Posts by Frank Van riet

Firmware fixes and hybrid bundles make mutant MSAs meatier

MSA2324...

Actually we are using IE10 and IE11 in house with the old 2324's we still have in our lab. You do need to add the MSA to the list of sites with 'compatibility view'. In fact, even the user guides state that IE7 or higher is preferred above IE6.

I really doubt HP will make a new user interface for the MSA2324 anylmore..as that product is now 4 1/2 years obsolete. The MSA1040/2040 are totally different beasts..spanking new user interface (yes designed for IE11, firefox, chrome etc); MSA is now a full blown virtualized array with thin provisioning, automatic tiering, SSD caching, etc. Oh yes, and the article is not quite correct : the performance is now up to 122000 iops using 8KB for read workloads on SSD, the 37000 iops is for writes..(to put that in perspective, with 192 x 15K SAS drives, the MSA gets to write 32000 iops..the 37000 is done with 'only' 24 SSD drives..)

Who won all-flash sales sash, sucked up all the cash? – IDC report

Re: $$$/Raw is best analyst yardstick

Hi Liger,

First of all, yes I am biased, I do work in the HP Storage division.. but i'll try to be objective here..

You are wrong.. eg. In a 3Par Storeserv system deduplication, thin persistence, etc are NOT workload dependant as those are covered through hardware rather than an added software load on the controller CPU's. IBM for instance in their StorWize series now does data compression in hardware as opposed to software just in order to reduce the influence on overall performance. NetApp has been adding hardware technologies to improve the performance of their FAS arrays for years (eg. NVRAM)

In my opinion these are the major factors customers should consider when buying arrays :

- Net capacity... Why? Do you really want to pay for stuff you can't use ? Eg. Vault drives in an EMC VNX environment? All the NetApp overhead ? The overhead that is existing in a HP 3par or IBM StorWize? The overhead is different for every vendor and should be taken into account in any storage deal..as it inflluences your TCO a lot ...and it is the only way to get a correct normalization.

- Performance : Most customers don't care if you are offering an AFA or a hybrid array..as long as they get the performance they're asking for..

- Puchase Cost : what do I pay for all of this? This is where AFA most of the times fails.. You still need to be aware that AFA is still more expensive..and a correctly sized hybrid array can give you exactly what you need at a much better price point.

-Cost of managing and maintaining the array..very often overlooked..but in the lifecycle of your arrays this is maybe your biggest cost.

This all being said, I guess the brass at HP storage are now also knocking at the doors of IDC.... to find our where all of those numbers come from.

Snappy snaps: Veeam cuddles up to NetApp for storage selfie

Nothing special...NetApp is late in the game with Veeam

Veeam has had this functionality already for a long time in combination with HP StoreVirtual and recently also with the HP 3Par StoreServe arrays...

NetApp is just late in the game..

Cheers,

Frank

NO WONDER Big Blue dropped it: IBM server biz BOMBED in Q4

Ah a cloud guru... and what do you need to run all that cloud biz on? Well? Yes of course..hardware.

And as you need to offer a certain SLA, you will need more hardware : geographically clustered datacenters etc... Also the laws of a lot of countries require data to remain in-country..meaning you need local datacenters.. so even more hardware... and who do you think supplies that hardware to power the cloud..well, yes HP & Dell ... And BTW who do you think supplies & develops most of the infrstructure & management software to provide those cloud services ? Yup, HP.... Dell....IBM....etc....

And a last one : don't ever think cloud is cheap. In Europe we are now starting to see the inverse trend : companies that switched to cloud based stuff, moving workloads back onto their own infrastructure (and then they call it a private cloud..) ..all of this purely driven by cost... as they start to find out that cloud is bloody expensive (just look at the cost of a simple 10TB enterprise backup service, and also read the fine print in the SLA .... )

SME storage challengers emerge one feature at a time

Re: HP's answer

Actually Trevor, your info is not completely right.. each instance/node of a Lefthand/StoreViretual VSA can handle 50TB , and you can create a 16-node cluster, so up to 800TB raw, or 400TB in Network RAID 10..

With adaptive optimization, all you need to do is have a few (preferrably 2 or more) SSD drives in each node and you easily get the high-IOPS you are looking for with Adaptive Optimisation (sub-LUN auto-tiering). And if you really want to have high performance (I'm talking +1.000.000 IOPS), you can use Fusion I/O cards instead of SSD drives.

And if you need even more performance & capacity you can create multiple clusters, and manage them all toghether as a single system with the Lefthand CMS....moving LUNs between clusters using Peer Motion if needed.. And to make it even more attractive, you get REAL HA with Network RAID 10 : no failover, no downtime for the storage (like Peer Persistence on 3Par).

Now on the 3par : Not really an SME box, but again same thing; using Adaptive Optimization you can balance IO's between SSD; SAS & Midline SAS on the fly.. and 3par has a bunch of other stuff : Thin Provisioning / reclamation, zero block removal, Peer Persistence (HA without storage downtime ! ) etc .... without influencing performance.

Both of them 3Par & Lefthand have hybrid capabilities ; mix and match SSD & SAS or Midline SAS drives.. 3par also has an SSD only array, the 7450 that is more than a match for everything out there..

And yes i am biased (i do work for the HP Storage division).

Cheers,

Frank

Microsoft seeks patent for blade server chassis

Prior work/Art...

Actually the HP C3000 & C7000 were both launched in 2007. Before that there was the p-classs Bladesystem, which lived from 2002007 and the e-class from 2002-2003..talk about prior art.. All the C-class Bladesystems chassis can house servers, storage, networking, power, management...just like the MS patent application..only differences : servers are placed vertically in the C7000 and horizontally in the C3000 and the interconnects are at the back.

Is it a NAS? Is it a SAN? No. It's Synology's Rackstation 'NASSAN'

Re: Where's...

Hi Trevor,

Actually a good SAN Array should have redundant motherboards (ie controllers), redundant paths in the backplanes, fans, power supplies, redundant SAS connectivity up to the disk drive... even the VNXe, FAS2000, MSA2000 series have all of this..

And on top of that most of them offer a form of block replication option...

and as for 'physically shoot the primary node... you could do that with HP StoreVirtual boxes..the cluster will happily continue to run..without its user noticing anything.. and BTW all of that for a mere..yes around 20K€..for about 14TB SAS based capacity (and yes i'm a bit biased)..

Don't get me wrong : i own a Synology box at home and i'am impressed with its capabilities.. but it is in my eyes 'not ready for prime time' yet.. :

- They don't own the complete storage stack..this is OK for home use..but for datacenter usage you really need to control the complete stack (starting at the server HBA , over the 'SAN' switches down to the box itself.. and most important : the hard drives (firmwares issues really can become a nightmare...)

- Especially those disk drives.. their current compatiblity list contains a lot of disk drives that are really , really a bad idea to use in this kind of boxes.. they can't stand the vibration, the 24x7 use etc...

and in a multi-disk environment they start to fail bigtime.

Bottom line : at the moment ..no..but maybe in some future iteration who knows.. they might become interesting..

Regards,

Frank

Belgians aim to be third neutral-net nation

Belgium : Much like Switzerland...

Just to clarify : language is indeed a big issue in the negotiations in Belgium. But to say we don't have a governement...is a bit flawed.. Actually Belgium has five (5!) Governements.. :

- The Flemish governement (for the dutch speaking part )

- The Wallon governement (for the french speaking part )

- The German ""

- The Brussel Gewest governement (for the Brussels area..)

- The federal Governement (for everything that is handled across all governements)

It is the federal governement that is the issue here...the four others are 'ok'...

Needless to say that clarifies a lot why we have one of the highest taxes in the world..all those people working for those different governements need to be paid.

Now, the current issue why a new governement cannot be formed, is because there is a debate re. Brussels and some flemish (as in ruled by the flemish governement) communities around brussels.. In the sixties some idiots created a system where (french speaking) people of those communities are allowed to vote for (french) politions in Brussels during elections.. and of course our 'Raad van State'( a constitutional court) has declared this illegal.. So the big dbate now is how they can solve this.. and of course if it gets just dismantled..the french speaking politicians would stand to loose a lot of power in the Brussels Govenrement (which is supposed to be bilingual, but isn't really..due to this stupid system)

I could go on for a few hours as of course there is more than meets the eye...but i hope this gives a small picture of what is going on... And draw your own conclusions...

Cheers,

Frank

Big Blue Sam disses HP, lauds Ellison

HP R&D vs IBM?

Well, for those that aree interested... in the whole of the IBM storage lineup, only 1 product family is true Blue : the the DS6xxx (over and out) and the DS8xxx series (these are evolutions of the old Shark technology). All the rest is OEM :

DS3xxx, DS4xxx, DS5xxx = LSI ; NAS boxes = NetApp ... and XIV is also bought in.. So where is that famous IBM R&D?

Ingram sore over Belgian warehouse burglary

Ingram Wording...

Hi all,

Just a comment hee : yes the tone seems harsh, could maybe be worded slightly different... but is actually referring to the Belgian law...if you buy stolen goods you are liable...even if you don't know that they were stolen.

Meaning if you don't warn Ingram, and you buy one of these boxes you're in big trouble. Warning Ingram would help in case the police wants to prosecute you....

... (yes, i know Belgian law is somtimes strange)

Cheers,

Frank