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Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

 
Steve Longenecker
Frequent Advisor

Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

My employer is seriously considering replacing our HP SAN hardware with EMC Clarion. Over the years as I have attended HP training, I always ask follow Sys Admins with both EMC Clarion and HP EVA experience, how well the two platforms compare. The typical answer is EMC works well with Windows, but should be avoided with HP-UX. What is the consensus out there?
11 REPLIES 11
Rick Garland
Honored Contributor

Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

My pro would be support - support for the EVA would be with the same folks as support with your systems.

This would not be true with EMC



Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

There was (still is?) a big issue wwith Clariion with HP's Serviceguard.

The Clariion are certainly no better/faster/easier to manage than the EVAs so unless they're offering them substantially cheaper and also offering to do the migration for you for free, I'd give it a miss.

HTH

Duncan

I am an HPE Employee
Accept or Kudo
Steve Longenecker
Frequent Advisor

Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

Guys, is this actual hands-on experience or speculation? I have heard many horror stories with EMC Clarion over the years, but need specifics to convince management.
Jeff Schussele
Honored Contributor

Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

I have no inherent Clariion bias.
We, in fact, are moving our lower envs to them as I type.
The one thing I've learned about them is - They are very dependent on "pathing". By that I mean they need to see *certain" pvlink paths as primary & the others as secondary. Else they see a lot of tresspass "errors". Now that wouldn't bother me so much, but the Storage Ops team whines about the "size" of their logs - and that has a lot of merit. I guess what I'm trying to say is the Clariions seem to need a lot more "front-end" planning & work.
Performance has yet to be determined as they are still quite new in our env.

My 2 cents,
Jeff
PERSEVERANCE -- Remember, whatever does not kill you only makes you stronger!
baiju_3
Esteemed Contributor

Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

We have Clarrions and HP MC Service guard Setup .Your company is not going to do any thing better by migrating EVA with EMC clarrion , rather they should consider Symmetrix Arrays .


I think EMC H/W solutions are costlier that HP's and EVA and CLARRION both come in the same segment .



thx,
-bl.











Good things Just Got better (Plz,not stolen from advertisement -:) )
Torsten.
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

Hi Steve,

in case of a problem, there is always the question: Who is responsible? If you purchase your hardware from different manufactures, you have to discuss your problem with all involved parties. If you have only one supplier, you can address your problem easily.

My 2 cents.

Hope this helps!
Regards
Torsten.

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Dave La Mar
Honored Contributor

Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

Steve -
The support issue "finger pointing" that Torsten mentioned is precisely the reason we purchased an EVA 5000 over what EMC/DELL was offering.
Nothing can be more difficult than obtaining proper support if your shop has mixed hardware vendors with equipment crossing over between vendor hardware.

The pricing was comparable in what we were purchasing, thus support was a deciding issue.
You might note that, in our case, we were able to reduce overall maintenance costs by going with HP's EVA and rolling the maintenance into the current contract.

Expect your superiors to leverage the vendors in question for additional pricing discounts since they are in competition.

FYI - Our EVA purchase was to replace an XP512 that became too much of an expense when expanding was required.

Sorry, I have no Clarion experience.
Best of luck on this.

Regards,

-dl
"I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information."
Bhushan Bumber
Frequent Advisor

Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

With my past experience,there is not a logic to replace HP SAN with clarion but it all depends on the type of HP san u r using.I recently worked with EVA5000 and that was fantastic experience.It was very smooth working easy to diagnose and above all the support was too good.I give more marks to EVA500 as compared to clarion.
Ciaooo
Bhushan
There is a solution to every problem.
Ray Ball
Frequent Advisor

Re: Pros/Cons of using EMC Clarion vs. HP EVA SANs

There was a time when the argument in favor of getting all of your support from the same vendor held water but that day has long past. It's not uncommon to have servers from a multitude of hardware vendors in the same shop. Should each one of them have their own SAN so that you never mix O/S and storage vendors? Of course not. Am I suggesting that there are no compatibility problems in a heterogeneous shop? No; there are still compatibility challenges; AIX and anyone's storage (even IBM's) is a weak spot. (EVA and AIX is definitely to be avoided.)

While I have never replaced an HP EVA with an EMC CLARiiON, I have replaced HP EMA 12000s with a CX700 and am very glad I did. Stability has increased 100% across our HP-UX, Solaris, Windows disk and STK tape SAN environment. We're happy to be rid of SecurePath and now use PowerPath.

Change can be good; don't be afraid to embrace it. Hold each vendor equally responsible for providing you the support you expect and are paying for.

My $0.02