topic Re: disk system in Operating System - HP-UX

disk system

EML — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 16:44:10 GMT

We are using rp5470s and rp7410s with VA7100s. My question is, can we use any other disk systems to be used with rp5470s and rp7410s other than HP's?
We always have this problems that HP would always want to change the disk systems like what we had with FC60s. Its causing too much harm on our business with almost every year that HP don't sell them anymore.

Can you recommend some disk systems that are really good with good upgradeability and scalability, maybe from other vendors? Basically, we don't need disk systems that are obselete every year!

Re: disk system

Ken Hubnik_2 — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 17:08:34 GMT

We use EMC. Pricey $$$$ but no problems with upgrading in the current frame.

Re: disk system

Zafar A. Mohammed_1 — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 17:41:51 GMT

$$$ EMC and relief.

Zafar

Re: disk system

Stuart Abramson_2 — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 17:48:54 GMT

As stated already, EMC makes the biggest, fastest, most reliable, most "intelligent", most popular and most expensive disk subsystems.

Another possibility is the HP XP series. They are based on the Hitachi HDS 7X00 and 9X00 and are also a good buy.

In both cases you are talking more money...

Re: disk system

John Meissner — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 17:57:40 GMT

We also use EMC - It costs some money... but time is worth more than money. It was a good decission.

We also entertained the idea of using shark disks - less expensive. But EMC seems to be an industry standard almost

Re: disk system

Eugeny Brychkov — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 18:39:18 GMT

Obsolete does not mean 'not supported'. Support lifecycle is at least 5 years after last customer shipment.
Why not to upgrade VA7100 to VA7110 and then/or to VA7410? This is a mid-range disk array family. VA7100 is a lightest, VA7410 is a mightiest.
High-end HP data systems are already mentioned XP and Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA)
Eugeny

Re: disk system

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 19:07:03 GMT

We use a disk system called Xiotech. We have nearly a terabyte installed.

Most HP players don't consider it major league. EMC and HP are considered mainstream.

The Xiotech advantage is more disk for your money. The arrays are less expensive. The disadvantage is you have a vendor other than HP involved in support.

http://www.xiotech.com

SEP

Re: disk system

Michael Steele_2 — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 19:09:30 GMT

I've used both EMC and XP's and found the XP 512 to be slower performing than any EMC product, but the XP1024 is suppose to better architecture and faster performing than the 512. Same with VA7410 over VA7400.

I???d be wary of trail blazer with an IBM Shark for they weren't fully compatible with some HP products a year ago. I recall superdome having problems for instance.

HP and EMC have also had their disagreements, and I would be wary of this change also however, EMC???s history is superb and hard not to like. But they are coming out with very large disks that I???ve heard some performance complaints about.

I would be slower rather than faster to make changes because there are many architectural changes everywhere with every organization. So you might want to wait six months and let others trail blaze and work out the bugs before changing too much.

Re: disk system

EML — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 06:07:20 GMT

Excuse for being so innocent, but what is EMC? Can you provide me with links or infos?

Re: disk system

EML — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 06:12:24 GMT

We are actually selling application platforms based on HP. We always have this issues with HP that almost every year, they change that disk system. What this would mean to us is doing testing all over again based on the new disks, before we could sell to customers. And those tests would be valid only for maybe 6 months, because after that HP is not selling the disk system again anymore. What we were thinking is to have disk system that is available for selling for maybe 3-5 years.

Re: disk system

Carlos Fernandez Riera — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 07:24:33 GMT

I think you cant find what you want.

You can buy a disk system and upgrade it during years, but you if you wish to buy the same disk system next year..-. you will not find it, with independence of the vendor.

Maybe buying remarketing equipment is a choice, and cheaper... as you would like resell systems supported by you platform vendor.

Re: disk system

Mark Ellzey — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 12:22:49 GMT

Hi,

Perhaps you may want to rethink your strategy. Set up the HP box to be O/S only on the internal disks, and offer a variety of disk storage systems for application and data storage.

As you've seen in the replies, HP offers these storage systems as well as other vendors. EMC is at the highest end in terms of cost and performance. Depending on what your customer needs, you may be able to use a simple JBOD (just a bunch of disks). Small raid systems are relatively inexpensive, but then you have to spend some money to get the safety and performance of something like EMC. My personal favorite for smaller installations is Network Appliance.

Regards,
Mark

Re: disk system

Tim Sanko — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 12:44:48 GMT

EMC disk is the best for my money. It is an external array that can be used in a san, directly connected SCSI, or FIBRE.

If you have a Fibre SAN at this time, take 5 or 6 fibres to the SAN from the symmetrix, Zone it with ECC (EMC CONTROL CENTER 5.1) and
then make the Hypers/Metas visible.

Remember EMC disk is always at least Mirrored. Most upgrades are done with the system running. Adding disk is just a place drives in bays, allocate them to the appropriate channel, and zoning the hypers/metas to become visible on a path. You can connect multiple different machines to a 8830 symm directly and more through a SAN.

EMC's service is much better than industry standard. We have tremendous CEs. Even though we have mostly HP servers. We use primarily EMC drives. They actually become relatively reasonable under bulk use. At $4000.00/ea for 181GB drives, we found it price comparable drive/drive

The Symm has a artificially brilliant memory utilization scheme. We have 24 GB in our SYMM. It makes filesystems instantly.

I was beyond amazed.

I had run the same script with device changes for a different array, and I thought it didn't work it ran so fast.

Reliability. Performance, They aren't cheap, but they are fabulous. They are also the best at implementing SAN architecture around, for my money. They are also responsive. They also have a tremendous Backup solution "EDM" that works with fibre connectivity better than sliced bread. We still use EDM for our Production environment.

Tim

Re: disk system

Tim Sanko — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 12:55:17 GMT

With SYMMS or Clarions from EMC, you are not stuck with a disk type or size as they are presented not as disks in total, but in slices or Hypers that can be striped across channels, controllers, etc.

They can make Metas so that this collection of hypers is a single point presentation to LVM of a 320 GB Meta, The options are many and varied. they can be raided mirrored pairs, in so many options I get dizzy looking at them.

A slight amplification, Symms are not the only answer to EMC storage questions. They have some truly remarkable software also. Timefinder on the Symms is also available. It allows third mirror and setting up of BCVs for backups on the same box, another box, etc and there is SRDF.

Depending on what you want to do I believe EMC might find a way to suck all that you can afford out of your pockebook, and make you happy at the same time...

Re: disk system

Dave Wherry — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 13:30:51 GMT

What exactly are you looking for? You say you have FC60's. I would call that low mid-range storage. What is your storage requirements? How many servers? What OS are those servers running? What is your budget?
It's just too simple to say EMC or HP or HDS. Each of the vendors have fine mid-range and enterprise class storage systems. If you are looking for mid-range there is the VA and EVA lines from HP, the CX line from EMC, the Thunder 9500 line from HDS. In the enterprise area there are XP's, Symm's and Lightning 9900 series.
What is it you need and want. Which usually brings you back to the budget. What you need and what you want do not always match up with what you can get. You should talk to a reseller who deals with more than one of the vendors. You'll get a slightly less biased opinion.

Re: disk system

Dave Wherry — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 13:58:45 GMT

Sorry. I went back and reread the entire thread. I see you have a VA. As for your hopes of getting a subsystem that won't be replaced in the near future, there are no guarantees. Each vendor mentioned will keep coming out with new products displacing the old.
To be able to certify your software on many storage subsystems will be an extremely daunting and expensive task. As you've read here, there are many options and none of them are cheap. Some just less expensive than the others.
The fact of the matter is this stuff does change and it changes rather quickly. I installed an XP256 and a year later was looking for a second one to do a Disaster Recovery project. The 256 had been replaced by the XP512. The good news is there is seemless interoperability. I could easily have the 256 on one end and the 512 on the other. The same could be said for EMC Symm's or the HDS products. A very cool thing right now is CASA from HP. You can do Disaster Recovery between different subsystems. You can have an XP at your main site and a Symm at your remote site. Of course this is getting off on a different tangent.
If your goal is to certify your applications/products on different storage susbsystems, I wish I had you budget. I honestly do not see a great need for certifying the app's on storage. If the storage works with the server platform there should be no reason why the app' will not work with the storage. For the most part applications do not interact directly with storage. It has to go through the operating system. That is you point of certification.