New to EqualLogic SAN

Congratulations on the new purchase Mitchell.  You have yourself a great array with a lot of built-in functionality.  For the most up-to-date information on EqualLogic deployment, and usage, I’d go out to http://www.equallogic.com, and behind your login, you will find a lot of really good, current deployment guides.  Another great resource is the site that you posted on:  en.community.dell.com/techcenter  Dell has a great group of folks who are engaged in putting out good documentation to get going.

It will depend somewhat on what your interests are as to what direction you might want to look in.  Since you didn’t provide any details to your environment, I think it would be best to make sure that you have a correct switching infrastructure deployed so that whatever it is that is connected up to it, works the way it was designed.  If you can provide a little more detail as to the environment you are installing it in (vSphere?  …Hyper-V?  etc.) you might get more details responses.

You might also want to look at my blog at http://itforme.wordpress.com.  (shameless plug, I know)  I cover many aspects of using the EqualLogic arrays in a real world environment, including all of the built in tools like ASM/VE, ASM/ME, SANHQ, etc.  Switch configurations, Replication, etc.  These might serve well as a supplement to the current documentation provided by Dell.

Mitchellbailey,

What you will want to do is go to www.support.equallogic.com and create an account if you haven't done that yet. Then once you are logged in you can go to the resources section along the top and then to documentation. You can then navigate to the model of EQL array that you have. There you will find the install and setup guide as well as the hardware maintenance guide as well. If you have any other questions please let me know and I would be happy to assist.

Besides the EqualLogic support site that Kenny pointed you to (support.equallogic.com), there is also the Configuration Guide that is a good document and will give you a high-level overview, it's located here: en.community.dell.com/.../2639.equallogic-configuration-guide.aspx

Also, this link has additional information about the PS Array:

en.community.dell.com/.../2660.equallogic-technical-content.aspx

These links are updated regularly as the Firmware and/or Product features are added.

-joe

One other link you may find useful is the Dell Rapid EqualLogic Configuration Portal, this link gives you an overview of how you select the operating systems, switches, and arrays, and then has a link to the tools can help use with step by step instructions:

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2012/05/04/equallogic-recipes-for-success.aspx

-joe

Hi sketchty00,

Thanks for your response and the useful links!

To add more detail this is a greenfield project and so all the kit we've purchased is new. We have also bought 4x Dell PowerConnect 6224 Switches with stacking modules and 3x Dell PowerEdge R720 servers which will be the physical hosts for a VMware vSphere 5 environment. Windows domain will be Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 SP2, SQL 2008 and Citrix XenApp 6.5.

Mitch

Enjoy the project.  It sounds like fun.  I'm assuming you will be splitting off two of your switches for your LAN, and two for your SAN?  Take a look at: itforme.wordpress.com/.../reworking-my-powerconnect-6200-switches-for-my-iscsi-san for a simple configuration of the 6224's that work against the EqualLogic arrays.  

Thank you and yes, that was our plan. The link you've included is exactly what I was looking for! Thank you very much and I will keep you posted as to how the project goes.

Mitch