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 Liem Nguyen, Director of Corporate Communications — May 11, 2010
Our partners at Citrix and Microsoft are making it easier for Compellent Fluid Data storage users and channel partners to plan cloud computing projects. A few weeks ago, Compellent announced our work with Microsoft on the dynamic infrastructure toolkit for cloud computing. This week the Compellent team will be demonstrating more of our next-gen cloud technology support for both Citrix and Microsoft virtualization platforms at Citrix Synergy in San Francisco.
In Compellent booth no. 300 in the Moscone Center tomorrow May 12 through May 14, we’re going to showcase support for the next evolution of the Citrix Ready program: StorageLink version 2.2. The upcoming StorageLink 2.2 code from Citrix will include the Compellent Storage Adapter, which integrates provisioning, management and recovery of Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines through the StorageLink interface.
The wow factor will be our demo for Site Recovery integration. It’s future technology from both Compellent and Citrix, which will automate setup and execution of disaster recovery of Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V workloads. I can’t go into more detail right now but we’re working on enabling customers to integrate Compellent continuous snapshots and thin replication with Site Recovery.
Stay tuned for more official words from Citrix and Compellent. In the meantime, don’t miss our demonstrations of Compellent, Citrix and Microsoft cloud tech at Synergy.
If you can't make it to Synergy, here's a video demo that walks through some of the technical features of the StorageLink 2.2 GUI with Compellent integration. We'll have the second demo with Site Recovery next week.
Let us know if you're going to Synergy. If you're already using StorageLink or plan to use it with Site Recovery we'd love to hear from you.
by Compellent Technologies, — May 03, 2010
IT departments in the healthcare industry, from OEMs to frontline care providers, are facing profound pressure on their data center infrastructures. Mark Manning from McKesson tells his story, describing McKesson’s infrastructure before and after Compellent and why storage really does matter to the world of business.
9:02 am – Mark Manning, Chief Ditchdigger, for McKesson’s EnterpriseRx division is presenting on his infrastructure before and after his Compellent implementation.
9:04 am – EnterpriseRx is the McKesson flagship application for pharmacies. Most of McKesson’s customers are hospitals, outpatients, chain and individual pharmacies.
9:06 am – McKesson has invested heavily in technology to provide better customer service and improve staffing productivity.
9:07 am – There is an unbelievable amount of data out there – when the record comes in, when it goes out, who handled it, etc. There are a lot of improvements that can be made to enhance the customer experience, including things like email and accounting, laboratory data and compliance management.
9:08 am – All records need to be retained, nothing can be deleted. In addition, there’s a big shortage of pharmacists, so while data grows, it’s becoming harder for pharmacists to manage it all.
9:09 am – In 2009, less than 25 percent of US physicians utilized HER systems.
9:11 am – From the time you’re born to the time you die, you generate a lot of records. Every visit to the dentist office, the doctor office, etc., generates health and medical records.
9:15 am – Since 2005, EnterpriseRx has grown to 150 customers in 800 locations across 13 time zones. In 2008, EnterpriseRx had two EMC SANs and one StorageTek SAN. Storage management was at an all-time high, application performance was impacted, and EnterpriseRx was hit with availability issues.
9:18 am – In 2008, we had about 23 customers in about 300 stores. Our SANs were completely maxed out, and we were just throwing more and more storage at the system with very little forethought. Cracks started to develop.
9:20 am – The feeling was best described by a coworker of Mark’s: Imaging you’re in a cactus field, naked, and a tornado comes along…
9:21 am – We decided that we needed a solution that not only kept us afloat, but helps us and keeps us ahead of the competition.
9:22 am – McKesson’s technical needs included a solution that provided scalability, flexibility, restoration of individual databases, multi-site disaster recovery and cost savings from power and cooling.
9:23 am – McKesson’s human needs included manual ILM, quick and easy cloning, reductions in operating costs, idle redundancy and risks for more “hands off” time and more sleep! At the time, the division had 12 people in three locations.
9:26 am – McKesson’s customer service needs included excellence in customer service, quick and complete resolution of IT issues, high availability of customer data, the ability to react to customer requests, and technology partner who know, understand and deliver on McKesson’s demands.
9:28 am – As part of the IT upgrade process, McKesson:
- Conducted market research
- Consulted other business units and industry professionals
- Considered EMC, HP, NetApp, 3PAR and Compellent
- Performed a Proof-of-Concept on Compellent:
- Performance capabilities
- Survivability after failures
- Storage provision process
- Copilot customer service
- Backup, recovery and cloning
- Adding storage to array without downtime
- Automated ILM (Fast Track and Data Progression)
9:33 am – The installation process involved in using a customer to go live with the system. There was one minor issue that was taken care of in one day. McKesson and Compellent both said, “I do!” and surprisingly, even McKesson’s most risk-averse customers were rushing to the front of the line to make the switch. Mark migrated 37 TB of data within a week, and they immediately saw incredible results.
9:35 am – McKesson is in the honeymoon phase. The Compellent SAN collects usage data, can recover from disaster quickly, Enterprise Manager provides a report on how the system is working, and now Mark can spend time fishing with his son.
9:39 am – After an important restoration, other employees thought it was a miracle. Mark told them, “No…it’s Compellent.” Now, the IT team refers to BC and AC: Before Compellent and After Compellent.
9:41 am – McKesson continues to grow with Compellent. Customers continue to enjoy fast response times and on-time deliverables, McKesson is enjoying shorter development lead times, faster turn-around of solutions and fixes, and Copilot responses are over the top. In addition, Compellent continually asks for input and delivers on requests.
9:45 am – One time, Copilot found out that Mark’s team urgently needed some new parts that were not available locally. Copilot had a jet in the air with two of everything the team needed, including an engineer that day.
9:50 am – Mark says that Compellent can’t fly under the radar anymore.
9:51 am – Mark’s team manages 903 volumes across 532 of raw storage at three locations with three people.
9:54 am – Most people may not know this, but Mark said that EMC stands for “Easily Migrates to Compellent”!
9:56 am – Mark’s business unit president is proud of his Compellent installation. He’s happy to go against the grain.