+1 Netapp's tools make the difference, compared to other storage vendors.
From: Martin Blackstone [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 13 October 2009 14:37 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: NAS/SAN NetApp offers: SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure. This allows you to take snapshots of running VM's. It integrates with VI so that it VI can put the VM's into a hot backup mode and allow for the snapshot. In the event you blow up a VM or the OS running under it or any other type of disaster, you simply recover the snapshot and you are up and running. Try taking a cold snapshot of your running VM's and restore those. You will probably get a success rate of anywhere between 0-100%. But you will never know until you need it and it will change every single day. You no longer need to run BackupExec inside your VM's anymore. Oh, and this whole process takes about.....5 minutes? That's 5 minutes for your whole VM infrastructure. Restore a whole 30 GB VM? 15-20 Min. Their Exchange and SQL SnapManager products are the same. Snapshot all your Exchange stores in 30 seconds. Backup done! PLUS, the big win in my opinion is once your Exchange stores are snapshoted, the application will run ESEUtil against those snapshoted stores to ensure they are in a consistant state. No more running tape jobs or even disk jobs and praying that if you ever need them that they are good. Same for SQL..... Restore and Exchange store? 1-2 min for the store, and then log playback time whatever that takes. Then it is even nice enough to mount the store. :) My point is that none of these are not just nice bonus's, but very powerful tools that show what NetApp brings to the party and goes back to my original statement which was look at the applications your storage provider can provide with the devices to make your life easier and more productive. Now my secret is out.... I demo these products all the time for customers and a lot of times its things like this that turn the deal. DAS is cheap, and like I said, open up any computer magazine and anyone can sell you disk. But what can this disk do for you?? What can it do for your org? Storage isn't just about how much disk you can buy anymore. Storage is about tools. Tools to improve your life, tools to improve data management, and tools to improve recovery and the safety of your data. There may be a reason NetApp won MS Storage Partner of the year. :) From: Benjamin Zachary - Lists [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 7:31 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: NAS/SAN I was at the vmware forum the other day and netapp did a decent demo on their new offerings with deduping backups, sql and exchange for storage recovery. Also their app has a plugin for vcenter so you could manage the SAN from the vi console which I thought was a nice little bonus. Up to this point we have been building SANS via basic servers using either Datacore or Starwind software controllers. For other areas we also use NFS for less required storage like file sharing etc. My client just purchased 2 PS 6000's and I have another client who has an HP-SAN and running 20 VM's on it ran it to a crawl so they are moving into LeftHand after demoing it out. The hp san was managed and I never laid eyes on it other than running vmware benchmarks on it and it didn't fare too well, it was their entry level product. Starwind reports 3250 IOPS which is okay, but its memory usage masks a lot of that if you get a server with a lot of ram then the disk i/o is pretty good. Datacore does similar at a higher level (and price) but still less than a hardware based SAN of similar size. Im just learning about benchmarking SAN's myself (any tips appreciated). I run DRBD/IET in my datacenter because I can babysit it. I also have a Starwind server that does snapshot backups of all 4 of my esx servers and it does it pretty well. ________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ This e-mail (including all attachments) is confidential and may be privileged. It is for the exclusive use of the addressee only. If you are not the addressee, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please erase all copies of the message and its attachments and notify us immediately at [email protected] . Thank You. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
