Demo virtual Equallogic PS6000 array available

If you’re a Dell/Equallogic partner you can finally have access to a software version of a PS6000 iSCSI array. This has been available internally at Dell since at least 2009 (the date of the included documentation) but it’s release to partners is very new – new enough that I has to alert them to the fact that the download they initially made available on 1/3/2012 had expired.

The demo has numerous restrictions – such as fifteen 1GB disks (don’t ask me what happened to 16!), it cannot be updated using Equallogic firmware, it automatically reboots every 10 days and (most importantly) expires 9 months after the demo was built. You’ll need to keep obtaining and installing updates every 9 months to continue using the demo.

The upside is you can quickly walk through the setup of an Equallogic array, incl iSCSI, snapshots, replication, multiple arrays setup in a group etc, the DeleteAllMyDataNow command etc.

The demo arrives as a .zip file containing a .vbs script and a directory full of components (incl documentation). The VBS script will build a directory with a .vmx file and fifteen VMDKs, allready to be fired up with VMware Player, Server, Workstation or imported into ESX/ESXi.

When you run the script it will prompt you to pick a directory.

New
Selecting a new directory will popup a confirmation to build a new demo

then the script will create the virtual machine

and prompt you when finished

Upgrade
If you pick an existing directory you’ll be prompted to upgrade the existing demo.

and it will also prompt when finished

Now just open the vmx file with your favorite VMware virtualization solution and go to town. I suggest VMware Workstation 8 with a custom NAT network for the demo Equallogics (you can group multiple demos together), your ESXi servers, vCenter etc.

If you’re not a Dell Partner you’re out of luck – but the NetApp demo is open to all (anyone can get a now.netapp.com account).

If you are a Dell partner head over to the partner site to get started. Note that you’ll need to sit through a couple of hours of training before you can get to the download.

Works pretty well as an iSCSI target, even supports VAAI.

Note: if you opt to set it up from the command line (“setup”) the default Equallogic username/password is grpadmin / grpadmin.
To shutdown from the command line just use “shutdown”
To reset the array use “reset” then “DeleteAllMyData”