How to Execute a Successful Proof-of-Concept in the Dell Solution Centers A Dell White Paper Kris Applegate Solution Architect Dell Solution Centers
THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. 2015 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this material in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden. For more information, contact Dell. Dell, the DELL logo, and the DELL badge are trademarks of Dell Inc. Intel and eon are registered trademarks of Intel Corp. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and trade names other than its own. February 2015 2 Dell Whitepaper
Table of contents 1 Introduction... 4 2 Know Your Options... 5 3 Plan Your Proof-of-Concept... 6 Product(s)/Solution(s) to Test... 6 Examples:... 6 Success Criteria... 6 Examples:... 6 Hardware Needs... 6 Examples:... 7 Software Needs... 7 Examples:... 7 Access Criteria... 7 Test Tools... 7 Examples:... 7 Test Plan... 7 Example:... 8 Roles and Responsibilities... 8 Example:... 8 Timeline... 9 Example:... 9 4 PoC Template..10 3 Dell Whitepaper
1 Introduction The Dell Solution Centers are a global network of connected labs that allow Dell to help customers architect, validate and build solutions. With footprints in every region, they can help you whether through an informal 30-60 minute briefing, a longer half-day workshop, or even on to a proof-of-concept that would allow you to kick the tires of your solution prior to signing on the dotted line. Simply engage with your account team and have them submit a request to get started today.. 4 Dell Whitepaper
2 Know Your Options Prior to beginning to plan your Proof-of-Concept (PoC) it s a good idea to make sure you have been exposed to all your options with regard to the solutions that Dell offers. Whether through one-on-one conversations with your account team, Executive Briefing Center engagements, or through briefing or workshops in the Dell Solution Centers, you have several options for hearing about solutions available in the Dell portfolio. It s critical to plan all of the steps in your test to make sure you take advantage of your time testing the pertitent features and options of a given product. 5 Dell Whitepaper
3 Plan Your Proof-of-Concept There are a couple of key items to have in place and outlined prior to starting any PoC. Here are some areas that we ve deinfed as critical to success: Product(s)/Solution(s) to Test Take time to familiarize yourself with the solutions so that you know what it is you want to test. Identifying this early will help make sure that the proper resources at the DSC are enaged to assist you. Examples: Dell Cloudera Apache Hadoop Solution Dell Wyse Datacenter for VMWare Horizon View Dell Compellent Storage SC4020 All-Flash Array Dell Red Hat Openstack Cloud Solution Success Criteria We encourage you to outline how you will define success at the end of this PoC. This is generally an indicator as to whether or not you ll proceed to purchase the tested solution. Most customers conduct either functional testing, performance testing, or a combination of the two. You might identify hitting a specific performance number or validating that a product feature meets your needs. Examples: Achieve 1000 sustained IOPS with 4k Random Reads Successfully take a Compellent Snapshot of my Microsoft SQL Database without downtime Provision 1000 task-worker desktops sustaining 9 IOPS per user Hardware Needs Prepare a detailed list of the equipment you ll be asking the Solution Center or your Account team to provide. The Solution Center will do their best to accomadate where they can. It is be a good idea to have some alternatives in mind if there isn t a specific match to the component you re planning to test. 6 Dell Whitepaper
Examples: Dell Compellent SC8000 with Dual Controllers and (8) 400 GB SLC Disks, (16) 600 GB 10K RPM Disks, and (12) 2TB 7.2K RPM SATA Disks (2) Dell Powered R730Ds with (24) 1TB 7.2K RPM SATA Disks, 256 GB RAM, (2) Intel E5-2630v3, Dual PERC 730P Controllers, and (2) 10 GbE Network adapters Dell M1000E Blade Chassis with (3) Dell PowerEdge M630 Blades with Any Processor / Memory Combination Software Needs Much in the same way as above, this outlines the specific software needs. Examples: Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server 7.0 x86_64 with all patches to date Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Dell TOAD Datapoint 3.5 Access Criteria PoCs can be run in-person at one of our Dell Solution Center locations or they can be accessed remotely. This section identifies how many VPN Accounts you would need if you re accessing the PoC remotely. Examples: (1) Room in the Chicago Dell Solution Center with (3) customers for (1) week (3) VPN Acounts for the following individuals: 1. John Smith, 2. Steve Jones, 3. Sally Taylor Test Tools Prepare a list of the tools that you will use to help you meet your success criteria. These might be benchmarking or functional testing tools. Additionally Dell Solution Architects at the Dell Solution Centers will readily help you identify the tools we ve used ourselves in the past. Examples: IOMeter for Microsoft Windows 1.1.0 Phoronix Test Suite 5.4.1 Test Plan 7 Dell Whitepaper
This is a general step by step of how you (or agents acting on your behalf) will be executing the tests using the above supplied configurations. Example: (1) Create (2) 12-Drive RAID 10 Virtual Disks on the R730D on the front drives and (1) RAID 1 on the 2 Rear Flexbay drives. Set the VD on the rear drives as the boot device. (2) Install Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server 7.0 x86_64 to the rear drives using the default partitioning schema. (3) Format the two VDs up front with ET4 and mount them under /data/1 and /data/2 respectively. (4) Install IOMeter on the system and execute 20 cycles of the 4k Random Read IO Profile test and log the results. Roles and Responsibilities This section clearly outlines how best to identify who is responsible for each phase of the PoC. This allows all parties visibility into what is being asked of them before they join the testing team. Having the outline in place will help to save time and clears up any confusion or miscommunication. Example: Task Send Eval Hardware to DSC Provision Hardware Install Operating Systems Install Cloudera Hadoop Execute Intel Big Bench Test Dell Solution Center Dell Account Team Customer Partner (Cloudera) 8 Dell Whitepaper
Timeline In this section you identify how long you plan to give for the above parties to perform their requisite steps. Keep in mind that most PoCs in the DSC take about a week to setup (once the equipment is availabe) and can run for one to two weeks in some cases. Example: Week 1: DSC to provision hardware, install Operating Systems, and provde access to the customer. Week 2 Day 1-2: Cloudera to install CDH 5.3 on cluster. Week 2 Day 3-5: Cloudera and Customer to execute Big Bench test suite on the cluster. 9 Dell Whitepaper
4 Proof-of-Concept Template Product(s)/Solution(s) to Test Success Criteria Hardware Needs Software Needs Access Criteria Rooms at the DSC: VPN Accounts: Test Tools Test Plan 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Roles and Responsibilities Task DSC Account Team 1. Timeline 2. 3. 4. 5. Customer Partner We look forward to working with you on this important opportunity as you outline the steps necessary to identify the solution best suited to your needs. If there are questions, please contact us at: http://dell.com/solutioncenters 10 Dell Whitepaper