by Andy Stumph, — December 16, 2008

Hi, my name is Andy Stumph and I’m a Senior Systems Engineer with MaximumASP. MaximumASP is a Microsoft Gold Certified hosting and IT services provider based in Louisville, Ky. We recently released a new product offering called MaxV. MaxV is virtual dedicated server offering that is hosted on Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Microsoft Failover Clustering and a Compellent Storage Center SAN and managed using the System Center Suite of products. We believe we are the first hosting company to market with a highly available / clustered virtual server offering based on Hyper-V!

The MaxV provisioning process is built entirely using PowerShell. When a customer signs up for a virtual dedicated server on the MaximumASP website, a set of PowerShell scripts kick off that runs the entire process, creating LUNs on the SAN, mapping those LUNs to a 14 node cluster, creating the virtual machine, running sysprep on  the VM, making the VM highly available and even setting up a backup routine for the VM. This whole process can be done in a matter of 15 – 20 minutes. In the past, provisioning a traditional dedicated server could take 2 – 3 business days.

One of the main reasons we are able to offer a clustered Hyper-V configuration with an automated process is our use of the Compellent Storage Center SAN. Compellent recently released a set of PowerShell cmdlets called the Storage Center Command Set for managing the SAN. These cmdlets are a key ingredient in this whole mixture. Without the Storage Center Command Set, MaxV would not exist in its current form today. If you had to use the GUI, imagine how long it might take you to create a LUN and then map that LUN to 14 servers across multiple interfaces…then log on to each server and perform a disk rescan. This can be done in seconds using PowerShell and the Compellent Command Set.

Below is a sample script that shows the power of the Command Set. It will connect to a Compellent Storage Center, create a new LUN from an existing replay, map the LUN across all cluster nodes and perform a disk rescan on all cluster nodes.

This is just a sample of the things you can do with the Command Set. There are a total of 60 cmdlets providing a very powerful set of tools for automating disk, LUN and SAN management.

function Get-ClusterNodes
{

$Cluster = New-Object -comObject MSCluster.Cluster
$Cluster.Open("") 

$Nodes = $Cluster.Nodes 

foreach ($Node in $Nodes)     
     {     
     [array]$NodeList = $NodeList + $Node.Name
     } 

return $NodeList
$NodeList = $null
}

# Load the Compellent Command Set
if (!(Get-PSSnapin Compellent.StorageCenter.Scripting -ea SilentlyContinue))
{
Add-PSSnapin -Name Compellent.StorageCenter.Scripting
} 

# Compellent SC Connection Variables
$User = "User"
$Pass = ConvertTo-SecureString "P@adf3adfe1" -AsPlainText -Force
$SCHost = "192.168.10.1" 

# Initiate Connection to Compellent Storage Center
$connection = Get-SCConnection -HostName $schost -User $User -Password $Pass -Save $SChost -Default 

# This is the description field for a given replay
$ReplayName = "GoldenImage" 

# Get the named Replay
$Replay = Get-SCReplay -Description $ReplayName 

# Create a new volume on the Compellent from the replay
$NewSCVolume = New-SCVolume -SourceReplay $Replay -Name "HyperVGuest1" 

# Get all nodes in the cluster
$Nodes = Get-ClusterNodes 

# Map the new volume to all the nodes in the cluster and perform rescan
foreach ($Node in $Nodes)     
    {
      $SCServer = Get-SCServer -Name $Node

      New-SCVolumeMap -VolumeIndex $NewSCVolume.Index -ServerIndex $SCServer.Index            
      Rescan-DiskDevice -Server $Node -RescanDelay 5                             
    }

by Justin Braun, Microsoft Product Specialist — December 12, 2008

This week we announced the availability of the Storage Center Command Set for Windows PowerShell as a free download for Compellent customers.

PowerShell is the powerful, new scripting interface from Microsoft with support for Windows Server 2008 (including Hyper-V), Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows Vista.  We’ve integrated PowerShell automation with our Command Set scripting shell. From Command Set, IT pros can  automate administration tasks on the Windows platforms for their Compellent Storage Center.

We’ve integrated PowerShell automation with our Command Set scripting shell. From Command Set, IT pros can automate administration tasks on the Windows platforms for their Compellent Storage Center.

We’ve exposed over 60 cmdlets that you can use to manage different objects within Storage Center including the controllers, servers, volumes, and alerts in addition to features like Copy-Mirror-Migrate (CMM). With the installation of the Command Set, we also include a few samples scripts to get you started in your scripting endeavors.

What types of scenarios are the Storage Center Command Set useful for?

Exchange Volume Provisioning

With Exchange Server 2007, you can have up to 50 storage groups. In a scenario where you need to deploy 50 storage groups with one database each, you’ll probably deploy with an individual volume for each database and each storage group for the transaction logs totally 100 volumes.

Although the Storage Center web management tool is very easy to use, it can be time consuming to complete the process of creating the volume, mapping it to the server, and then assigning a drive letter or mountpoint server-side for the volume. With the Command Set, you can automate this process from start to finish and complete your provisioning process in minutes instead of hours or days.

To augment this process, you can leverage the Exchange 2007 cmdlets to create your storage groups and databases all in the same pass after the volumes are created.

Windows Failover Cluster Deployment

Taking the same principles from above, you can handle mapping the same volume on the Storage Center to multiple servers at the same time including multiple paths for scenarios that require Multipath I/O (MPIO).  You can also leverage CLUSTER.EXE (part of MSCS) to automate the creation of your cluster and the individual cluster resources including details like dependencies.

Virtual Machine Deployment

Using a combination of the Storage Center Command Set and cmdlets that are available within Hyper-V, you can automate the process of provisioning storage as well as deploying virtual machines in literally minutes!

Use Replays for Backups

Instead of backing up each individual volume, how about using the replays for each volume as the source for a backup? Included with the Storage Center Command Set is sample script called “Push2Tape”. This script will take the name of the volume on the Storage Center, retrieve a list of available replays for that volume, and then create a view of the latest replay map that to a tape or media server as either a drive letter or mountpoint. With the replays mounted on the tape or media server, that server is then the sole point for all your backups. This process will take the overhead that is typically associated with running backups on a production server, and put that on the tape or media server.

The possibilities are endless. Login to Knowledge Center today and download your copy of the Storage Center Command Set for Windows PowerShell. You can also register to join our secure online group and share best practices with other Compellent PowerShell users.

by Justin Braun, Microsoft Product Specialist — November 5, 2008

Compellent is participating in the Microsoft Failover Cluster Configuration Program (FCCP), which is a vendor partnership program that promotes validated hardware configurations for use with Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering. Instead of having to search Microsoft's Hardware Compatibility List and select individual components that have been tested, simply select a solution that we've validated through the Failover Cluster Configuration Program.

As we validate different failover cluster configurations, we'll post them on our Qualifications and Validations page.

by Bob Fine, Director of Product Marketing — October 29, 2008

We understand – SSDs are expensive – but we’re making them work for users both in performance and affordability. When planning the launch of Compellent’s SSD solution, we pulled out all the stops to figure out how users could maximize efficiency, and ultimately we determined the drive approach would be most adoptable and scalable. See what Martin Glassborow had to say about what we’re doing on his blog. Only the most frequently accessed blocks of data (rather than complete LUNs or volumes) earn “tier 0” storage – it’s for applications that can really take advantage of the performance boost from SSD technology. Questions about how we are able to help our end-users manage this, look no further than this post from our CTO Larry Aszmann.

by Stephen Anderson, Director of Alliance Marketing — October 28, 2008

This week a couple of folks from my team will be at the Citrix Summit in Orlando to talk to channel partners about their experiences designing and implementing Citrix solutions for customers. Compellent recently completed certification work to be Citrix Ready, a program that says we met requirements for the Citrix Delivery Center infrastructure for application delivery.

So what does being Citrix Ready really mean? Our SAN passed a lot of verification tests established and confirmed by Citrix to make sure Storage Center will work effectively within a Citrix-based infrastructure. For the enterprise, for instance, Citrix customers who want to use XenServers for server virtualization can be confident that Storage Center will simply just work as the backend, networked storage system.

Of course, we’ve been a Citrix partner for a very long time, and by now hopefully everyone knows that Compellent doesn’t require any third-party apps or agents to have servers talking to the SAN. That means it’s pretty easy to deploy any OS, provision storage for apps, and manage any server connected to the Compellent SAN — in Citrix environments or otherwise. Being Citrix Ready just gives customers that extra level of confidence for deploying Compellent and Citrix together.

Drop us a note if you’re going to Citrix Summit or let us know what you thought of the show afterward.