Rick Gouin

Category: Storage

Storage Center 7.3 (Compellent)

· Rick Gouin

Storage Center (Compellent) Operating System version 7.3 became generally available last month.  Its been rolling through the various stages of release all summer, and I now have some customers on it.  There are so many improvements in this release that I had to take a moment to talk about it.  This release probably should have been a 7.5, its one of the biggest updates we’ve seen in a while. So whats new?  Lets look at a few of the biggest updates: The Web GUI is back!  And its not Java anymore!  A while ago, Dell did away with the old […]

Dell EMC Takes Aim at Low End Storage

· Rick Gouin

I’ve been involved in solutions for a few customers recently where they opted to not buy part of the solution, instead choosing to go with a less expensive storage option for data that they perceived to not merit the cost of higher end storage solutions.  QNAP, Synology, and similar providers have been quietly meeting this low end storage need for some time now, while larger providers like Dell EMC only had some aged offerings in their portfolio.  The PowerEdge ME4 is designed to meet this need by bringing some pretty high end features down market at a low price point. […]

The three snazziest announcements from Dell Technologies World

· Rick Gouin

Dell Technologies World is in full swing in Las Vegas this week.  There are so many new products and features being announced that it can be hard to keep track of them all.  I’ve sifted through all this stuff and come up with a few of the biggest things to come out at this years show.   PowerMax 2000 and PowerMax 8000 This refresh to the VMAX product line represents the next generation of the enterprise class storage array, complete with all new names for things to keep you on your toes.  We are calling the running code “PowerMax OS” […]

Nutanix .NEXT 2017 Announcements: Rollup

· Rick Gouin

Coming out of .NEXT 2017, we saw 3 major strategic announcements from Nutanix, as well as a number of smaller updates.  Some of these had been previously announced, and some were all new.  In this article, I’d like to give a quick overview on some of those smaller announcements or changes that didn’t get the press they may have deserved. First, lets review the big 3: Calm Xi Xtract These 3 updates are the ones you’ll find all over the trade papers if you search on Nutanix.  They are stealing the spotlight, but there are some other noteworthy things that […]

Dell Releases New SC5020

· Rick Gouin

I previously blogged about the release of the SC7020, which is part of the “odd number refresh” that has now added the SC5020.  By this, I mean that it appears the even numbered SC platforms (SCv2000, SC4020, SC8000) will be refreshed via odd numbered platforms, of which we now have details on 3 of them: SC5020, SC7020, and SC9000. At Dell EMC World 2017 in Las Vegas this week, Dell announced the availability of the SC5020.  Its available for quoting any day now, and will start shipping in June 2017. What are the promises? Up to 45 percent more IOPS, […]

Nutanix CE 5.0 Released

· Rick Gouin

Nutanix 5.0 Asterisk was released in the commercial version about 2 weeks ago.  Then, about a week ago, it became available in the CE version.  I have already upgraded my home lab to run CE 5.0, and wanted to take a few minutes to talk about some of the key updates in this new release.  There have been a LOT of changes, but I’m just going to focus on the things that I think are big news.  Most of this stuff applies to both the commercial and the CE release. For those of you that are wondering, I have this […]

How to Install Crashplan on Your Headless NAS

· Rick Gouin

One of the most popular articles of all time on this blog has been an article on how to get CrashPlan running on a headless server.  Crashplan changed some things in how this needs to be done, so my old article was no longer correct.  I went through the process and updated this blog, so as of today, this process is working correctly. Many of you run a NAS of some sort at home.  Crashplan is a great choice to backup these devices, but its not terribly intuitive to do so, and it’s technically not supported to use Crashplan in […]

Dell Releases New SC7020

· Rick Gouin

** UPDATE ** This platform is no longer unified.  Dell has removed the ability for the SC7020 to provide NAS services.  The system has also had its scalability limited from a drive count perspective.  Now at 500 drives.  I will keep my comments on these changes to myself.   *** A couple weeks back, Dell made a new storage platform available with very little fanfare.  This new array, the SC7020, is positioned as a refresh for the SC8000 series.  You may recall this post, where we talk about how the SC9000 is not meant to replace the SC8000.  This is […]

Nutanix .NEXT 2016 Announcements

· Rick Gouin

I’m on the plane on my way home from the Nutanix .NEXT conference in Las Vegas.  This years conference certainly lived up to the high standard set last year in Miami, and should be top of your list for future years.  Last year the big news was that Nutanix was going to make its own hypervisor, it was a huge announcement.  There were other things as well, but AHV took the cake.  This year, there were so many announcements, that I’m having a hard time remembering them all!  Maybe none of them were quite as big as AHV, but they […]

Nutanix Acropolis File Services – .NEXT 2016

· Rick Gouin

Last year at .NEXT 2015 in Miami, Nutanix announced scale out NAS services which was for Acropolis only.  In version 4.7, which was announced at .NEXT 2016 in Las Vegas, this feature will be available on AHV and ESXi.  Its pretty cool.  Check out the official feature page here. Here is the basic idea.  You can deploy scale out file services straight from Prism (the Nutanix UI) without creating any front end VMs or rolling out any images.  What happens is you create a file server via the Prism interface (see below).  You can create multiple separate file server environments. […]