bear bytes fall 2014

FALL 2014

The Need for Speed

Making The Move

To 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi

Lock it downThe Security

Of Network Virtualization

PaaSThe Cloud Platforms That Have

You Covered

So� ServeAre You

Ready for So� ware-

De� ned Storage ?

Exclusive!Bear Data Solutions

is now Datalink

THE BIG IDEATruMed’s Bob Manning On The Team That Made His Ideas A Reality

VISIT US AT DATALINK.COM

FALL 2014

The Need for Speed

Making The Move

To 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi

Lock it downThe Security

Of Network Virtualization

PaaSThe Cloud Platforms That Have

You Covered

So� ServeAre You

Ready for So� ware-

De� ned Storage ?

Exclusive!Exclusive!Bear Data Solutions Bear Data Solutions

is now Datalinkis now Datalink

THE BIG IDEATruMed’s Bob Manning Bob Manning On The Team That Made His Ideas A Reality

VISIT US AT DATALINK.COMVISIT US AT DATALINK.COM

BEAR BYTES

BB 201410 01 Cover.indd 1 8/31/15 6:19 PM

Contact Datalink and Dell for your complimentary assessment

1-800-448-6314

In an e� ort to help guide our customers through mission critical IT decisions, Dell’s team of solution experts have

developed an innovative new tool—the DPACK.

The Dell Performance Analysis Collection Kit

Make an informed decision based on your environment.

Let Datalink and Dell provide a simple analysis that gathers critical data from your environment in less than 24 hours.

Stats gathered include core requirements—on a per server basis and aggregately—such as:Disk IO (Read/Write %) • Throughput • Capacity • Memory utilization • Latency

IntroducingDPACK

Dell 201410 Layoutbh.indd 2 12/8/14 6:14 PM

Bear Bytes_Advert.indd 1 16/10/2014 17:53:10AppSense 201410 FP Layout.indd 1 12/8/14 6:11 PM

4 BEARDATASOLUTIONS.COM

in this issue

VP OF MARKETINGJosh K

CREATIVEH2andCo

lovenrockets designLauren LadoceourBharath Natarajan

Questions? Please contact:

Datalink10050 Crosstown Circle, Suite 500

Eden Prairie, MN 55344

Phone: (800) 448-6314

6 SIMPLETEXT

8 15 MINUTES

14 THE CLOUD

16 NETWORKING

18 VIRTUALIZATION

20 STORAGE

24 PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTS

31 BACKUP

Y ou may be aware that Datalink recently acquired Bear Data, and I would like to help you

understand how the combined organization can be of greater service to you. Over the past 10 years, you have counted on Bear to provide information technology and services to meet your business requirements and IT challenges.

Datalink and Bear Data share similar go-to-market strategies, o� erings portfolios, and exceptional sales and technical teams. Most things remain business as usual for you, and the majority of people you have worked with at Bear Data have joined Datalink.

As a customer, the combination of two strong companies provides you with a number of benefits:Comprehensive portfolio of advanced services.We meet customers’ infrastructure and service needs at every stage of the data center lifecycle from strategic planning through implementation and support. Our Advanced Services assist with initiatives such as private and hybrid cloud strategy, cloud service management including service catalog development, cloud readiness assessment and overall cloud strategy, data center relocation, system, application and data migration, and business continuity/disaster recovery planning. We focus on transforming data center infrastructure and processes to gain e� iciency, agility and business value.Robust services and technology o� eringsWhether incorporating emerging technologies such as

flash, deploying converged infrastructures such as virtual data centers, moving to the cloud, or building towards ITaaS delivery capabilities, Datalink enables the business through IT. Our technology portfolio includes more than 150 manufacturers, and we are one of the largest partners of many of the top manufacturers. As a result, Datalink is well positioned to be a strong advocate for you.Expanded support and managed servicesDatalink delivers real-time, solution-level managed and support services across a broad range of technologies. Our managed services address key IT operations and become an extension of internal teams. With Datalink OneCall support services, two geographically disperse centers provide direct access to a support team who regularly exceeds industry and partner benchmarks for customer satisfaction.

Please go to datalink.com to request more information or with any questions that you would like addressed. We appreciate the trust you have placed in us and look forward to addressing your future data center and IT services needs. With more than 30 o� ices throughout the United States, Datalink is well positioned to support the data center needs of your organization.

If I can be of any assistance, please contact me through our website: datalink.com

Regards,

Paul LidskyPresident and CEO at Datalink

a bit from the CEO

contents

BEAR BYTES

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NetApp 201308 FPbh.indd 7 12/8/14 6:15 PM


reclaim, reuse, reprocess...

R ecycling in IT is assumed to involve recycling hardware; melting it down and then manufacturing

new hardware. Yet recycling in IT is more diverse and involves other IT products. Hardware, software, documentation, and multimedia can all play a role in IT recycling. Hardware Recycling of hardware in its simplest form means finding new uses for old computers. Reusing old servers as test systems for developers or for user chat rooms is also a value added proposition. Recycling of hardware also includes donating components to non-profits and selling them for scrap. The rare earth metals contained in high end electronics has made recycling of tantalum capacitors, rare earth metal in computer chips, and precious metal connectors very lucrative. Software Software recycling includes code libraries to permit reuse of proven software modules and license management. License management is the monitoring of user software installations. Since software licenses are frequently paid for based on the number used or for a set quantity, keeping software licenses to a minimum can help companies save money. Ensuring that employees remove software they no longer use and for software de-installation with the software recorded as no longer used (freeing up the license) can save money. Documentation Code reuse is based on the idea of reusing existing works instead of reinventing the wheel. The rise of digital document

libraries allows for reuse of software and hardware documentation as well. The

simplest implementation of this is standard templates to be used for software

manuals or user documentation. Saving all documents used by IT, such as frequently asked questions lists, hardware and software test plans, and user manuals along with reference information for the software version the documents were written to support, allows

for the recall of old manuals when needed and reuse of only those

sections that are made obsolete. This saves time for users or software testers

who need documentation for old versions, and labor for technical writers who need to

update existing documents.

Multi-media Old USB drives, if properly scanned for malicious software, can be reused by other employees. Old diskettes are not easily recycled. However, magnetic tape can still be used if cleared of its old information and then reused. Cloud computing permits the storage of data in a cloud, if the required security level is low but the need to access it is high. In such a scenario, cloud computing space is easily recycled by deleting unneeded and unwanted data often. Old servers and computers can even be recycled into cloud computing space, allowing slow systems to take over cloud computing data analysis tasks or data storage.

When looking to recycle IT, be sure to consider all potential avenues beyond simply turning in old components. Time, money and effort can be saved for the immediate organization and those further down the line when recycling efforts are put into practice.

The Many Forms of Recycling in IT

simpletext

BE SURE TO CONSIDER ALL POTENTIAL AVENUES BEYOND SIMPLY TURNING IN OLD COMPONENTS. “ ”

BB 201410 03 SimpleText.indd 6 12/8/14 5:52 PM

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Adaptive-Flash-Ad-US-2.indd 1 10/10/2014 7:26:04 AMNimble Storage 201410 FP Layout.indd 1 12/8/14 6:16 PM


photography by Tim Mantoani

and Andrea Gómez Romero

The Big Idea

When the Internet of Things requires a strong so� ware engineering team to deliver.

In the world of healthcare technology TruMed, is an exciting up-and-comer, building refrigerated vaccine kiosks that promise to save pharmacies and doctor’s offices thousands of dollars and keep patients healthy. With orders coming in from all over the country and a smooth cloud-based system at the center of it all, cofounder and chief product officer Bob Manning believes it couldn’t have been possible without BEAR Data’s software engineering team. Here he explains how the team wrote the code behind the kiosks and helped make Manning’s ideas a reality.

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The Big Idea

TruMed’s cofounder and chief product officer Bob Manning


BEARDATASOLUTIONS.COM10

Tell us what TruMed’s AccuVax refrigerators do exactly.Bob Manning: Right now, vaccines are often stored in

college dorm-style fridges that let in light and heat each time the door opens and can lead to vaccine spoilage. Our AccuVax system provides a stable temperature, eliminates the door and automates the process of tracking inventory, saving o� ice sta� up to 20 hours of extra work each week. The system always knows exactly how many doses are on hand at any given time and also orders more when the stock runs low. BB: Can something like AccuVax save money?BM: One of the problems we solve involves the number of vaccines that are allowed to expire unused. In a small practice with two doctors, they might spend $20,000 a month on vaccines and have to toss 10 percent of that.

But because we track lot numbers and expiration dates, we can notify doctors and nurses not just when a product expires but when expiration is coming up so they use or exchange that vaccine. But more than anything AccuVax helps better protect patients so they get the protection they need.BB: Why did you need to partner with BEAR Data on something like this?BM: I’ve been involved in product development for 20 years. My partner is also a seasoned executive. But we’re not a couple of 20-year-old guys with laptops who can code 20 hours a day. We needed someone to build our cloud-based system that monitors all the kiosks and transactions. BEAR put together a strong proposal and presentation when we were evaluating potential partners and their people on sta� had executed and delivered on these kinds of projects before. Everything was done

on time and as promised. And now that we’re in production and ready to start filling orders, BEAR will continue to iterate on the software they built and provide level three and four support on the application going forward. BB: The BEAR Data software engineering team’s Tom Bailey was the project manager for this partnership. Dennis Vickers, BEAR’s vice president of Enterprise Services, also worked on TruMed. How did you handle the pressure knowing that what you were creating would a� ect others’ health?Tom Bailey: We do about six projects a year and have built at least 15 di� erent systems. Dennis Vickers: We’re used to working in high-value situations. One of our clients was a defense contractor, and we wrote software to do maintenance on weapon systems. It was pretty critical. So the pressure wasn’t new to us.

Cold Case TruMed’s AccuVax (above) brings smart refrigerated storage to vaccines. (opposite) Bob Manning at TruMed headquarters in San Diego.

”“ ”“ We needed someone to build our cloud-based system that monitors all the kiosks and transactions.


11BEARDATASOLUTIONS.COM

Top Dog Welcome to Bear Data Solutions

”


BEARDATASOLUTIONS.COM12

It’s a great example of this new world of the Internet of Things—software that

interacts with devices that you don’t normally think of as being managed by software.

Journey to New Worlds Dennis Vickers (below) leads his BEAR team (opposite) to discover solutions from their office in Camarillo, CA.

”“


BB: Who’s on the team?DV: There are eight developers, all somewhat self-directed and with a wide range of skills—database, client development, user interface—in terms of technology and app development. TB: We all work together face- to- face, day in and day out in the Ventura o� ice and attract a lot of great talent. So we can o� er everything you’d get from a team in a tech city like San Francisco but at not at as great of a cost. BB: How long did it take you to write TruMed’s code?TB: It took about 5 months. We built the app code that lets all of those units phone home and tell the central site what’s going on with them. Then we interfaced with a third party inventory management company. Also, the kiosk is temperature controlled within a couple of tenths of a degree. If a unit reports to us that the temperature is too high or too low in one area, we flag that as an issue and send a text out and email to the appropriate people, like the o� ice manager at a doctor’s o� ice. DV: It’s a great example of this new world of

the Internet of Things—software that interacts with devices that you don’t normally think of as being managed by software. TB: The other set of application code we wrote is the user interface on a website so doctors can manage their kiosks. The biggest bump was that there was no precedent for this. DV: But we have a lot of continuity in our team, so corporate knowledge stays within the team, which is of huge value. TB: Right, and any one of our developers can work on the app later because they’ve all had a hand in the creation of it. BB: What else makes your technical services team so unique and valuable to clients like TruMed?DV: The truth is there aren’t many companies that o� er what we o� er. Not many have software development teams for hire, especially not ones that have the length of experience and the breadth of technological capabilities.TB: Plus, we have the ability to understand the customer’s need from a business perspective and translate that into

requirements our developers can work on. We understand the business need and create software around that. BB: What were TruMed’s needs?TB: When we were brought into this process, Bob had a great idea but hadn’t started working on the details of how to build it out into a system. The kiosk was still on the drawing board and no software had been written. DV: We helped them form their ideas that we could build into an application system. Software always starts with ideas. We’re good at helping them form their ideas, move from the raw stage all the way through getting it built and delivered. In that way, we provide a lot of value before we even start writing code.




C loud computing has dramatically altered the landscape of how business applications are developed

and delivered to their end users. Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a type of cloud service model for creating and running applications without the overhead of maintaining the hardware and software infrastructure. In this model, the consumer creates an application or service using tools and libraries from the provider. Companies commonly use PaaS to create social, mobile, employee facing internal applications, and even back end applications like trading systems, messaging systems, payment processing, and more.

the cloud platform that has you covered

cloud computing

Applications of Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions

THERE IS NO NEED TO BUY ALL THE EXPENSIVE SOFTWARE LICENSES NEEDED TO BUILD, RUN AND DEPLOY APPLICATIONS.“ ”

PaaS delivery modelsPublic PaaS solutions are platforms that run on the public cloud and are popular because developers don’t have to manage the infrastructure in-house. Common examples of Public Paas are Heroku from Salesforce and AWS Elastic Beanstalk from Amazon.

Enterprise hybrid or Private PaaS is delivered by IT within the company to business developers, partners and customers. Enterprise PaaS could be built on top of public IaaS, on-premise physical servers, and on-premise VMs. VMware spino� Pivotal and Red Hat OpenShift are popular providers of Private PaaS.

PaaS Advantages The primary advantage of PaaS is that it reduces the amount of coding and time needed to deliver an application. Applications built using PaaS come with inherent advantages of cloud computing including high-availability, multi-tenancy, and scalability,

PaaS reduces TCO in most cases as there is no need to buy all the expensive software licenses needed to build, run and deploy applications. PaaS follows the cloud delivery model – pay per user or pay as you go pricing model.

PaaS is a great fit for agile development environments. Agile software development methodology is based on iterative and incremental development with built-in feedback loops from users. Developers might not always know up front what software or platform licenses they might need for their applications. Using PaaS reduces this risk because if the software is no longer needed they don’t have to pay for it anymore.

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Companies are making the costly mistake of over-provisioning in the cloudA recent survey of IT senior leaders indicates that a majority of companies are over-provisioning cloud capacity. Servers are typically utilizing only half their capacity on average. These results indicate that companies are bringing their old data center provisioning habits into the cloud world. Majority of IT leaders responded saying that the over-provisioning is required to protect performance and ensure they can handle peak demand. There are plenty of automation tools for cloud scaling, but the research clearly shows that companies are not using them. Instead they are going with the legacy practice of scaling manually.

Why cloud telephony makes sense?Companies that switch over to latest communication system always try to look for solutions that will not only meet their present but also their future needs. This

often leads to over-specification

where the companies want to play

safe by buying a technology that covers them for the coming years. Cloud telephony is a

great solution for this problem. In addition,

communication is no more limited to making

or receiving calls, it is all about integrating voice, video,

chat, and screen sharing on a single platform. Unified communications is best accomplished by migrating to the cloud as companies can take advantage of rapid development of new services in this area.

the cloud platform that has you covered NEWS

Are you up to date on EU cloud SLA?In June of this year, The European Union (EU) Cloud Select Industry Group came out with the Cloud SLA Standardization Guidelines. The guidelines are not binding and are meant for business to business contracts. The goal is to seek a common approach to service standards in contracts between cloud customers and cloud service providers.This is an important development to watch for customers and

service providers as this could become a global standard soon. The guidelines cover topics on which cloud service providers have been reluctant in making contractual commitments like compliance with EU data protection laws, SLAs on availability and incident resolution, data back-up and recovery commitments, data security and encryption technologies among others.

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16

8 02.11ac is gaining in popularity among phone manufacturers because of its improved

multimedia experience without draining the battery of the phone. This technology provides three times the data rates over 802.11n for the same battery power consumption. 802.11ac achieves this because the phone’s Wi-Fi interface can wake up, transfer data with the access point (AP), and then go back to sleep mode quickly. In addition, each AP will see significant improvements in the number of clients supported. It will also provide a better experience for each client as it enables more bandwidth for a number of parallel video streams.

If your organization is going the BYOD route or having to deal with exponential increase in wireless traffic then it might be the right time to upgrade to 802.11ac. Once the decision is made to move to 802.11ac, then there are two ways to go about it. You could Rip-and-replace your existing network with 802.11ac or add an overlay network which means adding 802.11ac network to your existing Wireless LAN.

Most enterprise networks still use 2.4GHz band even if they have enhanced it with 802.11n. In this scenario an overlay network is the way to go. Since 802.11ac utilizes the 5GHz band exclusively there will be no impact to your existing users. New devices in your network which are 802.11ac capable can benefit immediately.

Rip-and-replace is removing all old APs and replacing them with new 802.11ac APs. The new 802.11ac APs support both 5GHz and the old 2.4GHz bands as they come

with dual radio capabilities built in. With this approach existing clients do not lose WLAN support. The Rip-and-replace method leads to a less complex and easier to manage WLAN infrastructure but is more expensive as new APs are needed everywhere and not just in areas where higher capacity is needed.

In the end, the decision to go with the overlay or the rip-and-replace method and the timelines involved will depend on factors like technology and bandwidth needs, device adoption as well as financial constraints in your organization.

networking

Planning for the move to 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi

the need for speed

BEARDATASOLUTIONS.COM

IF YOUR ORGANIZATION IS GOING THE BYOD ROUTE THEN IT MIGHT BE THE RIGHT TIME TO UPGRADE TO 802.11AC. “ ”

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Beware of the Shellshock bugShellshock is a security bug in the code of a program called Bash, which is typically installed on non-Windows operating systems such as Mac, Unix and Linux. Hackers can use this defect to send instructions to a machine and plant malicious software without having admin rights. Within hours of the initial discovery of this flaw, hackers were able to exploit it by creating botnets to unleash DDOS attacks as well as perform vulnerability scanning.Since bash is extremely common, even more so than OpenSSL, Shellshock is considered more dangerous than the Heartbleed bug that was discovered a few months back. In addition, Shellshock is particularly easy to exploit. Hence it is highly recommended that affected systems are patched to help mitigate the impact as soon as possible.

What is NFC?Near field communication or NFC is a close-range, low power

wireless communication that is based on radio-frequency

identification (RFID) technology which allows communication

between two end points. NFC enables transfer of small amounts

of data between two devices which are in close proximity. NFC

does not need a pairing code like Bluetooth and it uses very low

power and does not drain the device battery. NFC

is primarily used in smartphones that will try

to replace your cash and credit cards. It is

secure as it works only in very short ranges

and hence it is difficult to eavesdrop.

Why Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is gaining popularityNetwork Functions Virtualization (NFV) proposes separating the network functions

from proprietary hardware so they can run in the software layer. It works by

virtualizing entire classes of networking functions into smaller pieces called VNFs

that can be chained together to create communication services. A VNF is a software

package that implements network functions such as network address translation (NAT),

firewalls, intrusion detection, domain name service (DNS),

caching, etc. and runs on industry stand servers or even on

the cloud. The benefits of NFV for service providers and companies

include lower capital and operational expenditure, increased flexibility and

ability to adapt to future changes.

NEWS

highly recommended that affected systems

of data between two devices which are in close proximity. NFC

does not need a pairing code like Bluetooth and it uses very low does not need a pairing code like Bluetooth and it uses very low

power and does not drain the device battery. NFC

is primarily used in smartphones that will try

to replace your cash and credit cards. It is

secure as it works only in very short ranges

and hence it is difficult to eavesdrop.

Why Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is gaining popularityfirewalls, intrusion detection, domain name service (DNS),

caching, etc. and runs on industry stand servers or even on

the cloud. The benefits of NFV for service providers and companies

include lower capital and operational expenditure, increased flexibility and

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18

virtualization


lock it down

SECURITY IS ENHANCED DUE TO NETWORK VIRTUALIZATIONTECHNOLOGY’S ABILITY TO MICRO-SEGMENT THE NETWORK TRAFFIC

AND ITS ABILITY TO HAVE FIREWALLS END TO END IN THE DATA CENTER. “

”

N etwork virtualization has several advantages including shorter provisioning time, enhanced network

management capabilities and increased efficiency of resource usage. It turns out that there is another major benefit of network virtualization: security. Security is enhanced due to network virtualization technology’s ability to micro-segment the network traffic and its ability to have firewalls end to end in

the data center. The flexibility and security capability that is provided by network virtualization is not easily achieved in physical network environments. The micro-segmentation feature especially is very cost prohibitive to implement in a physical environment.Micro-segmentationMicro-segmentation brings the concepts of perimeter firewall defense into the virtual network and with it brings new opportunities for having security practices that are focused not on perimeter defenses, but on securing traffic inside of the data center. Network virtualization isolates and segments between the physical hardware and the underlying virtual networks and connected virtual machines. In addition, it allows new networks to be easily created and through policies allows only certain types of traffic to enter that that network. If a threat tried to penetrate the network, it will not be authorized to and even if an attacking agent gets on to the network, it will not be able to spread within the data center. Segmentation takes care of this risk as the threat is now confined to a single segmented network.Virtual FirewallsVirtualization allows partitioning a single physical firewall into multiple virtual firewalls. Each is known as a security context and has its own set of virtual interfaces to which the security policies can be applied to. Each security context is an independent firewall, with its own security policy, interfaces, and administrators. These virtual firewalls are then distributed throughout the data center which allows server-to-server traffic to be protected by firewall rules in addition to the traffic going in and out of the data center.

Why security is becoming a driver for network virtualization

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Sponsored Cover


NEWS

Virtual SAN adoption is increasingVirtual SAN (VSAN) technology enables companies to build out a high-performance storage tier which is optimized for virtual environments. At the same time it is simple to use and reduces TCO. VSAN software is starting to be embedded in the kernel of the hypervisor which means it has very good visibility into the

physical infrastructure beneath which helps it optimize the I/O paths to deliver better performance. VSAN also helps storage administrators to easily see the shared storage and compute resources and help maintain policies from an easy to use management interface.

What is hyper jumping?Hyper jumping exploits a weakness in a VM, transforming it into a platform that can be used to launch attacks against other VMs that are using the same infrastructure. Less than secure operating systems and weakness in virtual switches during times of overload are common causes of this attack. Hyper jumping can be protected against by grouping and separating uplinks, setting up a separate management network from the VM port group, using the built-in firewall for your virtual environment, and finally by applying latest security patches for the operating system.

Why Virtualization is disruptive to backupServer virtualization is disruptive to backup because many virtual servers can be present in one physical machine. It is easier to treat virtual servers the same way as physical servers by installing a backup application agent on each VM. While that might simplify the backup architecture, it will lead to performance hits and I/O and CPU bottlenecks.In addition, VMs are much harder to keep track of because the one to one relationship between application and physical server is broken. VMs can be created, deleted and moved in a matter of seconds and that makes VM discovery and backup very difficult. For this reason there is a need to implement enterprise backup software that come with features like auto-discovery of VMs, the ability to back up at hypervisor, VM or sub-VM level, among other things.

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20

soft serve data

storage


Software-Defined Storage is ready for mainstream adoption

D ata is becoming much more critical than ever to run businesses

both large and small. This drives their data storage environments to be smarter, easier to manage, and highly efficient. The answer to this need could be the recent innovation called software-defined storage (SDS) which promises to manage the rest of the storage platform efficiently. Software-defined technology allows the data center to increase the efficiency of controlling and managing the key physical resources and provides the features that can help the various platforms scale and become more robust. It provides this capability by abstracting physical components into logical services.

One of the key physical resources in the data center that is becoming increasingly unmanageable is storage. The primary reason is the physical sprawl of various storage components. There is a constant need to buy more storage components like controllers, disks and shelves just to keep up with modern demands. A need for change is becoming apparent.

Advances in SDS and in complementary technologies like server virtualization and software defined networking (SDN) looks to address these issues. SDS provides a consolidated management interface and policy-based automation which makes it possible to grow infrastructure in a more

manageable fashion. SDS achieves this by separating software and the storage hardware by placing the software layer in a centralized hypervisor. The software has visibility to all of the physical and virtual resources and enables automated provisioning and de-provisioning based on requirements at that time. In addition, the software can work with hardware from multiple vendors including commodity hardware which enables storage engineers to build non-proprietary environments.

The use of commodity hardware in storage and in other data center levels like servers and networking is increasing rapidly. It is now possible to fulfill almost all the storage needs without purpose-built hardware. SDS enables this by providing the functions of the purpose-built hardware by using commodity hardware. That’s a very powerful trend and will most probably disrupt traditional storage technologies and processes.

SDS PROVIDES A CONSOLIDATED MANAGEMENT INTERFACE ANDPOLICY-BASED AUTOMATION WHICH MAKES IT POSSIBLE TO GROW

INFRASTRUCTURE IN A MORE MANAGEABLE FASHION. “

”

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News

How tiering and caching helps in getting flash into the environmentDetermination of whether a data set is flash worthy or not can be taken out of the hands of the storage administrators by the implementation of automated tiering and caching technologies. Caching stores data which is temporary and accelerates the most active and current data.

The data held in a cache is always a copy of data that exists elsewhere. Automated tiering is a method to place active data to a faster, and most probably more expensive, tier of storage and move less frequently used data to a more cost effective tier of storage.

Buyers will have the upper hand with cloud storage vendors in 2015Buyers will hold the upper hand if they are in the market for a cloud file sharing solution as there is an intense competition among multiple vendors in this space now. Companies should evaluate the different solutions and decide on the best one for them. The vendors are looking to sign up as many customers as possible and hence this is a great time to lock in significant long-term discounts. Finally, customers should also look into signing up with multiple vendors if their need is large enough to avoid risk of vendor lock-in.

Hybrid arrays brings together the best of disk and flash technologiesFor many years now, fast-spinning disk technology was considered the best option for storage but recently, flash storage technology has become very popular as the performance is many times faster than disk. The downside for flash is cost and hence it is not economical to move all the data stored in disk to flash arrays. But there might be a better way, since it is clear that majority of data for most of the applications do not require the

performance of flash. Hybrid arrays which is made of both hard drives and flash is a more cost effective solution as it makes sense to combine the two: high

performance flash for top-priority applications and hard drives for everything else.

SALE

BB 201410 09 Storage.indd 21 12/8/14 6:01 PM

@DatalinkCorpfacebook.com/DatalinkCorp

linkedin.com/company/datalink

blog.datalink.com

B

BB 201410 10 Datalink connect promo.indd 22 12/8/14 6:27 PM

datalink.com

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Read the latest Technology Blog, authored by our esteemed team of solutions engineers. Follow our events and catch the latest news

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BB 201410 10 Datalink connect promo.indd 23 12/8/14 6:28 PM


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NEC’s M-Series Storage Disk Arrays: the perfect balance of performance, a� ordability and functionality. Features include data-at-rest encryption, cache augmentation and automated storage tiering.

NEC ProgrammableFlow Networking

Introduced in 2011, and installed in production networks around the world, the NEC ProgrammableFlow® Networking Suite was the first commercially available Software-Defined Network (SDN) solution to leverage the OpenFlow protocol, enabling full network virtualization and allowing enterprises, data centers and service providers to easily deploy, control, monitor and manage secure multi-tenant network infrastructure.

scalable server that grows with your environment so you can add processors and memory when needed. Ideal for SAP®

Unique True Five 9’s out of the box providing high availability

NEC ProgrammableFlow

Express5800Enterprise Server

For Mission Critical Applications

and Virtualization

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Build with Innovative Solutions from NEC

Complete Datacenter Solution Vendor

Tammy Dias

NEC Account Manager

408-204-2626

[email protected]


Build with Innovative Solutions from NEC

Complete Datacenter Solution Vendor



product highlight

Hardware and SoftwareEngineered to Work Together

Oracle Exadata Database Machine is delivered completely integrated and balanced for optimal performance. There are no unique configuration requirements and no special Oracle Exadata certification.

Update your data warehouse in near real time. Run reports that once took three hours in just 20 minutes. Consolidate multiple databases onto a single platform. Oracle Exadata Database Machine loads data faster, returns queries sooner, and sets new IT performance standards. It’s secure, it’s scalable, and all of it— hardware and software—is supported by Oracle.

Future in a Box

Faster, more flexible, and highly available, Oracle Exadata is shaping the future of IT by delivering the complete technology stack—hardware, software, and everything in between—in a reliable, redundant database machine that’s easy to manage, fast to deploy, and fully supported by a single vendor.

Preconfigured, scalable, and secure, Oracle Exadata Database Machine addresses the needs of today’s businesses with extreme performance for enterprise data warehousing, online transaction processing (OLTP), and mixed workloads.

Extreme Ease of UseKeeps IT Simple

Easy to deploy and manage, Exadata runs—with no changes—all Oracle Applications. Even the expertise of your DBAs and system administrators is directly transferable.

Exadata is easy to upgrade in the field with no interruption to your existing system. And, because all Exadata components are from Oracle, you significantly reduce implementation risks, downtime risks, and support risks. With only one vendor to call, there’s no runaround— just faster resolution.

Better information, more flexibility, and lower IT costs with extreme performance. Experience the extreme benefits of Oracle Exadata today.

New Possibilities for Your BusinessThe World’s Fastest Database Machine: Oracle Exadata

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Some look at an empty field and see an empty field.

Others look at that same field and see homes with families

or thriving businesses.

Bring Your Ideas to Life

1-800-448-6314datalink.com

Datalink Application Development

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product highlightFAS8000: Scale-Out Storage for the EnterpriseThe next generation of NetApp storage.

FAS8060 (6U) ControllerMaximum capacity: 4800TB

With the FAS8000, we’ve refined and enhanced every aspect of the FAS platform, and in the process created a hybrid storage system that is uniquely well suited for the needs of today’s enterprise—without leaving the past behind. The FAS8000 is designed to help you run your business operations faster while reducing management overhead, simplifying IT operations, and improving return on investment.

We’ve focused on flexibility, so that the FAS8000 adapts to your changing needs without ever requiring planned downtime or disruptive hardware changes. With FlexArray storage virtualization software (the subject of a separate article in this issue of Tech OnTap), the FAS8000 can also virtualize and manage existing storage arrays, extending the capabilities of the Data ONTAP® operating system to more of your

storage infrastructure.

Introducing the FAS8000.

For many IT organizations, adding storage capacity can be disruptive. Most storage systems have pretty narrow limits and capabilities, so you end up with multiple storage systems, silos of storage, orphaned capacity, and greater management complexity. The FAS8000 solves this problem with unified scale-out storage that lets you scale your storage environment in the way that makes the most sense for your business needs. Flexible hybrid storage options let you provide an optimal level of acceleration for each workload.

Because the FAS8000 combines innovative hardware design with the proven capabilities of clustered Data ONTAP, industry-leading management capabilities, and unmatched support for well-known hypervisors,

applications, and management and orchestration tools, it delivers the benefits of scale-out without sacrificing any of the capabilities that your operation depends on.

The FAS8000 is the first FAS architecture designed specifically for clustered Data ONTAP. All FAS8000 models scale out to a maximum of 24 nodes.

Deliver superior TCO. Proven storage efficiency and a 2x increase in price/performance over the previous generation reduce capacity utilization and improve long term ROI. FlexArray storage virtualization software lets you integrate existing arrays with the FAS8000, increasing consolidation and providing even greater value to your business.

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Take the

to the cloud.fast track

http://datalink.com/cloudcomplete

http://datalink.com/cloudcomplete


product highlight

Enhance performance in enter-prise applications and VDI envi-ronments with improved I/O and low latency. Dell™ Compellent™ Flash-optimized solutions’ unique way of tiering data allows you to deliver high-speed SSD perfor-mance to more applications in your environment while reducing your costs significantly compared to other flashoptimized solutions.

Designed to drive down costs while boosting performance

Compellent Flash-optimized solutions offer flash performance at rotating disk capacities and prices. These solutions are the first in their class to automati-cally tier data from write-inten-sive SLC SSDs to lower-cost, read-intensive MLC SSDs and traditional rotating disks.

The innovative Flash-optimized solutions provide all-flash or hybrid-flash storage. These solutions offer up to an approxi-mate 2x price advantage over competitive hybrid solutions, and up to an approximate 5x price advantage over com-

petitive all-flash solutions.

Compellent Flash-optimized solutions are designed to pro-vide high performance with low latency for enterprise databases, OLTP and ERP sys-tems, and other I/O intensive workloads. With these solutions, you can achieve greater than 300,000 IOPS with low latency.

Flexible configurations to meet your requirements

Compellent Flash-optimized solutions provide all-flash or hybrid-flash storage with the energyefficient Dell Compel-lent SC220 flash enclosure that has twenty-four 2.5” drive bays or slots. In the all-flash solution, the twenty-four 2.5” drive bays are populated with SSDs; the hybrid-flash solution uses a mix of SSDs and rotating disks.

Flash-optimized solutions use an SC220 flash enclosure that has six 400GB write-intensive SLC SSDs and six 1.6TB read-intensive MLC SSDs (one of the highest-capacity 2.5” enterprise-class MLC SSDs available). For an all-flash

solution, you can fill the twelve remaining slots in the SC220 with six-packs of SLC and MLC SSDs. For a hybrid-flash solution, you can fill the twelve remain-ing slots with a combination of SSDs and 1TB 7.2K RPM HDDs.

Flash-optimized solutions use an SC220 flash enclosure that has six 400GB write-intensive SLC SSDs and six 1.6TB read-intensive MLC SSDs (one of the highest-capacity 2.5” enterprise-class MLC SSDs available). For an all-flash solution, you can fill the twelve remaining slots in the SC220 with six-packs of SLC and MLC SSDs. For a hybrid-flash solution, you can fill the twelve remain-ing slots with a combination of SSDs and 1TB 7.2K RPM HDDs.

An all-flash solution consists of one or more of SC220 flash enclosures and provides two tiers of storage with both read- and write-intensive SSDs for applications that require high IOPs and low latency.

Flash at the Price of DiskThe Compellent SC8000 and SC4020

Compellent SC8000

Compellent SC4020

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T he first bolt of lightning struck four hours into Simon Dominguez’s nearly 30-mile swim across the English Channel. The winds kicked up to a violent 60 knots,

and huge waves continually slapped the BEAR Data account executive in the head, knocking o� his goggles and forcing saltwater into his mouth until his tongue swelled to twice its size. The French and English shores miles away and his support crew in the boat riding alongside him in danger of capsizing, Dominguez’s marathon swim for charity was close to being called o� .

But he wouldn’t have any of it. The previous two years spent training almost every day before and after work in the 40-something-degree waters of the San Francisco Bay had prepared him well for rough conditions. Even the eight-hour night swims in Northern California made the black waves less ominous. But Dominguez knew the second he touched the boat carrying a doctor, family members, and o� icials to make sure he followed the swim rules, all his e� orts would be for not. And the money he was raising for his nonprofit group Night Train Swimmers would never materialize.

So instead, he convinced the boat captain to let him power on, pausing every 30 minutes or so to refuel with a protein drink tied to a rope thrown to him from the craft. “I was 100 percent committed to finishing the swim,” says the BEAR Data sales team member. “I knew that if I was unsuccessful, I’d have to come back again next year and do it again.”

On July 19 at 5:50 a.m., 13 hours and 22 nautical miles after first diving o� the beach in Dover, Dominguez crawled up onto French soil in the town of Le Cap Blanc Nez. (All told, this English Channel swim raised $5,000 to support programs that teach water safety to kids in the Bay Area.) The life-long swimmer and part-time swim coach dried o� , took in his

victory, and very soon began planning his next major ocean trek for charity.

“I use the same drive and dedication that I put into my swim in servicing clients’ needs,” says Dominguez when he got backto his desk a few days later. “There are no shortcuts.”

In his time with BEAR Data, Dominguez has built up a portfolio of partners quickly, thanks to his interest in listening to clients’ needs and working with them to find services and products

that truly fit their needs—even if it takes more than a year of conversations and emails to build the relationship. “I had one client who was already working with one of our competitors, but after months of listening to him and proposing solutions, he now considers me a partner to his business,” says Dominguez. “My end goal is to become a trusted advisor to him. It might take me up to 18 months to be in that position, which is about the time I trained for the Channel. But my passion and perseverance to help him will come back and reward me. I know it.”


backup

Going the Distance

Account executive Simon Dominguez took the patience and hard work he uses to make BEAR Data clients’ dreams come true to help him swim through an epic electrical storm and rough currents across the English Channel.

The route across the channel and the effect of the storm.

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Scale out storage at the speed of your business.With HP StoreVirtual Storage you can virtualize easily with a software-defined solution that is simple, scalable, and highly available.Keep your business moving through all stages of virtualization growth with HP StoreVirtual Storage. It offers deployment flexibility with the software-only, hypervisor agnostic StoreVirtual VSA, or the turnkey converged storage appliances built on industry-leading HP ProLiant technology. Gain versatility and management simplicity with an all-inclusive scale-out architecture for virtualization without boundaries. All of which helps deliver ROI to the power of three—giving you a greater return on information, infrastructure, and individuals.

The power of HP Converged Infrastructure is here.

© Copyright 2013 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

HP StoreVirtual Storage,powered by Intel® Xeon® processors

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