Aer Lingus opts for Tegile arrays, snubs EMC in shock move

Aer Lingus, the Irish airline, has equipped itself with Tegile hybrid arrays instead of upgrading its existing EMC kit. The airline will use Tegile's Zebi HA2800 arrays to store data for SQL databases, data warehousing and VDI deployment because it was unable to scale at the speed necessary with its existing EMC arrays. Aer …

[Tom 7]

Cunning.

The post is required, and must contain letters.

[thomas k.]

Re: Cunning.

Aer Cunning? Cunning Aer? I don't get it.

[Michael Hawkes]

Charlie Mingus

The legendary jazz musician.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sacre Bleu

"as soon as we reached our storage limit, we had to go back to the vendor to buy additional storage space"

You run out of storage and have to buy more? I am sure that won't happen with their new vendor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sacre Bleu

But the point is these new storage vendors are offering storage as a service, you pay what you use and can "upgrade" to more capacity with a license key, rather than ordering the kit, waiting for it to be delivered and installed.

It's like memory in the old mainframes (although, they used to send a tech out with a soldering iron to cut through tracks). The capacity is already in the hardware, it just needs to be unlocked.

[Levente Szileszky]

Re: Sacre Bleu

Yeah, that's the famously scumbag EMC Symmetrix pricing model from the 2000s... thanks but no thanks. Fortunately Tegile is not exactly the same (albeit still not something I'd prefer, for sure.)

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work there

I used know Brian. Thing about Air Fungus is they are an old Mainframe (OS3x0/zOS) and Aix/Solaris shop. In the mainframe space particularly they are used to be able to activate (and deactivate) new capacity as and when needed. Suspect Tegile are more flexible that way than EMC are.

Nice to see the old muckers still at work.

[smt789]

Tegile has a capacity on-demand pricing model. It is a good box. I have had several clients test it and all of them were impressed.

[MyffyW]

Capacity On-demand

Thanks smt789 - I was wondering what they did when they ran out of space. Suddenly it all make sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Capacity On-demand

so, they've never maxed out a drive array before?

[smt789]

Re: Capacity On-demand

Their utility model is pretty nice. You can burst into and out of capacity as needed. Paying month to month on usage. Coupled with the dedupe and compression, you get a lot of bang for your buck. Similar to procuring through the cloud.

[Levente Szileszky]

Re: Capacity On-demand

Might sounds nice but in return for some 20-30% lower initial payments you will actually NEVER OWN the box, you are RENTING it forever - try selling that to CFOs...

[Tom Maddox]

Re: Capacity On-demand

Fundamentally, that's what you're doing anyway. You "buy" a storage array, and then you pay enough in service and support that four years later, you've bought it again. Sure, you can let it go out of support . . . as long as you don't care about your data too much.

[Levente Szileszky]

Re: Capacity On-demand

It's not 4 years but 3 or less and again, saving 20% until you stay under 60% utilization, only to keep paying it FOREVER vs 3 years later not having to pay anything but support - which is, I must add, will remain FAR-FAR LESS than previous lease payments (because only a complete idiot with no clue about procurement, with no negotiation skills or purchasing in general wouldn't get the initial 3-y support already bundled in, with another 3-y extension price also spelled out in the PO.)

With all this in mind I'm not sure why would anyone run unsupported units in production... that being said there are several usage scenarios below mission-critical roles for older storage systems as long as they have redundant parts (eg if I had to retire an EQL box I could still keep it somewhere in production as it comes with practically everything redundant inside, all we'd need is a couple of spare disks on the shelves.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Capacity On-demand

I guess I don't get your argument. In my experience most CFO's would prefer an OPEX model opposed to CAPEX. That would present a compelling reason for a CFO to choose Tegile.

[Levente Szileszky]

Re: Capacity On-demand

Actually you didn't get it at all.

First it's not "most" but "certain" CFOs prefer OPEX over CAPEX, secondly it not really OPEX vs CAPEX - it's owning vs renting, both paid the same way, in monthly payments and, most importantly, only showing savings until you don't go over your default utilization quota (normally around 60% of your total storage) and even that is just around ~20% when compared to monthly payments w/ $1 buyout at the end.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a Hybrid array

The HA2800 is not a hybrid array, it's an all-flash box with ZFS on top. Probably the only reason it was purchased is XtremIO wasn't GA.

[Tom Maddox]

Re: Not a Hybrid array

Interesting . . . in the sense that everyone else seems to disagree with you. From what I've read, the HA2800 is all-Flash by default but can be expanded with SATA disks to provide cheaper bulk storage.

[Levente Szileszky]

Re: Not a Hybrid array

Exactly, you can add up to 72TB in expansion chassis (under Specifications, at bottom): http://www.tegile.com/products/zebi-storage-arrays#tab-1

[Levente Szileszky]

Re: Not a Hybrid array

Yeah except Tegile's Zebi architecture is a true unified SAN/NAS solution while XtremeIO is a block-only dedupe/compression offer (and will be forever as EMC won't compromise Isilon sales) - they are not even close.

BTW XtremeIO's GA was announced by EMC back in 2013 November so let's just drop the nonsense.

[jushy]

Short sighted

I think the point for a large enterprise like Aer Lingus is that with a start up like Tegile they are taking a huge punt on whether the manufacturer will even be around in a few years.

They are a private company with a small number of customers and less than $50m in revenue and only closed a funding round of $35m last year - small potatoes really.

They are rarely mentioned in any of the press as even a leading player in flash (such as Violin, Pure, Nimble etc.) much less storage generally.

Personally I think that many of these flash vendors (over 200 at present according to TechTarget) will be gone in a few years, either best case acquired or at worst defunct leaving massive legacy support issues.

All the major manufacturers are now providing storage on demand where there is more there than is required and can be made available as required.