by Nicholas Sweere, Product Marketing Manager, Dell Compellent — August 11, 2011

The release of Replay Manager 6 provides many new features for taking Replays, or snapshots, of server environments. While it can be complicated and difficult to run and manage business critical applications -- such as SQL databases, Exchange and Hyper-V – taking and managing Replays shouldn’t be. The latest release of Replay Manager enhances and simplifies management capabilities so administrators can spend less time on Replays and more time on their server environment.

Below is an overview of three of the new features now available with Replay Manager 6:

1. Multiple Instance Management
   Now multiple instances of Replay Manager can be managed through a single centralized management interface. This feature eliminates the need to switch between Replay Manager interfaces, simplifying the management of Replays of server applications such as SQL, Exchange and Hyper-V. This new management interface can be installed on a server, VM or a desktop to ease traditional management challenges.
   
2. Windows PowerShell Scripting
   Many users prefer using Cmdlet scripting over a traditional GUI. Replay Manager now supports 43 PowerShell Cmdlets, providing all management capabilities found within Replay Manager’s GUI. PowerShell scripting greatly reduces the time required and difficulty of completing complex and/or repetitive tasks when taking snapshots of server applications.
   
3. SQL Restore without Recovery
   When recovering a SQL database using Dell Compellent space-efficient snapshots, users are now able to restore the database by recovering it. This new feature allows database administrators to apply backup logs to enable an even more granular recovery of their database – recovery between snapshots.

For a demo of Replay Manager 6.0 click below.

 

by Nicholas Sweere, Product Marketing Manager, Dell Compellent — July 12, 2011

The release of vSphere 5 and Site Recovery Manager 5 is one of the largest product launches in VMware’s history. This launch adds additional features, customization ability, and provides an even more robust virtualization offering. In support of the launch, Dell Compellent is updating several of its ever expanding list of integrations and will be certifying them with VMware for the launch of vSphere 5:

Storage Center for vSphere 5
With the release of vSphere 5 and Storage Center 5.5.3, Dell Compellent will be fully supportive of all new storage volume/datastore mappings available through vSphere 5. Principal among these new features will be the ability to support and map up to 64TB VMFS datastores. This will allow virtualization administrators to support more, larger virtual machines (VMs) per volume/datastore.

Site Recovery Manager 5 (SRM 5)
Dell Compellent’s Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for SRM 5 will be available for download when vSphere 5 launches later this summer. The SRA will support new features within SRM 5, like automated failback from a disaster event and the new work flows for planned migration and downtime. This new version of SRM will provide an even more complete solution for planning, automating, and recovering from disasters or planned downtime. Additionally, Dell Compellent will continue its OEM relationship with VMware for SRM 5, allowing all DR recovery hardware and software support to be centralized under a single roof using the Dell Compellent Copilot support organization.

vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) - Block Zeroing
Block Zeroing, part of the server offloading APIs known as VAAI, is supported now through our Storage Center releases. Block Zeroing allows servers and Dell Compellent to do what they do best, manage VMs and storage respectively. Block Zeroing reduces CPU load and IO on the server and reduces time to create and manage storage assets for the user.

vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) – Unmap
The release of vSphere 5 unveils another VAAI offloading API, known as Unmap. Before Unmap, deleting data from VMFS datastores, like a file or VM, did not necessarily allow for that once consumed data to return to the available storage pool. Using Unmap, the server will now notify the Compellent array to free the once consumed storage assets back to the available storage pool. This provides even more storage efficiencies using a Dell Compellent array.

Upcoming Support
We will also be updating the immensely popular and easy to use Dell Compellent vSphere Plug-In, the Enterprise Manager / vSphere Integration, and support for all the vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) primitives. We are working hard to ensure all our offerings continue to offer customers the quality experience with VMware they expect from Dell Compellent Fluid Data. Check back for updates and announcements on additional VMware integrations. In the meantime, watch Darren Thomas, Vice President and General Manager of Dell Storage, discuss Dell’s alliance with VMware — and how it enables the cloud.