Demo’ing EqualLogic from my laptop
March 1st, 2010Hello, my name is Marc and I am the tech guy at Dell that carries an EqualLogic Array around in my trunk. Depending on the week, I can do 4 to 8 EqualLogic Demo’s easily.
Doing a “basic demo” with EqualLogic is very powerful. I describe a “basic demo” as initializing the EqualLogic Array, walking through Group Manager, setting up and connecting SAN HQ with a walk through, creating Volumes, detailing snapshots and thin provisioning, mounting the Volume to your laptop, copying data, etc.
Now I can demo all of this easily from my Dell laptop running Windows 7 and directly connecting a simple everyday Ethernet cable from my laptop NIC to the Eth0 port on the EqualLogic Array. However I feel that there is even more to demo and review because EqualLogic is powerful and simple at the same time.
With the help of VMware Workstation 7 my new and improved “basic demo” now includes:
- a Virtual Machine running Windows Server 2008 which better shows the full installation of the HIT, including ASM/ME. I can review in detail the importance of Remote Setup Wizard, the VSS integration and MPIO setting (Volume Slices anyone). With ASM/ME I can show the power and simplicity of application integrated snapshots at no additional cost to the customer. A single EXE does install all that great functionality in the HIT!
- a Virtual Machine running ESXi. This is great because there are customers that sometimes cannot wrap their heads around how an EqualLogic Volume is a Data Store that is formatted with VMFS. Now I can show how to exactly enable the iSCSI Initiator, add the Group IP Address, rescan and view the Volumes, mount a Volume as a Data Store. BAM – simple yet powerful.
With a Laptop, an EqualLogic Array, an Ethernet Cable plus a power strip and a projector I am ready to go onsite and WOW our customers on all of the value that EqualLogic can bring!
