Presentation about Dell Equallogic SAN from July 2008

1. Copyright 2008 ilse media b.v. Alle rechten voorbehouden
Storage @ SchoolBANK
Marcel Dumont, Operations Director
Schoolbank.nl
London, July 10th
2008

2. Copyright 2008 ilse media b.v. Alle rechten voorbehouden
Introduction of SchoolBANK
SchoolBANK is about getting and staying in touch with your old
classmates and friends.
 Started in May 2002
 Since May 15th
2007 part of ilse media, the largest online
publisher in the Netherlands.
 2nd
largest social network site in The Netherlands
 Top 15 website (STIR)
 4 Million registered users (as of 1st
July 2008)

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Social networking is about volumes
Success of social networking depends on a lot of factors, but
there is one crucial factor to gain success: VISITORS
 Social networking requires interaction, therefore visitors.
 People flock to the dominating player
 Low margins x High volume = good money

4. Copyright 2008 ilse media b.v. Alle rechten voorbehouden
And about stickyness…
Once you get the visitors, the big challenge is to keep them
returning.
 a requirement for a long term success of website
 Return users cost nothing, new users requires marketing
 Limited sized market (total online population 11m)
 Requires constantly influx of new information

5. Copyright 2008 ilse media b.v. Alle rechten voorbehouden
Enter Storage
Trigger your users to enter as much information into the website
as they want and use that data to trigger other users to return to
the site.
 User details
 School information
 Stories
 Reunions
 Images
 Video (soon)

6. Copyright 2008 ilse media b.v. Alle rechten voorbehouden
We need more storage

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Previous Solution: DAS
Standardized environment, based on Dell hardware and Microsoft
OS. Storage was either internal drives or SCSI-based Direct
Attached Storage
Pro’s
 Simple hardware
 Low initial investment
 Easy to add
Cons
 Doesn’t scale performance wise, actually decreases
 Doesn’t scale well space wise.
 Static allocation of space, loads of waste
 Backup procedure complex
 Single points of failure

8. Copyright 2008 ilse media b.v. Alle rechten voorbehouden
Wish list
 Ease of maintenance
 Improved IO Performance
 Scalable / Expandable
 Reliable
 Efficient / Flexible
 Affordable

9. Copyright 2008 ilse media b.v. Alle rechten voorbehouden
Options as experienced 2007
DAS Not an option, want to move away from it.
NAS Performance degrades when increasing
capacity, network overhead
Online Cloud Not viable due to used pricing,
ownership/IP issues
Storage Grid Too expensive, separate fiber channel
network required
FC SAN Complex administration, performance
degrades when increasing capacity,
separate fiber channel network required.

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Enter iSCSI and Dell EqualLogic
 Ease of maintenance
Web interface, logical drives, snapshots
 Improved IO Performance
Beyond our expectations. No iSCSI->FC conversion
 Scalable / Expandable
yes, with added IO benefit
 Reliable
Redundant controllers, good support
 Efficient / Flexible
Ethernet, iSCSI, dynamic resizing
 Affordable
No FC network required

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Experience till now
 100% uptime
 Average 20% IO/CPU utilization
 Windows R2 integration is not optimal
 Unexpected usage: each web server has a small, fast SAN
drive for the Lucene indexes.
 Backups are no worry.
 We sometimes forget we have a SAN……

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(Near) future
 Move new hosting environment
 Expanding the Dell EqualLogic infrastructure
 Dedicated iSCSI network
 Multiple Dell EqualLogic arrays will form a cloud and share
the snapshotting
 Longer-term: Add SAS-based Dell EqualLogic

13. Copyright 2008 ilse media b.v. Alle rechten voorbehouden
Thanks
Marcel Dumont
marcel@schoolbank.nl