There are two time-worn phrases I strive to remember, especially during the whirlwind process of launching new products for the Dell EqualLogic storage line. One of them is “Work Smarter…Not Harder.”[1] That is easier, of course, when you have the right information and tools—which is what EqualLogic SAN Headquarters is all about. Today at Dell Enterprise Forum (DEF) in San Jose, our EqualLogic SAN Headquarters 2.6 with SupportAssist, which helps you optimize your data center, will be featured in the expo, labs, and storage super session.
Over the years, SAN Headquarters has provided exceptional monitoring and analysis capabilities for your EqualLogic infrastructure. Now, SAN Headquarters 2.6 brings you enhanced RAID Reliability Reporting—designed to evaluate storage reliability based on current RAID levels and to forecast reliability improvements from potential RAID policy changes—keeping you better informed. And, with support for Microsoft® Windows Server® 2012 and Microsoft Windows® 8, SAN Headquarters continues to bring you tight integration with the latest Microsoft operating environments. However, the most exciting new feature of SAN HQ is our integration with the Dell Services SupportAssist offering. Dell SupportAssist functionality can accelerate and streamline the resolution of issues. This initial release of SupportAssist for EqualLogic SAN HQ collects, analyzes and sends key diagnostic information to Dell Tech Support (building on the functionality called SAN Assist in SAN HQ 2.5) and automatically creates support cases when certain technical issues arise, such as drive failures. As part of our vision for proactive, automated enterprise support, we will continue to build out further SupportAssist capabilities for EqualLogic.
My second favorite time-worn phrase without a doubt is the latter half of “Formula for success: under promise and over deliver.”[2] I diligently sit in on the planning teams for my products to make sure I understand exactly what will be delivered and when it will come to fruition to make sure I can communicate the right information to you. Consistently, I am impressed with the dedication of our engineers to providing the features they have promised and with the Quality Assurance team’s tenacity in ensuring that features are thoroughly tested prior to release. We do our level best to make sure we deliver software tools to make your work life easier.
At Dell, we take working smart seriously. So much so, that we have a Storage engineering team dedicated to promoting the sharing of information and best practices. You can keep up with their latest findings on the Dell Tech Center Storage Wiki. More EqualLogic technical content, produced by Marketing, Engineering, and Solution Partners can be found on this landing page. Also, please join our Tech Center Chats (every Tuesday afternoon from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. CST) so you can connect with our technical experts and provide input that will help us learn how to better enable your enterprise. As always, you can download the latest EqualLogic software releases from our support site with a valid support contract.
I’m happy to be here in San Jose (and out of the Texas heat) and thrilled to talk to our customers and partners about the benefits not only of EqualLogic hardware products, but of the all-inclusive software included with each of the EqualLogic PS Series arrays. If you are at DEF this week, stop by the EqualLogic booth in the Expo. I’d love to meet you in person! You can also find me on Twitter (@CookieAtDell) and communicate with our EqualLogic Social Media team through the @EqualLogic handle. Stay up to date with the rest of the Dell Storage community via Facebook and Twitter.