Application Protection: There’s Something Happening Here

There’s something happening here What it is ain’t exactly clear There’s a man with a gun over there Telling me I got to beware Yes, it’s blasphemy to simply change a classic like Buffalo Springfield’s “For What’s It Worth” – but I will anyway to prove my point. There’s something happening here If you haven’t [...]

Podcast: Integrated Exchange Single Item Restore

Like finding a needle in a haystack, EMC’s ItemPoint helps you find and extracts emails from disk-based copies made by EMC’s Replication Manager. Please take a minute to listen to Neil Salamack and I hit the big points of why and how you’d do this. (Links to an MP3 file) Trivia: That’s Neil on guitar [...]

Is SQL Server 2008 on VMware ESXi 4.1 supported? Find out using Microsoft’s SVVP Wizards

For DBA’s who have concerns about the support of their SQL server environments on virtualization technologies other than Hyper-V™ and Virtual Server, Microsoft provides the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). This article shows the simple steps required to complete the SVVP Support Policy Wizard to check support of your configuration. Step 1 Select the Support [...]

FREE VNXe Simulator, Now Available!

A lot of folks are excited that we are offering the new VNXe “demo” for download… but wait – this isn’t a traditional “demo” with a recorded screen capture and someone talking over it … this is pretty much like taking a real test drive on a real system. So please, download our latest offering [...]

Now Supported! Exchange DAG on Clusters and Unified Messaging

Microsoft just changed their positioning on virtualizing Exchange today. The Unified Messaging server role is supported in a virtualized environment Combining Exchange 2010 high availability solutions (database availability groups (DAGs)) with hypervisor-based clustering, high availability, or migration solutions that will move or automatically failover mailbox servers that are members of a DAG between clustered root [...]

There is no “DAS vs SAN” and Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions from EMC

It’s refreshing to see the most recent post on the Exchange team blog promoting real-world, tested Exchange 2010 configurations. EMC’s got two white papers we did with Cisco and Brocade highlighting the benefits of virtualizing Exchange for local and remote availability reasons.  I’m sure EMC’s Dustin Smith will have more to say on this soon [...]

Windows Geoclusters, Stretch-Clusters, and RecoverPoint/CE Failover

Taking a page out of Chief EMC Blogger Chuck Hollis‘ playbook, I’m attaching the graphics from entire PPT file that I thought would be important to highlight for this blog and its readers.  Some of the graphics didn’t fit to the page as well as I thought it would (I need to shrink them further). [...]

Virtual Provisioning for Exchange 2010 and Buying Groceries

Virtual Provisioning for Exchange 2010 makes sense for the same reasons you don’t buy a year’s supply of groceries each time you go to the market.

Getting Exchange 2010 into the Private Cloud

Here’s the materials for my webcast on virtualizing Exchange. EMCLive-Exchange 2010 Private Cloud-final-clean On-Demand Webcast link Hope you found it helpful! •Virtualization and Private Cloud Review –Industry Trends –Cloud Computing Comparison –Journey to Private Cloud •Exchange 2010 Virtualization and Cloud Best Practices –A 6-Step Process to Virtualize Exchange –Customer Story •Frequently Asked Questions –Storage –Replication [...]

Storage and Virtualization for SQL DBA’s

I try to keep up with as many people who are interesting and important work in the field of Microsoft’s enterprise application products such as Exchange, SQL Server, and SharePoint and now and then it surprises me when someone really “gets it” in terms of their audience. Denny Cherry is one of those guys.  He [...]

Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 Comparison Chart

Here’s a handy comparison chart that has been floating around a few presentations here at EMC (credit to M. Jones).   I figured it was time to share this one as many companies are asking us about helping them with their upgrade plans.   Clicking on it makes it bigger… but calling it interactive would be a [...]

EMC Can Do Exchange for Small Towns, Too

Dustin Smith, Exchange MVP, Certified Master, and new blogger over here wrote a nice post about how EMC has offerings in the SMB space for Exchange. Typically when EMC enters a room to talk about storage options for Exchange (and SQL and SharePoint), many folks think we are going to cook up an expensive, Fibre-Channel [...]

Automating Perfmon with Perfcollect

[ Post by Paul Galjan ] When I started here at EMC, I was pleased to see that most of us would use actual host data (perfmon) to perform size out our storage.  We have a variety of cool tools that will analyze perfmon output and help visualize trends, size out replication bandwidth required and [...]

Raise Your Hand If You’ve Virtualized 120,000 Exchange 2010 Mailboxes.

Chris Devine, member of EMC’s Proven Solutions engineering team, setup this massive test case in order to understand Exchange 2010 configurations at scale and to gauge the impact/overhead of virtual provisioning with a VMAX (hint: minimal to none). I call these guys our solution builders. Here he talks with me about the details behind the [...]

Clarifying Thin Provisioning for Exchange 2010

I talked with Exchange Certified Master Dustin Smith (EMC) who clarifies the role of storage thin provisioning and how it compares to an operational approach that some companies are ALSO calling thin provisioning.   Recorded at Microsoft TechEd 2010 in New Orleans.

EMC – First and Only Exchange 2010 Synchronous Replication Solution

Boris Voronin from EMC’s Proven Solutions team talked with me about how EMC is the first company to leverage Microsoft’s Synchronous Replication API for Exchange 2010. This product Replication Enabler for Exchange 2010 plugs into the DAG framework but replaces native log-shipping with synchronous block-based replication. Very cool for customers who have a need for [...]

Thoughts after Microsoft TechEd 2010 New Orleans

Like a storm, TechEd 2010 came and went pretty quickly and brought with it a thundering roar of activity from all of the vendors and partners and gurus all fighting to highlight their message through the creative use of Twitter, $2 bills, Ducati’s, Treasure Chests, and attractive people.  Here’s a nice collection of photo’s from [...]

W2K8 R2 Hyper-V Live Migration with Exchange 2010, SQL 2008 R2, SCVMM, and EMC CLARiiON NQM

Longest title ever?  Thankfully I abbreviated SCVMM down from System Center Virtual Machine Manager.  Anyway… Microsoft has announced their launch dates for Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2, and Exchange 2010. EMC will be there to support them in many cities including Baltimore, NYC, Irvine, Raleigh, St Louis (to name a few). I was asked to [...]

Exchange 2010 Upgrade Plans – Poll Results

If I’m on Exchange 2003, do I upgrade to Exchange 2007 and then Exchange 2010 – or do I wait and go straight to Exchange 2010?

Symantec’s GRT = not so GReaT for Exchange

The tech industry is filled with “analysts” who will receive a buck and write exactly what a vendors asks of them. In this installment, Symantec went to the “Tolly Group” and got them to blast EMC’s Networker for being slower than Symantec’s new feature for backing up and extracting single mail items, called GRT for [...]

How to Build an Efficient Application Infrastructure through Virtualization

I couldn’t figure out how to embed this into my blog, but this is a great, short video which shows how EMC is working with Microsoft to virtualize applications like Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint.  It’s only ten minutes long and showcases one of EMC’s great technologists, Brian Martin, as he speaks with Microsoft’s Jim Schwartz.

Getting Exchange PPTs Ready for EMC World

For EMC World 2009, I’ve got two presentations that I’m putting the finishing touches on: 1. Exchange Disaster Recovery: Good, Better, Best This will highlight key differences in the styles of replication available to an Exchange environment: host-based, appliance-based, or array based. I’ve got some very interesting data comparing the built-in options of Exchange 2007 [...]

V-Max and Microsoft Application Documents

Here’s some documents from various departments within EMC around the new Symmetrix V-Max and Microsoft Applications. If you are implementing Exchange, SQL, or SharePoint in your environment today, I highly suggest you take a look (and read) the following: EMC Proven Solutions Reference Architecture for V-Max with SQL, SharePoint, and Exchange Whitepaper for V-Max with [...]

Exchange 2010 Public Beta Arrives

Today, Microsoft has released a public beta of Exchange 2010 and has affirmed the name publically (although the name slipped onto the web via Paul Thurrott SuperSite months ago).   Here’s the new  Microsoft Exchange 2010 Homepage. So far, the major themes being highlighted via Flash animation include: Unified messaging Exchange Online Archiving and Retention PC [...]

SourceOne – Archiving 2.0 for Exchange and More

Consider EmailXtender to be EMC’s first generation archiving product. SourceOne is EMC’s Archiving 2.0 product – completely re-written to match today’s needs. The most significant and unique difference to me is the ability to assign roles to specific jobs within their archiving framework.  In this sense, EMC is releasing a significant archiving product which looks [...]