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Hyperconverged Infrastructure: The CxO View Simple, cost-effective infrastructure for today’s business climate

Issue 2

In this issue

2 Welcome Fellow CxO

3 Research From Gartner: How to Determine When Hyperconverged Integrated Systems Can Replace Traditional Storage

11 911 Dispatch Center Improves Emergency Response Times with DataCore™ Hyper-converged Virtual SAN

18 About DataCore Software

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Today’s business climate carries

a great deal of uncertainty

for companies of all sizes and

industries. Unpredictable demand

makes it difficult to focus on

long-term planning. Instead,

companies are looking for more

short-term and shifting their

investments into only their most compelling projects.

There is a strong push to simplify and reduce costs of

IT infrastructure. Server virtualization was supposed to

consolidate and simplify IT infrastructure in data centers.

But, that only “sort of happened”. Companies do have

fewer servers but they never hit the consolidation ratios

they expected. Why? In one word, performance.

Surveys show that 61% of companies have

experienced slow applications after server

virtualization with 77% pointing to I/O problems as

the culprit.

Now, with hyperconverged infrastructure, companies

have another opportunity to fulfill their vision of

consolidating and reduce the complexity of their

infrastructure. But, this will only happen if their

applications get the I/O performance they need.

DataCoreTM Hyper-converged Virtual SAN is a high-

performance, easy-to-use hyperconverged solution

that enables companies to massively consolidate

their virtualized infrastructure. Unlike other

hyperconverged vendors, DataCore is the World’s

fastest hyperconverged solution. Compared to All-

Flash Arrays (AFAs), DataCore has been proven to

have, at minimum:

Welcome Fellow CxO

■ 345% faster response time enabling faster reports,

queries and accelerating decision insights

■ 220% more IOPS enabling more powerful workloads

to be accomplished in the same timeframe

■ 230% better value on price-performance for

greater savings

What does all this performance get you? Here are

some of the benefits:

■ Faster applications

■ Consolidate your infrastructure, cutting your

CAPEX

■ Less operational costs (power, cooling and space

efficiency)

■ Less time spent managing infrastructure

This means companies can run all their applications,

even enterprise applications and databases, on the

fewest nodes of single-tier infrastructure, providing the

highest ROI by minimizing both CAPEX and OPEX.

It’s these kind of results and the advances in

performance and efficiency due to DataCore’s

revolutionary Parallel I/O technology within our

hyperconverged solution that have led to over 30,000

customer deployments globally and 96% of CxOs

surveyed stating they recommend DataCore.

Sincerely,

George Teixeira

President and CEO, Co-founder

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Research From Gartner

How to Determine When Hyperconverged Integrated Systems Can Replace Traditional Storage

Hyperconverged integrated systems are all the IT

rage these days as vendors tout “data center in the

box” benefits. This research will help I&O leaders

distinguish the differences in HCIS and traditional

storage deployment strategies, and will provide them

with selection guidelines.

Impacts

■ Hyperconverged integrated systems’ (HCIS’)

current lack of integration with existing traditional

infrastructures causes I&O leaders to position it as

silo deployments within enterprise data centers.

■ As a result of workloads and economic analyses,

I&O leaders often deploy HCIS alongside existing

server/storage infrastructures, resulting in an

additional data center platform.

■ Most users do not go through formal HCIS

benchmarking and technical evaluation processes to

uncover differences in storage design and hardware

implementation that result in unquantified HCIS

storage efficiency, performance and ownership costs.

■ The migration of existing workloads onto HCIS is

likely to make I&O leaders to update their existing

vendor agreements, SLAs, data center design,

backup and disaster recovery strategies, staffing

and organization responsibilities.

Recommendations

■ Deploy HCIS to either consolidate all of the

midsize data center and remote office/branch

office (ROBO) workloads, or to address the specific

need for self-contained, high-impact workloads

such as VDI or virtual server infrastructure in large

enterprise data centers.

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■ Integrate HCIS as a new platform deployed to

support well-defined, well-matched workloads and

not as a one-size-fits-all server/storage alternative.

■ Create HCIS software-defined storage (SDS)

evaluation criteria, a test plan, and an analysis

tool that assigns heavier weighting to: data

reduction ratio; performance and scalability (all

for the worst-case scenario); customer support

capabilities and the HCIS vendor’s overall

supported ecosystem.

■ Create impact analyses of switching from

traditional storage to HCIS based on vendor

proposals and bids in the areas of procurement,

facilities, networking, security, backup and disaster

recovery, and future technology deficits.

Strategic Planning Assumption

By 2019, more than 50% of the storage capacity

installed in enterprise data centers will be deployed

with SDS or HCIS architectures based on x86

commodity hardware systems, up from 10% today.

Analysis

In today’s data-driven economy, more data creation

translates immediately into increased storage

demands. In order for a business to grow rapidly,

storage needs to be able to expand in an on-demand

manner. Interest in HCIS is growing as organizations

of all sizes and market verticals seek to simplify,

speed up delivery, improve manageability and satisfy

user demand for more availability, performance and

storage capacity on tight IT budgets and with lean

resources.

Today’s Hyperconverged systems range from

reference architecture software-only products (BYOS)

to enterprise-grade hardware appliances, and

are targeted at enterprises of all sizes. By taking

advantage of the distributed scale-out nature of SDS

and elimination of single point of failure, HCIS is

designed for high availability virtualized workloads.

Vendors (see Note 1) include late-stage startups, tier-

one server and storage OEMs, and enterprise software

and hardware vendors.

When deployed correctly, for appropriate workloads

and in the right deployment model, Hyperconverged

infrastructure is a powerful architectural choice that

can transform the modern data center. This research

will explain the impact of hyperconvergence as an

alternative storage platform and how to achieve the

best possible outcomes from adopting this technology.

The first order of business is to understand how HCIS

address current pain points and deliver on simplicity,

flexibility, selectivity and economic promises.

HCIS systems have gained mind share and are being

considered as alternatives for traditional server

and storage systems in the midmarket data center,

greenfield opportunities, ROBO, data center renovation

and modernization projects for highly virtualized data

center workloads. Table 1 shows the benefits and

limitations of HCIS systems.

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Technology IT Benefits Limitations

Traditional Servers/Storage Ability to select from broad choices

of storage and servers (selectivity)

Scale storage and compute

independently as needed (flexibility)

Integration and refresh is time and

resource consuming (economic)

Scale out is difficult (simplicity)

HCIS Seamless deployment, management

and expansion (simplicity)

Build in enterprise features such

as data reduction, backup and SSD

caching (economic)

Limited ability to independently

scale compute and storage

(flexibility)

Storage and server hardware vendor

lock-in (selectivity)Green highlighting: characteristics of strength; Red highlighting: characteristics of weakness

Source: Gartner (January 2016)

Hyperconvergence is a relative newcomer to data

center platforms modernization. Figure 1 below

shows critical differences that I&O leaders must know

before making a final decision to move away from the

traditional storage/server environment.

Impacts and Recommendations

HCIS’ current lack of integration with existing traditional infrastructures causes I&O leaders to position it as silo deployments within enterprise data centers

While Hyperconverged solutions are targeted to

flatten the IT workspace and reduce the silo effect of

different infrastructure components, the majority of

vendor implementations are not designed to integrate

with existing IT investments such a storage or server

farms, but rather to rip and replace them. That is

why HCIS is most often targeted and deployed as a

greenfield solution for a highly virtualized stack with

wide adoption in the midmarket segment, where the

integration with outside compute and storage is less

of a requirement.

HCIS data silo effect may derail deployments for

large enterprises when, instead of gaining operational

efficiency, HCIS may end up adding on another

Table 1. IT Benefits and Limitations of HCIS Versus Traditional Storage and Server Environment

platform with its own provisioning, management,

backup and DR, and capacity planning tools.

In order to avoid the data silo effect, the next

generation of HCIS will have to include some

integration capabilities with infrastructure outside of

the HCIS platform. For example, HCIS products will

have to gain the ability to ingest and control storage

on traditional storage arrays; present their own pool

of SDS for consumption by other servers in the data

center; and provision and support hybrid compute and

storage in the cloud.

Recommendations:

■ Deploy HCIS to either: consolidate all of the

midsize data center and ROBO workloads or

to address the specific need for self-contained,

high-impact workloads such as virtual desktop

infrastructure (VDI) or virtual server infrastructure

in large enterprise data centers.

■ Prioritize HCIS vendor solutions that have

integration capabilities with existing data center

investments and that will support hybrid cloud

deployments.

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Figure 1. Critical Differences Between HCIS and the Traditional Server/Storage Approach

Source: Gartner (January 2016)

As a result of workloads and economic analyses, I&O leaders often deploy HCIS alongside existing server/storage infrastructures, resulting in an additional data center platform

As IT architects expand their design objectives

to include staff resources and ownership costs,

the appeal of integrated systems and specifically

Hyperconverged systems increases: various

integrated system implementations can include

reference architectures, integrated stack systems,

integrated infrastructure systems and HCIS. The

inherent appeal of these systems rests upon the

advantages of single vendor support, fast time

to deployment, tight HW/SW integration, ease of

provisioning and daily management, common data

services, unified life cycle management and pay as

you scale out deployment model.

HCIS has the potential to lower acquisition and

ownership costs by eliminating the expense of SAN

storage and switches, supporting data management

features such as compression and deduplication,

shrinking infrastructure delivery times, and enabling

the use of commodity servers with direct attached

disk and flash.

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Figure 2. Impacts and Top Recommendations for Benefiting From HCIS

Source: Gartner (January 2016)

The planned service life of an HCIS system does not

have to align with server or storage system service

lives because they will often be deployed as a silo or to

support a specific project or workload.

Differences in application needs and the value maps

shown in Figure 3 indicate that cost-optimized

infrastructures will align application needs with

different technologies. Pursuing a coexistence strategy

also has the advantages of keeping competitive

pressure on traditional storage and server suppliers

to deliver aggressive pricing and effective postsales

service and support.

Deploying a HCIS solution as alternative platform

within an enterprise can enable IT to quickly satisfy

the needs of a specific business application or

workload by minimizing the testing needed to certify

its use with a variety of mission or business-critical

workloads. Examples include virtual servers, VDI

or development/testing environments. Developing

an extensible infrastructure and flexible operating

vision will help IT development by providing a viable

alternative against unwanted shadow IT. While there

are many qualitative arguments that are made in

favor of a single storage platform, the architectural

efficiencies and the benefits of maintaining a

HCIS environment might outweigh the operational

complexity and additional training they may require.

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Figure 3. Value Map of Alternative Technologies

Source: Gartner (January 2016)

Recommendations:

■ Identify high-impact workloads that can utilize

HCIS scale-out architectures, and benefit from

HCIS low-touch deployment, ease of ongoing

management and data reduction and protection

technologies.

■ Integrate HCIS as a new platform deployed to

support well-defined, well-matched workloads and

not as a one-size-fits-all server/storage alternative.

Most users do not go through formal HCIS benchmarking and technical evaluation processes to uncover differences in storage design and hardware implementation that result in unquantified HCIS storage efficiency, performance and ownership costs

While HCIS is a relatively new deployment model,

it is expected to grow from $372 million in 2014 to

more than $5 billion by 2019 with 68% CAGR, while

remaining very fluid and fast-evolving, causing rapid

change for its product offering. All providers stress

simplicity and flexibility in various ways, but there

are subtle differences in exactly what these messages

actually translate to.

Each vendor’s HCIS implementation is likely to

exhibit unique storage efficiency, scalability and

performance profiles based on a specific workload.

HCIS decision planners need to be aware of the

wide span of HCIS offerings:

■ Hardware: Wide range of CPU, I/O optimization

hardware and SSD for caching or tiering

■ Hypervisor: Some HCIS solutions support a single

hypervisor, while others offer broader options

■ Data reduction: Some HCIS solutions offer no data

reduction, whereas others offer compression and/

or deduplication, including global deduplication

across the cluster

■ Data resiliency and efficiency: Some HCIS will

only provide data block replication, while others

can enable erasure coding, few provide the ability

to select between erasure coding and replication,

and some broader backup/disaster recovery with

application integration and file-level recovery

■ Scalability: Some HCIS clusters scale only up to eight

nodes, while others claim to scale into the hundreds

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■ Integration: Some HCIS solutions allow integration

with existing data center infrastructure (such as

servers, storage or public cloud) while most do not

■ Data protection and availability: Some HCIS

solutions include built-in snapshots, QoS backup

and sync remote replication

There are big differences between HCIS performance, depending on hypervisor, software stack, hardware, VM density, workloads, caching and data reduction technologies.

Recommendations:

■ Include the following criteria when evaluating

HCIS: redundancy model, support and

maintenance procedures, hypervisor support, and

method of providing SDS.

■ Create HCIS software-defined storage evaluation

criteria, a test plan and an analysis tool that

assigns heavier weighting to data reduction ratio;

performance and scalability (all for the worst-case

scenario); customer support capabilities and the

HCIS vendor’s overall supported ecosystem.

■ Test HCIS solution performance under load as well

as data reduction ratios over time and at scale in

order to rightsize your cluster and finalize your

HCIS configuration.

■ Create a HCIS workload testing lab and perform

head-to-head testing by using real workloads or

storage workload generators. One example is

HCIbench, a free storage performance testing tool

for HCIS.

The migration of existing workloads onto HCIS is likely

to make I&O leaders to update their existing vendor

agreements, SLAs, data center design, backup and

disaster recovery strategies, staffing and organization

responsibilities

HCIS performance profiles and mean time between

data loss (MTBDL) will differ from existing storage/

server infrastructures. Users should identify existing

SLAs that have been made obsolete and create new

SLAs that align with HCIS capabilities. Revising

SLAs also creates an opportunity for users to cost-

optimize their operations by better aligning SLAs

with application requirements, thereby reducing the

number of situations where the infrastructure is

overdelivering against application needs. Common

measures include guaranteed I/O rates, host visible

bandwidth, response times, availability, MTBDL,

recovery point objectives (RPOs), recovery time

objectives (RTOs) and $/GB costs.

Disaster recovery schemes that rely on proprietary

HCIS-based replication technologies can only work

with other HCIS-based systems in the same family and

cannot work within existing disaster recovery schemes.

If the user has a contract with a disaster recovery

provider or colocation company, there will be contracts

to review and possible renegotiation. Possible areas

of renegotiation could include bandwidth, power and

space requirements, and the need to purchase a new

system at the disaster recovery site.

Since HCIS systems are inherently more autonomic in

their operation and require less ongoing maintenance,

their deployment could create opportunities to

revise policies and procedures that have been made

obsolete by new technologies. As a result of HCIS

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implementation, I&O leaders will be able to reorganize

operations to improve efficiency and free budget to

reskill the organization to make it profitable rather

than a cost center.

Recommendations:

■ Build a cross-functional team that includes all

stakeholders to ensure the inclusion of current

and future storage and application requirements,

senior management support and the creation of an

effective RFP that covers the subtle consequences,

detailed in this research, of deploying an SDS

HCIS solution in the data center.

■ Engage with HCIS suppliers to profile candidate

storage workloads and create SLAs that align with

HCIS SDS capabilities and application needs.

■ Create impact analyses of switching from

traditional storage to HCIS based on vendor

proposals and bids in the areas of procurement,

facilities, networking, security, backup and disaster

recovery, and future technology deficits.

Additional research contribution and review by Arun

Chandrasekaran, Mike Cisek, Dave Russell and

George Weiss

Evidence

Evidence for this research includes more than 200

Gartner client inquiries in 2015; vendor interviews,

surveys and product demonstrations in 2014 and

2015; and customer reference surveys in 1H15.

Note 1. Sample HCIS Vendors

■ Atlantis Computing

■ Gridstor

■ Dell

■ Hitachi

■ HP

■ HTBase

■ Maxta

■ Nutanix

■ Pivot3

■ Scale Computing

■ SimpliVity

■ Springpath

■ StarWind Software

■ Stratoscale

■ VMware

Source: Source: Gartner Research, G00292287, Julia Palmer and Stanley Zaffos, 15 January 2016

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911 Dispatch Center Improves Emergency Response Times with DataCore™ Hyper-converged Virtual SAN

Speeds up 911 Dispatch Response

Every Millisecond Counts in a 911 Call Center;

DataCore Reduces Latency Times and Makes

Critical SQL Server-based Dispatch Application Run

20X Faster

Located in Medford Oregon, Emergency

Communications of Southern Oregon (ECSO) is a

combined emergency dispatch facility and Public

Safety Answering Point (PSAP) for the 911 lines in

Jackson County Oregon. Corey Nelson, IT Manager at

ECSO, is responsible for IT at the organization. Not

only is he responsible for most of the technology

in the 911 data center, but also for almost all

Fire Department and Police Department vehicle

computers that are deployed in the field.

ECSO is a firm believer in the power of a

hyperconverged solution now that it has implemented

DataCore™ Hyper-converged Virtual SAN. Importantly, this single decision has enabled ECSO to keep using a traditional storage array by making virtual storage part of the hyperconverged infrastructure, as well as significantly increasing performance and reducing storage-related downtime.

ECSO first needed to look for a better storage

solution because its dispatch application, based on

Microsoft SQL Server, was experiencing latencies of

200 milliseconds at multiple times throughout the

day. When this application runs slow, it impacts how

fast Fire and Police can respond to an emergency. In

addition, ECSO wanted a solution to meet its key “must

haves” including better real-time mirroring, replication,

and an overall more robust storage infrastructure –

and the organization was dedicated to finding a better

alternative than its existing NetApp solution.

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Fortunately, Nelson attended VMworld and found

DataCore. What Nelson was not thinking – even after

four intense months of looking at DataCore and

alternatives – was that a hyperconverged solution

would meet all of his tecnology and resulting business

objectives.

DataCore is deployed as hyperconverged infrastructure

using DAS or internal storage on a cluster of hosts.

DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN enables users

to put the internal storage capacity of their servers

to work as a shared resource while also serving as

integrated storage architecture. Hyperconverged

systems by definition combine compute, storage,

storage networking tiers into a single unified system.

From a performance standpoint, much of the traffic

that went over the storage network could now be

eliminated and with the compute and storage co-

located faster response times were possible.

“At the time I had my first conversation with one of

DataCore’s system engineers, I was not thinking about

a hyperconverged solution,” explained Nelson. “Rather,

I was thinking about a traditional storage solution

whereby I had a separate array that handles storage

and separate hosts that would rely on that backend

storage.”

Once DataCore came onsite to ECSO and drew up

various potential solution scenarios that would meet

the organization’s infrastructure needs– focusing

specifically on a hyperconverged solution, according to

Nelson “a lightbulb went off” in his head.

“I knew then that hyperconverged was the way to

go,” emphasized Nelson. “Following that we were

able to come up with a price that suited our budget

“This product makes you think differently about storage and ultimately is the next step in virtualization. DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN gives us the flexibility, reliability and performance to keep our systems running non-stop. No other products I looked at were even close to accomplishing this.”

- Corey Nelson, IT Manager, Emergency Communications of Southern Oregon

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Customer Snapshot: Real-world Hyperconverged Scenario at ECSO

DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN is perfect for environments that require high availability in a lowcost, small footprint, as well as latency-sensitive environments where the user wants to move data close to database applications, but needs to share it across a cluster of servers.

In one instance the entire ECSO building went offline because its Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) was being replaced. For most companies, this would mean downtime, but that is unacceptable for a 911 call center. Since Nelson had set up a back-up data center (the DR site) with DataCore, everything failed over and continued to run, despite the power outage at the primary site.

“I failed back after nine hours, and brought everything back online to the primary site,” noted Nelson. “It all worked like it was supposed to. I had zero issues from the technology side. It was great! And we stayed ‘live’ entire time. We never stopped receiving 911 calls – as that is never an option.”

– and what came next was an excellent, hassle-free

installation. I felt extremely good that DataCore Hyper-

converged Virtual SAN was the right solution for us,

which is not something I can say about the product we

had previously installed for storage management.”

NetApp was the previous storage vendor, which within

3-4 months of deployment became a huge headache

for ECSO. NetApp was paired with Dell – the server

vendor that ECSO was using prior to the NetApp

purchase. However, with a sizable investment in

NetApp, Nelson knew that he wanted to use NetApp

in some capacity. DataCore enabled him to do that to

extend the DAS capacity from each server.

The criterion that Nelson was using prior to DataCore’s

selection consisted specifically of looking for a hybrid

storage solution whereby he would incorporate some

SSD drives for performance. Nelson built out his

“selection” spreadsheet that spanned traditional

storage vendors as well as solutions that would

enable him to leverage his existing infrastructure– an

incredibly important objective since he had purchased

the NetApp technology just 18 months ago.

Performance Surges with DataCore

Prior to DataCore, performance and specifically

latency was a huge problem at ECSO – particularly

due to the NetApp array which delivered latency of

200 milliseconds on average throughout the day.

DataCore has solved the performance issues and

fixed the real-time replication issues Nelson was

previously encountering. This is because DataCore

Hyper-converged Virtual SAN speeds up response and

throughput with its innovative Parallel I/O technology

in combination with high-speed caching (using low-

latency server RAM) to keep the data close to the

applications.

The critical 911 dispatch application must interact

nearly instantly with the SQL server-based database.

Therefore during the evaluation and testing period,

understanding response and latency times were

vital criteria. To test this, Nelson ran a SQL Server

benchmark against his current environment as well as

the DataCore solution. The benchmark used a variety

of block sizes as well as a mix of random/sequential

and read/write patterns to measure the performance.

The results were, quite simply, amazing. The DataCore

Hyper-converged Virtual SAN solution was 20X faster

than his current environment, despite the fact that the

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same nodes that generated the I/O load had to a fulfill

the requests (compared to the current environment

where separate servers generated the I/O load and all

the NetApp storage had to do was to meet the load,

which it did poorly).

“Response times are much faster. The 200 millisecond

latency has gone away now with DataCore running,”

stated Nelson. “In fact we are down to under 5

milliseconds as far as application response times at

peak load. Under normal load, the response times are

currently under one millisecond.”

Unsurpassed Storage Performance and Simplified Management using DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN

Before DataCore, every storage-related task was

labor intensive at ECSO. Nelson was accessing and

reviewing documentation continuously to ensure that

any essential step concerning storage administration

was not overlooked. What became clear was that if he

went down the path of purchasing a traditional storage

SAN, it would be yet another “point” to manage.

“I wanted as few ‘panes of glass’ to manage as

possible,” commented Nelson. “Adding yet another

storage management solution to manage would just

add unnecessary complexity.”

The DataCore Hyper-converged solution was

exactly what Nelson was looking for. DataCore has

streamlined the storage management process by

automating it and enabling IT to gain visibility to

overall health and behavior of storage infrastructure

from a central console.

IT Environment At-a-Glance

■ DataCore Managed Capacity: 60 TBs

■ Are you using the auto-tiering feature? Yes

■ Number of Users: 50 internal; 250 external

■ Number of Virtual Servers and Number of Hosts: 3 hosts; 45 VMs

■ Primary Server Vendor: Dell

■ Storage Vendor(s): Dell; NetApp

■ Server Virtualization Platform: VMware ESXi 6

■ Desktop Virtualization Platform: NA

■ Hyperconverged Software: DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN

DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN frees Nelson

from the pain of labor-intensive storage management

and provides true hardware independence.

“DataCore has radically improved the efficiency,

performance and availability of our storage

infrastructure,” he said. “I was in the process of

purchasing new hosts, and DataCore Hyper-converged

Virtual SAN fit perfectly into the budget and plan. This

is a very unique product that can be tested in anyone’s

environment without purchasing additional hardware.”

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As it turned out, Nelson got the “path forward’ he

wanted with DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN

in that he can now rely on one pane of glass (the

DataCore management console) to manage the

storage residing on NetApp, which he just serves up

to the DataCore servers as an extension to their local

disk space.

After DataCore was implemented, NetApp was

relegated to being the low-end storage tier for use

cases such as storage archiving applications that

do not require a lot of throughput or performance.

DataCore allowed the investment in NetApp to be

protected.

The “hierarchy” of storage now at ECSO is as follows:

■ DataCore-managed flash storage comprises Tier

1 storage.

■ Tier 2 storage consists of the DataCore-managed

SAS drives.

■ Tier 3 storage is represented by the NetApp

external storage array.

With DataCore auto-tiering, all this storage is utilized

holistically to meet the performance and capacity

needs of the workloads. “Hot” data will typically

reside on tier 1, “warm” data on tier 2 and “cold”

data residing on tier 3. By automatically moving data

on a sub-LUN level basis to the tier that best matches

its performance characteristics, DataCore ensures

that each tier is used efficiently and optimally from a

performance and capacity perspective.

Delivering Real-time Data Redundancy

According to Nelson, “Now we are synchronously

mirroring to the other site. Before I may have been

doing some snapshots to the other site – but that was

timed, managed and certainly not done in realtime.

There certainly was no mirroring going on before and

latency was deplorable. Moreover, the old solution

would not allow us to failover to the backup site

without migrating the systems, therefore taking them

offline during that time. I knew that a special product

was needed to keep the systems running all of the

time. If our systems fail, it puts not only citizens but

first responders at risk.”

Two DataCore nodes reside at the primary site and

one DataCore node resides at the DR site, which is

two miles away. The DR site is connected by dark fiber

– specifically a 10-gig low-latency latency link. Both

primary site nodes mirror to the third node at the DR

site. All told, the infrastructure consists of 60 TBs of

storage including 5 TBs of SSD or flash storage.

One of Nelson’s concerns with some of his

applications was whether they could use the fiber-

linked DR site for snapshots, periodic replication or

purely synchronous mirroring.

“With DataCore, all of that works with no problem,”

said Nelson. “Protecting your data against server

outages simply by adding DataCore Hyper-

converged Virtual SAN software is easy. Within

seconds, I can migrate my two production CAD

systems over to the backup site and Dispatch is not

affected. It works great. There is zero downtime.

Nobody even knows it occurred.”

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Nelson has brought an entire host down, while everything

was moved over to the backup host and it was “invisible”

according to him. “And then you can bring it back, which

often is the problem,” he lauded. “DataCore does it all –

from failover to failback, all seamlessly.”

Key applications are all based on SQL Server,

Exchange and Active Directory. One application ECSO

has is very unique and that is a computer-aided

dispatch application for Fire and Police. All of the data

is stored in SQL Server, but runs in a private cloud at

ECSO’s data center.

“That is really our critical application where all

information is broadcast over the network,” stated

Nelson. This gets all the Tier 1 support and it is what

everything revolves around at our site. It must always

be up-and-running.”

Better Storage Economics through Flexibility

One of the things that most appealed to Nelson about

DataCore was that if he wanted to add another server

(as has already been the case), then he could just

buy a server and turn it on – because he had already

bought enough licenses to cover a new server under

DataCore’s license terms.

“Originally I had two DataCore-powered servers

deployed and that was working just fine – and then

I added a third at a DR site just for some additional

redundancy and because I needed some more CPU

cycles,” explained Nelson. “At some point I might add

a fourth to our DR site.”

Nelson explains that adding the third node was not

particularly difficult – although he admits he is glad

a Wizard exists that he can utilize in the future when

necessary for configuring the additional nodes.

“DataCore did not even know that I added another

server because I just did it myself and turned it on,”

stated Nelson. “What is more, I did not have to buy

any specific hardware. I could have bought a bunch of

disk drives and just added those. DataCore gives me

the flexibility to build my environment how it needed to

be built.”

Summary

For ECSO, a hyperconverged solution from DataCore

accelerated their mission-critical applications while

providing huge cost-savings.

The call dispatch application, utilizing Microsoft SQL

Server, has a direct impact on the speed of Fire and

Police to respond to emergencies. With DataCore, the

tremendous performance seen during the Proofof-

Concept was matched by real-world performance in

production with peak latencies below 5 milliseconds,

whereas the application was regularly seeing latencies

of 200 milliseconds previously.

17

In addition, the organization knew that it needed new

hosts, but Nelson was prescient enough to know that

he did not want to buy new hosts without solving the

storage issue. It was during an introductory meeting

with DataCore that Nelson began to understand all of

the inherent benefits of embracing a hyperconverged

infrastructure. When the lightbulb “went off,” Nelson

realized that hyperconverged was a strategy that

could be embraced immediately by a solution readily

available from DataCore – one wherein the host and

the storage were all in one box.

“It was at that very moment that I thought – it fits our

price range and it gives us a way to use our existing

storage,” said Nelson. “It was a sheer breath of relief

once I found the solution in DataCore Hyper-converged

Virtual SAN that I had been struggling for months to

find. By implementing DataCore we would be solving

multiple issues with one purchase.”

And because of that one decision, we fixed our

storage performance issues and we upgraded our

entire infrastructure all within the budget we wanted

to spend in just a single year – rather than having to

spread out purchases to multiple years.”

About Emergency Communications of Southern Oregon

Beyond serving as a combined emergency dispatch

facility and Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) for

the Jackson County Oregon 9-1-1 lines, ECSO is also a

regional “drop point” for emergency information that

needs to be given to Jackson and Josephine counties.

This may include severe storm warnings or notice of

a foreign enemy attack. This information is received

through the National Air Warning Alert System

(NAWAS) radio channel that covers the entire United

States. www.ecso911.com

Source: DataCore

Hyperconverged Infrastructure: The CxO View is published by DataCore. Editorial content supplied by DataCore is independent of Gartner analysis. All Gartner research is used with Gartner’s permission, and was originally published as part of Gartner’s syndicated research service available to all entitled Gartner clients. © 2016 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. The use of Gartner research in this publication does not indicate Gartner’s endorsement of DataCore’s products and/or strategies. Reproduction or distribution of this publication in any form without Gartner’s prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company, and its shareholders may include firms and funds that have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner’s Board of Directors may include senior managers of these firms or funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from these firms, funds or their managers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see “Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity” on its website.

For additional information, please visit www.DataCore.com or email info@DataCore.com

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About DataCore SoftwareDataCore, the Data Infrastructure Software company,

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Corporate Park

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1 (877) 780-5111