Recently I added additional SSDs to a Starter XtremIO X-Brick in the RoundTower DemoLab that was partially populated with drives. There are a series of steps you need to execute to bring the added storage online.
Tag Archives: XtremIO
Repurposing used XtremIO X-Brick
Recently we consolidated our labs at RoundTower and I re-purposed an XtremIO X-Brick into the Cincinnati Demonstration Lab. I figured it was going to be very easy, execute the “reset to factory defaults” command and off I go. You will not be surprised to hear, it was a little more complicated than that.
This post explains how to recover/re-purpose the X-Brick to a point where it is ready to provide storage services.
EMC XtremIO – Dedupe: Replace a VMAX?
I am currently testing my EMC XtremIO PoC system with EMC. One of the great benefits of XtremIO is the Deduplication feature, which at a minimum will be 10:1, so the experts tell me and will be even better in version 3.0. My current Symmetrix VMAX configurations are 250TB and 350TB of tiered SSD, 15KFC and SATA storage for 2 sites. So assuming a 10:1 dedupe ratio, could I replace my two Symmetrix VMAX solutions with two XtremIO systems of 2 X-bricks (with 20TB model)? It almost seems too good to be true! From a price perspective, the XtremIO cost would be slightly cheaper than the VMAX (after the highly combative process of vendor bashing, sorry – negotiation, in my region) and from a space perspective 1/3rd the size (with SAN Fabric). No need to state the obvious about performance.
EMC XtremIO – Performance Testing
Today I completed the initial performance testing of my EMC XtremIO PoC system. I wanted to take a shot at it myself before the EMC SMEs come in to tune and optimise the configuration. In a single word, “Wow!” This is the first time I have witnessed 400,000 IOPS in any kind of enterprise lab. I look forward to seeing what additional tricks the experts can make my “X-bricks” perform. Continue reading
EMC XtremIO – Provisioning a LUN
This post covers how to provision a LUN for vSphere on an EMC XtremIO brick. Compared to provisioning the same on an EMC Symmetrix VMAX, it is very, very simple. Continue reading
