Part 1 - An Introduction
Simplicity in the realm of enterprise storage is a relative thing. I've have found that with time managing several types of storage from multiple vendors that certain parts of storage management are easier than others. I found that having an understanding of the layers of storage helps to keep things in perspective. I have also found that for my job, I wear several hats, only one of which is storage management.Today I want to talk a little about why I chose to purchase and use the Datrium DVX solution for my primary storage. I'm not sure right now how many posts this will take, but in this series I hope to explain the good and the bad that is the Datrium experience.
Backstory
Let's start with the previous iterations of the storage architectures I've managed, a little back story if you will. Does anybody remember LeftHand storage? No?!?!?! This was supper simple iSCSI storage that was marketed as hyper redundant. Each shelf was its own controller and was a RAID 5/6 with a network RAID 10 on top of that. The biggest drawbacks at the time (other than HP bought them out) were, it was limited to 1Gb ethernet, SSD weren't available and the RAID controller only had a 8GB cache.
After LeftHand came NetApp FAS. For me this was a huge change in paradigm. A single controller with fiber attached SAS shelves. So many layers and options for each layer. It was (and still is) a very extensible system. I jumped in head first in to the deep end of enterprise storage. It was fun, it was also the primary thing I managed for the better part of a year while my other projects fell further and further behind.
While managing the Virtual Environment, Guest VMs, Active Directory, IIS, systems monitoring, patch management and, operations and security projects, with storage management taking as long as it did with NetApp, the decision was made to find something a little easier to manage. The power and versatility of the NetApp platform made for an overwhelming management experience and took too much time away from the multitude of other schtuff on my plate. This led to a total review of what we need and what we want.
While trying to find easier and less time consuming storage solutions we found the Datrium DVX. This solution is fast, runs on commodity storage, super simple initial configuration and an easier ESXi host integration. After a pretty intense POC process that included it and several competitors, the DVX solution was up and running in our datacenters.
After LeftHand came NetApp FAS. For me this was a huge change in paradigm. A single controller with fiber attached SAS shelves. So many layers and options for each layer. It was (and still is) a very extensible system. I jumped in head first in to the deep end of enterprise storage. It was fun, it was also the primary thing I managed for the better part of a year while my other projects fell further and further behind.
While managing the Virtual Environment, Guest VMs, Active Directory, IIS, systems monitoring, patch management and, operations and security projects, with storage management taking as long as it did with NetApp, the decision was made to find something a little easier to manage. The power and versatility of the NetApp platform made for an overwhelming management experience and took too much time away from the multitude of other schtuff on my plate. This led to a total review of what we need and what we want.
While trying to find easier and less time consuming storage solutions we found the Datrium DVX. This solution is fast, runs on commodity storage, super simple initial configuration and an easier ESXi host integration. After a pretty intense POC process that included it and several competitors, the DVX solution was up and running in our datacenters.
Notes moving forward
This is intended to be a story about my experience not a technological presentation.
Please understand that there is a lot more going on here. I don't want to bore you with all the details, although I might, of all the steps, decisions, migrations, and installations, I already have a lot to tell here. So we are going to soldier on with the knowledge that we needed something new.
The rest of this series will describe the features, interpretations and overall experience using Datriums DVX system. Also note that this all took place over 2 years ago.
Please understand that there is a lot more going on here. I don't want to bore you with all the details, although I might, of all the steps, decisions, migrations, and installations, I already have a lot to tell here. So we are going to soldier on with the knowledge that we needed something new.
The rest of this series will describe the features, interpretations and overall experience using Datriums DVX system. Also note that this all took place over 2 years ago.
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