HDS kicks Hitachi-partner HP in the array

A senior HDS blogger says HP has added no value to its OEM'd P9500 storage array and that its supposedly unique APEX storage service level software isn't unique at all: HDS does the same thing. HDS (Hitachi Data Systems) is a wholly-owned Hitachi subsidiary responsible for selling and supporting Hitachi storage and server …

[Anonymous Coward]

Sums up the entire HP product line really.

Nothing more than a glorified reseller. It's a pity to see a once great innovating company reduced to a respray/OEM operation.. and the ink of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

EPIC FAIL

Glorified reseller?? HP now owns all the key technology that it sells - X9000, D2D, P4000, EVA and now 3PAR are all HP IP and, judging on the messaging at an event I went to last week, core to HP's strategy moving forward. You're going to see 3PAR squeezing the XP into a much smaller customer base. HDS are in trouble, make no mistake. A niche vendor in an increasingly converged marketplace. SUN have dropped the USP, HP will surely be selling 3PAR in a lot of places where they would have sold XP so HDS is pushing to be the only option for customers needing USP technology. BUT the key issue is, so few customers really need it or can afford it now. So the article says that HP do have a unique for HP-UX customers with the P9500. Where do HDS think HP have been selling most of their XP's for the past god knows how many years? I also think HDS will find that the updated management console was developed in conjunction with HP. So both HP and HDS's versions benefit but it's more than just a reseller r'ship. It might not be a differentiator for HP but what is HDS' differentiator?

[Anonymous Coward]

HP?

I've yet to see what value they bring at all!

A sad reflection of a once-great company.

[IO-IO]

Shock!

HP haven't added anything to the XP in the last few years, apart from cost.

Considering the acquisition of 3par this messaging from HDS doesn't come as a suprise.

The ship has sailed and HP are trying to find the life jacket.

[Anonymous Coward]

Screwing HDS...

No-added-value...

See Nexsan.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone's OEM'ing someones storage...

IBM OEM's netapp, LSI, etc... Their DS series is may or may not be better than the previous generation in reliability... Nothing new here.

[Barry Whyte]

OEM no more

Where have you been - IBM is back in organic storage - The Storwize V7000 is not OEM'd - its IBM - maybe the DS 4/5 of the past true. but no more...

[Anonymous Coward]

Storwize V7000 is OEM

I think you'll find that the Storwize V7000 is not a 100% IBM product and is based on OEM Xyratex storage arrays. Get your facts straight before leaping to a misguided defence. So IBM's entire mid-range portfolio is built using non-IBM parts - DS5000 from LSI, nSeries from NetApp and V7000 from Xyratex.

[Barry Whyte]

There is OEM and there is OEM

Coward, you fail to understand what OEM means.

In OEM terms, you take a box, and stick your own badge on it.

Taking something that you design, get a 3rd party to manufacture, then run your own software on it and control your own destinty is not OEM in the way you suggest the LSI and NetApp relationships are/was.

Be sure to understand what it is you say before you leap to a misguided offense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great way to treat your partners

Looks like HDS is pinching its partners because it's pride is wounded. What goes around..

[Anonymous Coward]

HP is not a partner of HDS's

HP have an OEM relationship with Hitachi not HDS - a subtle but important difference. Outside of Japan, HP and HDS compete on a regular basis, why would you expect them to say nice things about each other...

[Matt Bryant]

HDS marketting push.

We maintain relations (ooh-er, missus!) with about a dozen-plus multi-vendor, enterprise resellers worldwide, just about all of which have mentioned this year that HDS has been on the phone promising them the life of Reilly if they sign up as HDS resellers. It seems HDS have finally got off their backsides and decided they need some market presence, and slagging off hp just seems a part of that move. Not surprising really - if hp do replace the XP range with 3PAR-based products then HDS will want to try and poach some of the old XP customers whilst they are on a platform that HDS can pitch against.

But, as an enterprise hp-ux customer, I'm much more interested in getting my storage from the people whom actually know what hp-ux does under the hood, whether I use the hp-ux bits in APEX or not. The last time we entertained an HDS team they didn't even know what MirrorDisk was - not confidence buliding! I don't know what the figures are but I suspect a lot of the enterprise-level customers that currently have XPs also have hp-ux, not just Windows or Linux.

[XP Pete]

Not really ...

You havent't really understood how APEX works.

HDS Server Priority Manager will only limit IOs of non prioritized servers on the USP / VSP ports. That's all.

APEX enables you to define service level objectives and allows setting QoS levels like max latency in ms and min IOPS or min MB/s for certain servers. You can define up to 16 priority values based on bandwidth and latency.

The IOs are controlled in the server IO driver stack rather than on the XP / P9500 port.

Let's say an application A has been definde to achive a max IO latency of 10ms (measured at the server level). The other servers and applications do only get restricted if it is required to achieve the <10ms for App A.

Other important and unique solutions HP adds to the P9500 are the metropolitan clustering solutions HP Metrocluster for Serviceguard on HP-UX and HP Cluster Extension for MSCS on Windows, RedHat Cluster and Suse Cluster on Linux, HACMP on AIX and VCS on Solaris.