by Bob Oas, Marketing Communications Specialist — June 15, 2010
Over the past several weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to work with our Technical Solutions team to develop a series of papers. The idea was to create Technical Solution Briefs that not only discuss the integration between Compellent storage and leading third-party technologies, but provide examples of the solutions at work in real-world environments. Three of the five docs have been released, with two more scheduled to hit the street by June 25. You can download them from Compellent’s Resource Library.
Topics of the papers include:
- How to Test Upgrades in a VMware Environment without Downtime or Disruption Using Compellent Replays
- How to Quickly Deploy Storage for a Complex Exchange Environment Using the Storage Center Command Set for Windows PowerShell
- How to Safeguard SQL Server Data in a Clustered, Multi-Site Configuration Using Compellent Thin Replication
- How to Rapidly Provision Storage in a Hyper-V Environment Using the Storage Center Command Set for Windows PowerShell
- How to Rapidly Deploy Storage in an Oracle Environment Using the Compellent Command Line Utility (CompCU)
For those of you who attended C-Drive, these topics may remind you of the Solution Sessions introduced this year. Also delivered by the Technical Solutions team, those breakouts demonstrated how integrated solutions cut time, cost and risk. The new Technical Solution Briefs are an extension of that effort, and we hope you find them useful when considering ways to manage your data smarter. Please recommend other topics to cover. Just tweet me at @bob_oas or email me directly at bob.oas@compellent.com. I’ll bring your ideas to the team in July as we map out phase two.
by Compellent Technologies, — May 03, 2010
As one of the first storage vendors to support PowerShell, Compellent has the first mover advantage. This session outlines how users can use this to their advantage and accelerate their customers’ Windows data centers with the Storage Center Command Set for Windows PowerShell.
10:20 am – Shane Burton’s main goal is to integrate Compellent’s technologies with Microsoft. Justin Braun kicks things off.
10:21 am – PowerShell is a fully integrated command line shell and scripting technology from Microsoft for enterprise automation. Not only does scripting help create and manage volumes, it can assist with system administration. Windows platform support includes Windows XP and Vista, as well as Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2.
10:23 am – PowerShell reduces user error and makes processes run much smoother. Majority of the Microsoft applications being introduced will include PowerShell.
10:25 am – With the Compellent Command Set, users can provision volumes, manage replays, manage volumes, set attributes for disks, volumes, servers and users, and automate administrative tasks.
10:27 am – Shane walks users through the process of creating a connection to the Storage Center SAN, create a new volume, and create a new volume access path.
10:29 am – The Compellent Command Set is a free download from Compellent.
10:32 am – Shane starts talking about Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center, which is designed for cloud environments. The toolkit provides a way for a data center admin to hand off some of the provisioning tasks to individual business units for management.
10:34 am – From the data center admin standpoint, the toolkit set up the variable to collect usage data and allow for chargeback.
10:36 am – From the task scripts, which are PowerShell scripts on the back-end, replays are assigned to a host, rescanned, the template is assigned and off you go. The result is an allocation of space for different business units.
10:38 am – The different business units can then set up their virtual machines.
10:42 am – With Compellent PowerShell, the admin can rename a volume to the name of the VM, which makes it easier to manage volumes.
10:50 am – There’s also a cleanup option where PowerShell will delete unnecessary restores and recovery points from the SAN.
by Justin Braun, Microsoft Product Specialist — April 21, 2010
Recently, Microsoft introduced a new program, the “Dynamic Data Center Alliance” or DDA. This program was developed as a way for Microsoft partners from different facets to come together to create dynamic solutions and offer added value to customers using the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit.
“Ease of Use” is critical, and Compellent was at the forefront when we introduced the Compellent Storage Center Command Set for Windows PowerShell by offering a true storage management integration point between the Compellent Storage Center and the Windows platform.
Automation and integration between the storage system and the platform has always been a challenge. With the announcement of the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises, Compellent will extend that integration into the Dynamic Data Center by helping our customers streamline the provisioning process between storage and servers leading to effective and efficient management of their virtualized environments all from a single web interface. Effective and efficient management means not wasting space, levering replays for build images and efficient placement of data achieved through Data Progression.
We are also very excited to announce that we are co-presenting with the Microsoft Solution Accelerator Team at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas to show off this solution. If you are attending the show, be sure to stop by our booth or sit in on the session to catch a demo of our Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit integration.
For more information on the availability of the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit, check out the Dynamic Data Center Alliance Blog at http://blogs.technet.com/ddcalliance/.