, processing (MPP) analytics database and data solution—at a price that does not software, network, or hybrid—and they will platform for complex, predictive analytics break the bank. still likely need plenty of big data services from ParAccel. ESG believes Dell’s span to help get going. of big data solutions can help customers Author Dell has recognized the appeal of regardless of their current affinity for or appliances, preconfigured infrastructure, expertise in big data. Evan Quinn is senior principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. and partnerships for big data. For example, the company currently offers Defining big data going forward a preconfigured Hadoop infrastructure To capitalize on big data, an organization’s Learn more that includes the Cloudera’s Distribution infrastructure requirements depend on Enterprise Strategy Group: including Apache Hadoop (CDH) its goals and current level of adoption. esg-global.com software. Another example is the SAP® Has the company invested long-term in HANA™ appliance from Dell that is advanced analytics to better understand Dell | Cloudera solution: configured and highly tuned for HANA, customers or to help make fresh discoveries dell.com/hadoop an analytics database being used by an that drive research and development? Dell | SAP HANA solution: increasing number of SAP organizations Or is the organization still struggling with dell.com/hana

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