Arraya Insights

April 20, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Imagine a world where IT issues stuck to a 9-5 schedule. How about we make that 9:30 to give IT pros a chance to have that first cup of coffee and ease into the day? Sounds great, but we all know that issues can crop up anywhere, at any time.

Providing around-the-clock technical support sounds daunting, however it’s the foundation Arraya’s Managed Help Desk service is built on. We like to say this service extends the reach of Help Desk by linking them with our team of experts. This assessment goes beyond specializations and skills. In short, when your onsite support clocks out for the day, our team stays engaged, allowing internal IT to rest easy knowing we’ve got eyes on the environment.

Check out three scenarios where Arraya’s Managed Help Desk can make a difference.

Situation #1: ‘It’s after midnight and something just broke.’ As we mentioned above, IT problems don’t care about things like “regular business hours” or “sleep schedules.” Earlier this year, Twitter engineers were pressed into service at 3:40 a.m. EST to correct an internal code change which resulted in a range of problems, including service outages. It took over six hours to resolve the issue. PayPal experienced a similar issue late last year when a data center lost power, taking its servers offline for more than two hours, beginning at 1 a.m. EST.

Few companies have the volume of resources at their disposal or the industry-cachet of a Twitter or a PayPal. If a change doesn’t work as planned or the power unexpectedly goes out, it can easily spiral into a catastrophic event instead of a disruption.

Arraya’s team can monitor all facets of the IT environment, covering mission-critical apps and devices, network and security concerns, and more. Should something go wrong, our team can either spring into action and begin remediation efforts or escalate it to the appropriate resource. Whatever the case, this can help mitigate the fallout from incidents no matter what time they occur.

Situation #2: ‘Bob from Sales is having connectivity issues in California.’ Remote employees want tech issues solved right away, even if it’s first light where they are and the Help Desk is three time zones over. This expectation could come into play even more often as the Global Business Travel Association predicts business travel volume will grow by 2.5%, while spending will increase by 5.2% this year.

Employees spending more hours on the road often translates to more calls to the Help Desk. Making sure someone is available to field those calls can be a challenge – without a hand from Arraya’s Managed Help Desk, that is. Our 24/7, 365 days-a-year availability means our team is ready no matter what time zone an employee calls from.

Bonus: Even though our team is always just a call away, not all problems require the hand of the Help Desk. Some issues can be taken care of by users themselves – with the proper guidance, of course. Our Managed Help Desk’s comprehensive knowledge base lets users search through proven solutions to see if anything matches their needs. Providing this self-service option reduces call volume and gets users back to work that much faster.

Situation #3: ‘This is going to affect users at our Alaska facility … and our New York facility.’ It’s getting harder to quantify what counts as a regular workday. Technology has allowed businesses to spread their operations across multiple locations. Some of these varied locations may not have onsite IT of their own. Whether it’s supporting road warriors or workers based in multiple time zones, the challenge to IT remains the same.

We’ve already mentioned how our team’s 24/7 availability makes helping users across time zones a breeze. However, there’s additional value to be found in our service.

Our team is committed to ensuring continuity between the services we provide and those delivered by a company’s own Help Desk. Every interaction a business’ employees have with our team is designed to feel like it’s coming from the company itself. This ensures an immediate comfort level between our support team and end users.

Award-winning Help Desk support

Arraya’s Managed Help Desk offering is backed by our award-winning Managed Services team. For three years running, our team has been named to CRN’s Managed Service Provider (MSP) 500 list in the MSP Elite 150 category. This list recognizes Managed Service providers who consistently excel at steering customers through the multifaceted and constantly-evolving world of IT to achieve outstanding results.

Ready to start a conversation around after-hours support or about Managed Help Desk in general? Click HERE to speak with a member of our team. We can also be reached directly through our social media accounts: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Be sure to follow us on each to keep up with our latest company news, special offers, events, and more.

April 13, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Help Desks are feeling the pressure. Business’ technological needs are expanding at a dizzying rate. Employees are seeking greater and greater flexibility, both in terms of where they can work from and the devices they can use to do their jobs. In many cases, supporting these transitions has stretched traditional Help Desk environments to the breaking point.

Consider these points:

Spiking interest in mobility: The number of employees who regularly work from home has increased by a staggering 103% since 2005, according to research by GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics
Tough-to-fill positions: Indeed found that 88% of open tech positions remain open for at least 60 days before they can be filled
Increasing burnout risk: The average workweek for IT pros clocks in at roughly 52 hours, according to a Spiceworks study

Whether staffers are working longer hours because a project demands it, or because the team is short-staffed, either way, the potential for mistakes and burnout is dangerously high. Businesses in need of help on the Help Desks needn’t run that risk. One option they have is increasing the size of the existing Help Desk.

Another option? Managed Help Desk from Arraya Solutions.

Our Managed Help Desk service links existing Help Desk teams with our award-winning Managed Services team. Our team expands upon the experience, skillsets, or simply the number of free hands those teams need to better serve end users.

So what’s the best option for your team? New hire or Managed Help Desk? Here’s a closer look at what each of these options means for businesses:

Give your Help Desk a boost

Arraya’s Managed Services team works closely with customers to learn their business, their industry, and their unique pain points. Once that baseline exists, our team can function as an extension of onsite IT pros – taking work off their plates, providing guidance, and more.

The skill and ROI our team delivers is exemplified by our place on CRN’s Managed Service Provider 500 list, in the MSP Elite 150 category – a distinction we’ve achieved three years running. This annual list celebrates managed service providers who excel at helping their customers become more efficient and better-suited to thrive in today’s high-tech business world.

To learn more about Managed Help Desk, as well as the full line of Managed Services we offer, visit us at http://www.arrayasolutions.com/service/managed-services/. To start a conversation with us today, visit us at http://www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/ or through social media, on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

April 11, 2016 by Arraya Insights

VMware recently released a few dates concerning its vSphere family of products. If your business makes use of any of those tools and the following dates aren’t marked on your calendar, you’ll likely want to add them ASAP.

Date	Why It’s Noteworthy
March 31, 2016	All versions of vSphere Enterprise and vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise hit End of Availability. Now that we’re in April 2016, these products will only be purchasable under special circumstances.
March 12, 2020	vSphere Enterprise 6.0 goes End of support, meaning businesses who haven’t upgraded will be on their own.
February 10, 2016 – June 25, 2016	To aid the transition from legacy versions of vSphere Enterprise and vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise, VMware is offering existing customers 50% off vSphere Enterprise Plus and vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus upgrades during this window.

The vSphere Enterprise Plus advantage

If your business is looking to upgrade a vSphere Enterprise or vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise deployment, that 50% discount means there’s likely not going to be a better time to do so. If your business is considering making the move to vSphere for the first time, vSphere Enterprise Plus or vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus will soon be the only enterprise-class options on the market.

Besides the aforementioned ticking clocks, here are six other reasons upgrading to Enterprise Plus versions of vSphere makes so much sense for businesses:

Amplified ease-of-management. Each of these solutions features distributed switches which, unlike standard virtual switches, bring provisioning, administration, and monitoring duties all under one roof. This is achieved using cluster-level network aggregation. The end result is simplified networking, configuration – and it can even lead to additional capacity.
Guaranteed resource availability. Both solutions offer I/O controls surrounding network and storage. These tools monitor network and storage I/O loads and, should the need arise, allocate additional resources to virtual machines to cover any shortages which threaten service quality.
Streamlined host profile configuration/deployment. In each solution, host profile settings are saved and stored as a template which can be used to guide future host configurations and deployments. Also, any changes made to host configurations will be monitored and, should a change result in a compliance risk, IT will be notified.
Increased peace-of-mind around critical components. The Reliable Memory feature analyzes a facility’s supported hardware and determines the dependability of these pieces. Critical mechanisms (such as hypervisors) are stored on hardware deemed to be most reliable, reducing the chance of accessibility issues.
Optimized resource and energy consumption. The solutions’ Distributed Resources Scheduler (DRS) and Distributed Power Management (DPM) features keep a business’ resource and energy use in check. DRS takes business priorities into consideration and automatically adjusts workloads across hosts accordingly. Meanwhile, DPM recognizes usage peaks and valleys and powers down hosts during slow periods.
Built for Big Data. Both solutions make it easy for businesses to wield the data-crunching capabilities of Hadoop, which runs directly on vSphere. Also, vSphere’s Big Data Extensions give IT pros a common platform from which they can deploy and manage Hadoop workloads.

A partner in upgrading vSphere

Summer is right around the corner and, when it gets here, it will mean the end of VMware’s discount on vSphere Enterprise and vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise upgrades.

Arraya is a VMware Premier Partner and we stand ready to answer any questions you have about these solutions and help step you through the upgrade process. Get the ball rolling by starting a dialogue with our knowledgeable VMware team about not only the benefits mentioned above, but the full slate of advantages vSphere Enterprise Plus has in store.

Our team can also be reached on social media: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

April 6, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Recently, members of the Arraya Solutions team made the cross-country trek to the Cisco Partner Summit in San Diego, CA. The week-long event featured plenty of announcements and sessions likely to pique the interest of Cisco customers and end users alike. Now that our team members have had ample time to review their notes, digest what was discussed, and shake off the last vestiges of jet lag, here’s a look at some of the top stories they encountered during the Cisco Partner Summit.

Digital Network Architecture (DNA)

One of the biggest announcements came during Day 2 at Cisco Partner Summit. It involved the release of Digital Network Architecture (DNA), an open, forward-thinking, and software-driven architecture. DNA provides organizations with the groundwork necessary to thrive in today’s increasingly digital business landscape. Cisco designed DNA with five “guiding principles” in mind, specifically:

Free organizations to execute services on premises or in the cloud – regardless of whether the service itself has a physical or virtual base
Change how organizations manage their networks by introducing automation to simplify deployment, management, and maintenance duties
Increase the availability of analytical insight into the network itself, IT infrastructure, and the business as a whole
Create a “best-of-both-worlds” solution – the security of on premises and the openness of the cloud – by using cloud-based service management to unify network management
Join together a diverse collection of net-connected applications to create an open and malleable solution

Next-Gen Nexus Switches & Software

During Cisco Partner Summit, the tech leader also unveiled a series of updates to its line of Nexus switches and software solutions. These improvements all have at least one thing in common: bringing higher performance to Nexus-users. Let’s take these Nexus announcements one at a time:

The brand new Nexus 9000 switches sport some impressive features, including:

Industry-leading 100Gbps performance coupled with an increase in reliability and power consumption – at a lower cost than similar solutions
Sharper security driven by real time network telemetry capabilities
Scalability of up to ten times for cloud-scale IP addresses and end points, and support for over a million containers per rack
Software updates are coming to Nexus 7000 switches to deliver ACI functionality, allowing customers to gain even more value from existing deployments
New Nexus 3000 data center switches which break fresh ground in terms of performance for customers dependent on merchant silicon-based solutions
Cisco Nexus Fabric Manager brings valuable, time-saving automation to fabric lifecycle management tasks (configuration, deployment)

Hyperflex: A leap forward for hyperconverged

The final announcement from Cisco Partner Summit we want to highlight centers on Cisco’s Hyperflex system, which is being touted as the industry’s “first complete end-to-end” hyperconverged tool. Hyperflex has its roots in Cisco UCS and represents a great option for customers looking for a:

platform capable of bringing enterprise-grade applications to data centers and remote locations
solution designed to make an immediate impact, slashing rollouts to minutes as opposed to days
smaller data center footprint without having to sacrifice performance or break their IT budgets in the process

Discuss Cisco Partner Summit innovations

These are just some of the changes coming out of the Cisco Partner Summit. If you want to talk more about them – or any of the week’s other big announcements, our award-winning Cisco team is only a click away. Visit www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/ now to get the conversation started.

Or, reach out to Arraya on any of our social media accounts: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

April 4, 2016 by Arraya Insights

In case you aren’t familiar with Okta, it front ends SaaS based applications with a single point of login. This is very similar to a Microsoft product called Azure Active Directory Premium, which has an App Panel for the same functionality. The one advantage that Okta has is that it likely has a more robust insight into cloud usage patterns as a whole and therefore can not only show Microsoft products, but a wide range of vendor solutions.

Fairly regularly, Okta will release a report on cloud usage and perform customer interviews to determine cloud usage patterns for Enterprises. The latest report was released and it shows good news for the Microsoft faithful. According to Okta, Office 365 is the most popular app they connect to.

https://www.okta.com/Businesses-At-Work/2016-03/

As you can see, Office 365 overtook Box in summer 2014 and then took the overall lead by surpassing SalesForce by early 2015. It doesn’t appear that another vendor will overtake Office 365 based on the trends. At Arraya, we’re not seeing nearly as many Exchange on-premises installs as Office 365 migrations anymore. It is rare, I’d say once a quarter, where a customer is looking for Exchange on-premises. The first real insight of this report is that the tipping point has definitely been reached.

What is most surprising is the number of Enterprise customers with Office 365 and Google Apps for Work. The most common reason given by companies for this is that different groups use different collaboration platforms. While this is a great thing about the cloud, it can cause IT headaches, especially from a management and security perspective. My personal feeling is that this will start changing and organizations will pick one or the other.

The most revealing fact is that 30% of companies subscribe to Office 365 because it is now the easiest way to license Office Pro Plus. Let’s think about what this really means.

There are a couple of reasons companies move to Google Apps, but the main reason I’ve seen is perceived cost savings. Google is $5 or $10/user/month while Microsoft has a range of options. Let’s not talk about why this is a bad way to look at this, since I’ve covered it before. Instead, what does this really show?

It appears to show that Google’s cloud productivity offering doesn’t match an Enterprise solution like Office, at least for 30% of the companies out there. While Google Apps for Work does come with an offline version of their cloud software (via Chrome) even this isn’t enough.

These companies are effectively running two productivity platforms and the corresponding infrastructure. With Office Pro Plus, there is a user tied to the license, which means they are likely synchronizing their Active Directory to both Google Apps and Office 365 (Azure Active Directory Basic).

Where did the savings go from going with Google Apps? You’ve just dashed your financials by NOT leveraging their productivity suite.

This is what makes Office 365 such a great sell. From top to bottom, it is an enterprise class solution. If you’re really considering Google Apps for Work, you need to be asking yourself if your culture can take less than what Office can offer or will you fall into the 30% that can’t?

There’s one more set of statistics I’d like to discuss. The Office 365 and Google Apps usage by industry.

https://www.okta.com/Businesses-At-Work/2016-03/

What jumps out at me immediately is that Google doesn’t have the edge on Education that I thought they did. Clearly, Microsoft has made serious inroads here. The more interesting figure though is around Nonprofits.

Both Microsoft and Google offer free tiers for Nonprofits. For Microsoft, the free version does NOT include the Office software, but it is available at $2/user/month for up to 300 users. What amazes me here is that given the choice of free and a 1:1 comparison between Microsoft and Google, Nonprofits choose Office 365.

On another note, companies with potentially sensitive data, Finance, Biotechnology and Hospitals and Health Care are also choosing Office 365.

I encourage you to go read the full Okta report. It is a fascinating insight into the ongoing migration to the cloud. If there is one thing this report is screaming out, it’s that email has absolutely become a commodity service. It comes in as the number one app that is fronted by Okta. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone paying attention to the cloud story. A lot of companies start here and add on other features later. As the cloud continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see what jumps out next!

March 31, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Sometimes the shortest path from customer to ex-customer runs through a business’ call center. No matter if they’re calling for support, additional info, or some other need, a bad call center experience can inspire a customer to consider other options. The opposite is also true – positive call center experiences can be vital to keeping customers in the fold.

How vital? Consider these findings from Deloitte’s 2015 Global Contact Center Survey:

85% of survey respondents see customer experience as a competitive differentiator (up from 62% in 2013)
50% of respondents feel that call centers play a primary role in customer retention
43% of respondents say their call centers play a secondary role in customer retention
only 7% say call centers play no role in retaining customers

The consensus is clear: Businesses believe contact centers hold tremendous sway over customer behavior. In response to that growing value, 96% of organizations surveyed by Deloitte expect to expand their call centers in the next two years.

Better customer service through Unified CCX

Businesses mustn’t only focus on the size of teams or facilities when they consider call center expansions. Today’s customers – much like today’s employees – demand flexibility and speed. In order to build stronger, longer-lasting relationships with customers, businesses need to take those demands into consideration and grow and evolve their call centers accordingly.

Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (Unified CCX) can address those needs, bettering customer relationships by transforming call centers into powerful omni-channel contact centers. Here are five examples of how it does that:

Computer-telephony integration – Unified CCX features Cisco’s Finesse, a desktop solution capable of streamlining the flow of information to ensure agents have access to what they need to better serve customers. Finesse can be used as a jumping off point for CRM integration, allowing for advanced features such as relaying applicable customer information to agents via pop ups. These alerts can include information such as recent purchases, applicable special offers, etc.
Video-driven customer service – The inclusion of Cisco’s Jabber Guest puts customers face-to-face with customer service agents. This feature builds lasting relationships by enabling contact centers to deliver a more personal brand of service than they ever could before. Beyond the ability to put faces to names, video support allows customers and agents to see what the other sees, cutting down on confusion and allowing for faster, more satisfying service experiences.
Self-service functionality – Unified CCX gives customers multiple self-service features, including interactive voice response, dual-tone multifrequency processing, and automatic speech recognition. These tools allow customers to take greater control over their service experience. Should support personnel involvement be required, self-service features can still help better focus call routing, leading to shorter call times.
Next-generation reporting – Cisco’s Unified Intelligence Center gives contact centers access to historical and real-time reports and dashboards. These are available out-of-the-box, but users can also design custom reports based on their organization’s needs. This up-to-the-minute access to end-to-end metrics and trends allows contact centers to know where they stand in terms of performance and where adjustments can be made.
Social media monitoring – Cisco’s SocialMiner is a standalone option available with Unified CCX which helps businesses stay on top of customer interactions conducted through social media channels. Lacking an appropriate or timely response on social media can be a black eye for modern businesses. SocialMiner lets organizations easily locate customer queries or complaints, respond in real time, and track these interactions with detailed metrics and reports.

Bring Cisco’s Unified CCX home

Want to learn more about Unified CCX? Visit http://www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/ to begin a dialogue with our team of Cisco experts. All told, our team has decades of experience supporting every facet of the Cisco solution stack, including with assisting businesses on their journey from limited call centers into fully-realized, omni-channel contact centers.

Our team can also be reached via social media: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

March 30, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Microsoft just made protecting VMware virtual machines (VMs) in the Azure cloud as seamless as possible – and it did so while lowering cost of ownership and improving manageability. Those are some of the takeaways from a recent announcement by the tech giant concerning the enhanced VMware-to-Azure functionality that has come to Azure Site Recovery (ASR). The new features should make ASR even more appealing to businesses in need of a reliable disaster recovery (DR) strategy or those who are looking to reduce DR spend without sacrificing performance.

This update has been in private preview since October 2015. Since that time, Microsoft has been working to incorporate user feedback to further hone ASR for VMware. Now that it’s finally available for mass-consumption, let’s focus on four new capabilities we believe are the most significant:

No constantly-running IaaS components/appliances. Azure compute resources are only utilized in two specific situations: in the event of a failover or during a migration to Azure. The same goes for VMs provisioning. As for app data, it’s replicated securely and directly to a customer’s Azure storage. This arrangement is key to keeping the cost-of-ownership down.
Simplicity matched with scalability. On-prem components are tied together in a MSI-based unified setup, decreasing the process of replicating to Azure to a few measly steps. This eliminates much of the hassle often associated with replication solutions. As for growth, the solution’s scale-out mode extends on-going protection and replication across multiple high-churn workloads.
Non-disruptive recovery testing. ASR provides near-immediate VM failover testing, a feature that won’t interfere with on-going replication or production workloads. This gives IT some much-needed peace of mind that, should something go wrong, ASR will perform exactly as expected.
ASR-integrated failback. VMs are replicated back to on-prem ESXi environment. Then, they can be set to failback to either their original location, or an alternate, once an issue has been properly addressed. This allows IT to gradually step operations back to normal following an IT incident.

Cheat sheet for Azure VMware upgrades

Those are four main enhancements, but they’re not the only changes coming as part of this VMware-to-Azure upgrade. Luckily, Microsoft provided this high-level, “cheat sheet” to help businesses get a better look at all of the new features.

Courtesy of Microsoft

ASR gives companies a flexible path to do DR in the cloud. It eliminates added expenses and management complexities of traditional DR strategies, which can involve multiple data centers. By sharpening ASR’s capabilities around VMware VMs, Microsoft showed a willingness to extend these benefits and first-class protection to virtualization solutions outside of its own Hyper-V.

Have questions about what this announcement means for your company? Want to learn more about Microsoft’s ASR and its VMware enhancements? You can start a conversation with our Microsoft team today by clicking HERE. The knowledge and skill of our team members spans the entirety of the Microsoft product stack, something that has helped Arraya twice earn Microsoft’s Rising Star award for our region.

Our team can also be reached through social media. Arraya can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. While you’re there, be sure to click the “follow” or “like” button to keep up with our latest blogs, special events, and company news.

March 23, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Data. It’s essentially the lifeblood that every organization has in common. Every day, businesses take more in, send more out, and make more themselves. Without data, we’d all be very far up a not so scenic creek with nowhere to go. Considering the value and volume of all of that data, it’s no surprise cyber criminals have ramped up their efforts lately. As I mentioned in a previous post, making sure that only the correct people can access data, through the correct devices, and do the correct things with it, is a highly-involved job.

But what happens when there’s a breach? What happens when our data is lost, stolen, or accidentally deleted? A case can be made that protecting our data is just as important as how prepared we are to respond to each of those hypotheticals. A key element of this is having a comprehensive backup and recovery strategy in place.

The amount of data we maintain and the speed of business necessitates that partial backups occur during weekday nights and full backups happen over the weekend. Unfortunately, data breaches and the hackers who perpetrate them aren’t keen on following a set schedule. Breaches can occur at any moment and so IT must be prepared to respond to these intrusions at a moment’s notice. Getting to that state requires proper planning, as well as the appropriate tools and know-how.

Here’s the good news: Arraya Solutions has a cloud backup service that can help. It’s called Protect and it features:

Off-site and out-of-reach data storage: Protect takes a business’ data and stores it in the cloud, but not quite in the traditional sense. Our protected data is housed locally (in the area) under heavy lock and key. This approach puts our customers at rest because they know exactly where their data is at all times (even down to the address). However, it remains a mystery to any unwanted guests. Entrusting your data to an organization like Arraya, one which uses a different set of credentials, effectively shrinks the attack surface. This way, if your business’ credentials are compromised, IT will at least know that the business’ backups aren’t also at risk.
Backup and recovery specialists at the ready: Even simple restores can be a burden if data isn’t protected properly – or if IT’s to do list is particularly jammed. Things only get tougher when you look at more complex data such as SQL and email. Our Managed Services team has been recognized as one of the best in our area. Every single day, our engineers handle backups and restores of all complexities, for organizations in a multitude of industries. They’ll work closely with onsite IT teams to understand an organization’s needs and then ensure those needs are consistently met.
Lightning fast backup and recovery: In the event that the worst happens, our Protect service will put your business on the road to recovery as quickly as possible. Clients that utilize our platform typically see a full backup completed in under 10 minutes. This applies to all data types and sizes, from a few GB to multiple TBs. This speed is almost unheard of for in-house applications especially over the internet.

If you’d like to learn more about how Protect secures your data in the cloud, reach out to us at: http://www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/. From there, you’ll be put in touch with a member of our team who can answer any questions you have about Protect and show you how your organization can benefit from making the switch to cloud-based backup and recovery.

March 22, 2016 by Arraya Insights

This year was supposed to be the Year of the Monkey, however, EMC took things in a different direction with its recent VMAX All-Flash and DSSD D5 announcements. All of sudden, 2016 has become the Year of All-Flash for Primary Storage as the data storage giant expands its flash portfolio. With the elevation of all-flash, EMC seems ready to relegate traditional disk storage to a support role, entrusting it to handle organizations’ bulk and archive needs.

EMC’s news revolved around a re-engineered take on VMAX and the launch of a completely new category of flash in “Rack-Scale Flash Storage.” At the forefront of this new category is EMC’s DSSD D5 architecture. Let’s dive-in and explore the features of VMAX and DSSD D5 as well as some possible use cases for each.

New Release #1: VMAX All-Flash

Who Should Be Interested: VMAX All-Flash should interest businesses looking for a solution capable of consolidating storage workloads split between block and file types and/or businesses that also require up to “six-nines” availability and four petabytes of scalable storage capacity.

Features/Benefits:

Includes Write Folding technology to improve the durability of flash while also boosting performance
Scales easily due to V-Brick building blocks – each of which includes one VMAX engine and up to 500 TBs of capacity – that can be combined to increase usable storage
Available in two all-flash models:
- EMC VMAX All-Flash 450, which consists of anywhere from one-to-four V-Bricks
- EMC VMAX All-Flash 850, which consists of up to eight V-Bricks
VMAX All-Flash 450 and VMAX All-Flash 850 are each offered in two distinct package levels to better address customer needs:
- F packages (base level) include:
  - A streamlined management experience through Unisphere, EMC’s unified storage management solution
  - Thin provisioning to optimize storage space utilization
  - Support for Virtual Volumes (VVols) and SnapVX
  - Data protection and copy data management services delivered via AppSync
- FX packages (top level) include:
  - Features standard to F-level packages
  - Remote replication and disaster recovery provided by EMC’s SRDF Suite
  - At-rest data encryption
  - EMC’s ViPR solution for automating and improving the manageability of storage devices
  - A secure path to the cloud forged by EMC’s solution
- Integrates with a wide variety of industry-leading apps, including those from VMware, Microsoft, and more
VMAX All-Flash By the Numbers
- Capable of carrying millions of IOPS and read/write workloads
- Can clock in at 500 microseconds of latency
- Supports 150 GB/s of bandwidth

New Release #2: DSSD D5

Who Should Be Interested: DSSD D5 is perfect for businesses in need of top-flight performance and latency to support either traditional projects or cutting-edge endeavors such as big data.

Features/Benefits:

Uses NVMe-driven connections and PCIe networking to meet the elite performance levels today’s businesses demand: latency as low as 100 microseconds, 100 GB/s of bandwidth, and IOPS of 10 million in a 5U system
Shrinks data center footprints and TCO by providing up to 100 TB of usable capacity in a lone 5U chassis
Increases application uptime by way of features such as dual-ported client cards, dual H/A controllers, redundant components, and more
Multiple connectivity options (Flood Direct Memory APIs, blocker drivers, etc.) allow a range of applications to benefit from the speed and performance boosts of DSSD D5
Performance increases enable businesses to expand their horizons, making real time analytics and applications possible and highly-complex problems solvable
Boosts speeds for even the most data-intensive processes by up to 10X compared with competitors in the flash arena

Are VMAX and DSSD D5 right for you?

Ready to celebrate the “Year of All-Flash” by making the move to flash as your primary storage option? Or would you like to talk more about these and other EMC storage solutions to determine which path is the right direction for your company? Click HERE to connect with our highly-skilled and knowledgeable EMC team members. They can answer your questions and work with you to decide on the best course of action.

Also, our team can be reached directly through any of our social media accounts – Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Be sure to follow us on each to keep up with our latest blog posts, special events, and industry insights.

March 18, 2016 by Arraya Insights

I first heard the term “Unescorted Cloud Migration” from our VP of Enterprise Infrastructure, Ryan Benner. It instantly sparked a number of ideas and clicked several things in my mind around challenges I see customers having in adopting cloud solutions. This article is the first part of an ongoing series around different scenarios where Arraya can help customers avoid the pitfalls of an Unescorted Cloud Migration.

Today’s topic is Azure. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform, covering PaaS, IaaS and even SaaS in some cases through Azure Marketplace. It is a massive topic to cover with customers, which leads me to believe this is the reason a lot of customers are struggling with where to begin.

Azure is extremely easy to consume, but IT may not be the primary driver. As a result, you find business units and application developers expensing it on credit cards. When we are out talking to customers, it is usually IT coming to us to find out more about the solution because someone else brought it in first. This can certainly lead to some uncomfortable conversations around progress vs. security and IT’s control.

Having an application developer leverage Azure for non-production apps is a great entry point, but if a business unit has deployed something out there, you need a cloud strategy quickly before things get out of your control. Your first instinct may be to take extreme measures, such as shutting down the application, but by this point it is too late.

The second thing IT will do after realizing they can’t shut it down, is attempt to embrace it. Enter the Unescorted Cloud Migration!

You only start out on your cloud journey once. While it does evolve over time, you have one chance to get it right from the start. This is where a partner like Arraya can help. We’ve helped customers manage their cloud lifecycle right from the start so you can avoid the pitfalls of an Unescorted Cloud Migration and we have a new offering to help!

There are two workloads that we find resonate with customers and we’ve worked with Microsoft to design two quick-fire engagements to set them up for success while providing business value.

Business Continuity/Disaster Recover – Many customers have struggled to keep DR as part of their strategy in the past few years. While DR has traditionally been complex and costly to implement, that is no longer the case with Azure. Through Azure Site Recovery, you can protect VMWare, Hyper-V or physical servers to either another location or right into Azure! Piloting with disaster recovery makes a lot of sense because you are testing and replicating workloads, not just moving up production data immediately. It also provides immediate safeguards and benefits in the event of a disaster.

Dev/Test Workloads – Part of the reason virtualization was so prevalent in the 2000’s was the ability to instantly add development and test capacity to your infrastructure. This gets even easier with the cloud. By building a solid foundation on Azure Iaas, you can easily spin up (or have your developers) spin up resources to test out production workloads. The best part is that utilization and cost are now tied directly to projects, so IT and the business units can balance this against budgets and revenue.

Azure can be daunting. It is so broad that it is easy to get confused and figure out where to start. We believe one of these engagements will likely result in you taking your first steps on your cloud journey, or result in you taking control back of your environment. Reach out to us at mssales@arrayasolutions.com to schedule one of these engagements today and avoid an Unescorted Cloud Migration!