Steak And Array

Tonight Alan Hunt of VR6 Systems drove down to GCC to help us get our newest EqualLogic PS100E array into production.  Alan didn't have to come 3.5 hrs to help us with this, but he really wanted to come and make sure everything went smooth with the firmware upgrade of our current PS100E and then joining the two units together.  I love it when vendors go above and beyond!

Alan arrived around 4:30 and since all our VM's live on the SAN we couldn't do any real work until 5:30pm ... when our maintenance window starts.  So we chatted a bit then decided to grab a bite to eat before digging in.  When I asked Alan where he'd like to eat he pointed across our parking lot to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.  I let him know that I've heard that RCS is quite salty price wise ... but he insisted ... and who am I to say no to a free steak!  I was pumped!  I figured I'd never get a change to eat at CRS unless someone else took me ... I would have to wait no more :-)

We arrived at 5 right as they were opening ... and from the minute we arrived we were treated like special guests.  Service staff were amazing.  Our waiter Chris was very gracious to us newbies and explained everything in great detail.  Ed and I both went for a NY Strip and a salad ... remember we're watching our diet :-)

Oh my goodness, the streak was amazingly good ... it comes to you on a super hot plate still sizzling away.  I meant to take a picture, but it was so good I couldn't focus on anything else ;-)  The three of us had a great meal and even greater conversation around storage technologies and just life in general.  It was great to get to know the person "behind" the salesman.

Once we were stuffed, did I mention how awesome this steak was?, we headed back and started powering everything down.  We had to move a few items around in the rack to make room for the new array and we soon had it racked up.  We up'd the firmware on the old array then powered on the new.  After maybe 5 minutes of configs the two arrays saw each other and began distributing data between them ... yes, it's just that easy to add another array into your storage pool.  So we doubled our storage to 4.36TB and doubled(?) our performance from 3 to 6 controllers.  w00t!

Again, a huge thanks to Alan for spending the evening with us ... this is a partnership I look forward to growing.  If you're looking at storage you really should contact Alan.  We also talked a length about Data Domain for offsite storage/deduplication ... but that'll have to wait for a future post.

Here's a few cruddy pics from the cam phone ...

Alan and Ed working on firmware update

I'm trying to get Ed to "strike a pose" and he can't stop laughing ... who knew inserting drives into an array was so hilarious ;-)

 
The twins

2 servers and 2 arrays ... this is the core of our network ... 20+ virtual servers live on this storage and run on either of the 2 physical servers.  It's amazing that just 3 years ago to do the same would have required an entire rack of servers producing gobs of heat and requiring loads of electricity.  Thank goodness for VMware Server!

Comments

[T.R.]

We are in the final budget approval process for purchasing an EqualLogic SAN array for Taylor. It is very encouraging to read about your experiences with the product and the company on your blog.

[Erik]

Jason - we're in our VM infancy and was wondering what you use - VMWare Server or ESX... I'm thinking of getting ESX for a new server that will funtion as our main VM box...