FAST (FULLY AUTOMATED STORAGE TIERING)

FAST made a debut in the storage market yesterday (12/08/09). Finally after the market buzz we got a preview of the product in terms of its features, functionality, characteristics, possible shortcomings and use cases.

This blog post focuses on the features, the drawbacks and some applications around FAST.  By no means is this a comprehensive or an exhaustive list of the above.

After all, FAST makes a debut, (The previous post on FAST).

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NOTE: Out of the box thinking by EMC, imagine the flexibility one would have with a large infrastructure and FAST moving data based on policy. Its all about the big picture.

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Here are some features, highlights of FAST and how it operates.

• FAST will perform data movement based on IOPS, average I/O size and write percentage. This is currently true for the Symmetrix V-Max, Clariion CX4 and Celerra NS.

• Three elements that define FAST: Storage Type, FAST policies and Storage Groups.

• FAST is based on user defined – configuration policies.

• The configuration of FAST is typically done through FAST wizards (Symmetrix Management Console) on Symmetrix V-Max, FAST LUN Migrator for Clariion CX4 and Rainfinity File Management Appliance or VE for Celerra NS.

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• User defined analysis period for FAST. That will enable FAST to recommend or perform data analysis and then a data move based on policy.

• FAST created policies will associate with Storage Groups.

• FAST policies will be configurable at a LUN / drive / drive type / speed etc level.

• Data movement will take place based on a time of the date policy called “COLD” move or on usage policy called “HOT” move.

• Data movement will take place between various drive types, various LUN types and LUN sizes. (LUN types, LUN sizes will need to be same for the source and destination LUNs). For example a 9GB FBA LUN being migrated from Fibre to FLASH will need similar source and destination LUN properties.

• FAST data analysis will be performed in the background.

• For Symmetrix V-Max platform FAST will perform all analysis without the use of Symmetrix Performance Analyzer. Understanding is there will be some sort of API plugin available on the Service Processor of the V-Max that will enable Symmetrix Management Console (FAST plugin) to interface with the Symmetrix through the SYMAPI interface.

• For Clariions, the performance data of the array will be monitored and collected by Navisphere Analyzer.

• Based on the source LUN analysis, FAST will recommend the user to move the data either a faster speed drives or a slower speed drives.

• FAST will enable roll back based on user preferences (automated).

• FAST will be configurable by Symmetrix Management console wizards or SYMCLI

• FAST configurable by Clariion Naviseccli and installed on a host connected to Clariion, Host software called FAST LUN Migrator.

• FAST configurable by Rainfinity File Management Appliance GUI or CLI for Celerra NS “out-of-box data” movement. This enables the Celerra to move data to another Celerra or Centera or Atmos.

• FAST configurable by Rainfinity File Management / VE (Virtual Appliance) for Celerra NS “in-the-box” data movement.

• FAST can be installed non-disruptively on all platforms.

• FAST will operate both at an FBA and CKD level supporting open systems and mainframes for V-Max.

• FAST will operate at a LUN level on Symmetrix V-Max

• FAST will operate at a LUN level on Clariion CX4

• FAST will operate at a file level on Celerra NS

• FAST v1 users will be able to purchase a FAST v2 upgrade when it’s released in second half of 2010.

• FAST can be purchased as a FAST suite or part of an ATSM (Advanced Tiering Storage Management) suite with bundled discounting prices.

• For a unified storage system like a front end NAS (Celerra) with a backend SAN (Clariion), FAST can coexists at both levels. But it is not recommended to deploy FAST at a Celerra LUN level.

• FAST integrates with Symmetrix Management Console and with Rainfinity GUI (Celerra) for simple management. Though Clariion implementation will need one to specialize in CLI.

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FAST introduction by EMC

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FAST Drawbacks

Here are some drawbacks of FAST as I see it today.

• Does not support Virtual provisioning. So the Virtual provisioned LUNs will not be FAST enabled. Sub-LUN expected in second half of 2010

• FAST is not free and is charged based on RAW CAPACITY of the Storage Array.

• FAST will only work with similar LUN types (example FBA LUNs can be migrated to FBA) and LUN sizes (9GB LUN can be migrated to a 9GB LUN) only.

• FAST will require Professional Services and is not recommended for customer self implementation at least for the Clariion and the Celerra platforms. EMC is making a claim that FAST can be self provisioned on the Symmetrix V-Max platform.

• FAST works only on current generation systems like EMC V-Max Enginuity 5874, Clariion CX4 Release 29 and Celerra NS.

• With Clariion CX4 and FAST implementation, requirement is to have Navisphere Analyzer.

• With Celerra NS and FAST implementation, requirement is to have Rainfinity File Management /VE or Appliance.

• With Symmetrix V-Max FAST implementation, requirement is to have Symmetrix Management Console (Not free any more starting with the V-Max)

• For the Clariions, FAST only analyzes Fibre drives and LUN movement has to initiate from Fibre channel to FLASH or Fibre channel to SATA drives only. Movement from FLASH to Fibre or SATA to Fibre has to be initiated manually.

• A customer implementing Virtual Provisioning on Clariion CX4 and Symmetrix V-Max that is using 50% Thick Provisioning and 50% Virtual Provisioning. FAST will not work with Virtual Provisioned LUNs. But the customer will probably pay for 100% of Storage Raw Capacity when it comes to paying for FAST either non-bundled or bundled in an ATSM (Advanced Tiering Storage Management).

• FAST does not support IBM System I platform currently.

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Some real world FAST applications

• Acadia Service Model can now add granularity with offerings around on-demand resources using FAST at its core.

• On Demand application and workload needs can be met for OLTP, Data Warehousing, Mainframe compute and Virtual compute using FAST driven policies.

• Multi-tenancy with Private Clouds

• Move high demand data on faster drives while rarely used data goes on slower drives.

• Sell ITaaS based on SLA’s. Higher SLA’s can mean higher price. All automated processes controlled by policy.

• Higher transactions typically mean low overall cost; mean higher efficiency means higher profits all achievable through FAST policy engine.

Need to see some real world implementations of FAST now. In theory and on paper, FAST looks pretty compelling but practically will it do the magic.

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Some unanswered questions today

• How does it prevent from LUNs jumping between Fiber, FLASH and SATA if the application has un-expected performance that day?

• Manageability of FAST interfaces.

• Usability of FAST interfaces.

• Granular configuration policies associated with analysis.

• Future upgrades.

• Current implementations and how long and how effective are those.

• Can you improve performance without using SSD’s. Example with Fibre and SATA drives only.

• With future upgrades from FAST v1 to FAST v2 what happens with current user defined policies.

• Would Symcli scripts change with FAST implementation?

• During lockout periods (Where Symmetrix configuration cannot change, eg before a BIN file change) would FAST still operate.

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To read some of the answers to the questions, as commented by Barry Burke on the StorageNerve Blog

FAST is a bit of a new subject for me. Any experts please feel free to correct me if my understanding of FAST is incorrect at any level.

Stay tuned for a series of FAST posts over the next few days talking about various topics and how FAST plays within those areas.

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | FAST: Features, Drawbacks, Applications and some Questions
Read more posts categorized as Storage

So EMC has proved critics like me wrong and have introduced EMC FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) as an offering in Dec 2009. There were many skeptics like me that saw this product release being stalled because of various reasons, here.

Truly this was one of the most awaited products of 2009 from EMC after the initial announcement by EMC back in April 2009 along with the release of Symmetrix V-Max.

I have dedicated a separate deep-dive section for EMC FAST on the StorageNerve Blog, here

Along with FAST, EMC has also introduced some new enhancements to the EMC Symmetrix V-Max, Clariion CX4 and Celerra NS platforms. Currently FAST will be available on the above 3 platforms at debut and will provide automated storage tiering “in-the-box” for Symmetrix V-Max, “in-the-box” for Clariion CX4 and “out-of-box” for Celerra NS platforms.

As expected EMC has not made this feature free but rather offers a pricing model based on bundled software. FAST will be an available feature within ATSM: Advanced Tiering Storage Management bundle and will be charged based on RAW Capacity of the Array (Symmetrix, Clariion and Celerra)

FAST will not be supported on EMC DMX-4 and Clariion CX3. In essence FAST is only compatible with EMC Symmetrix V-Max Enginuity Microcode 5874.xxx.xxx and Clariion CX4 Flarecode Release 29.

FAST is a software only feature and integrates with existing hardware / software on the associated platforms.

The following are some of the features FAST will support at GA on the EMC Symmetrix V-Max, Clariion CX4 and Celerra NS platforms.

EMC Symmetrix V-Max

• Volume / LUN based data movement (Automated Storage Tiering) for open systems and CKD – mainframe volumes.

• Management of FAST through Symmetrix Management Console or SymCLI

• Data Movement can be accomplished between FLASH, fibre channel and SATA drives within the V-Max platform. Data can move in any direction and on any type of the drives based on policy.

• Data movement within a single frame or serial number only.

• FAST suite can be purchased as a standalone software suite but will be available at a discounted price based on a bundled option with Symmetrix Optimizer, DCP: Dynamic Cache Partitioning and SPC: Symmetrix Priority Controls.

• Symmetrix Performance Analyzer is not required for FAST to operate on the Symmetrix V-Max platform.
  

EMC Clariion CX4

• LUN based data movement (Automated Storage Tiering)

• Management of FAST will be enabled through CLI only. Not supported as an integrated part of Navisphere today.

• Will work with Flarecode Release 29 (Clariion CX4) only.

• Unlike the Symmetrix, the automated data movement will only be supported between fibre channel drives to FLASH or fibre channel drives to SATA. There is no automation related to data movement from FLASH to fibre channel or FLASH to SATA or SATA to FLASH or SATA to fibre Channel drives.

• Data movement within a single frame or serial number only.

• FAST suite can be purchased as a standalone software suite but will be available at a discounted price based on bundled option with Navisphere Analyzer and NQSM: Navisphere Quality Service Manager.

• Navisphere Analyzer is required for FAST to operate.

EMC Celerra platform

• File based data movement (Automated Storage Tiering)

• Management of FAST can be accomplished through Rainfinity file management appliance GUI or CLI. Customers also have an option to purchase Rainfinity File management/VE (Virtual Appliance), which has some limitations.

• Data movement can be enabled to another tier “in-the-box” or to another Celerra or Centera or Atmos.

• Celerra FAST is most interesting as it enables out the system data movement, like to another Celerra or Centera or Atmos.

• FAST suite can be purchased as a standalone software suite but will be available at a discounted price based on a bundled option with Rainfinity File Management Appliance or Rainfinity File Management /VE.

Based on EMC heat index charts, a before and after picture of a FAST implementation would look like this.

A FAST implementation video

Here is a post, back from August 2009 on Gestalt IT describing how EMC’s Unified Storage vision and federation may work. It is good to see, some of those things come to fruition now, and at least FAST with Celerra proves it.

Stay tuned for a series of FAST posts over the next few days talking about various other topics and how FAST plays within those areas.

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | After all, FAST makes a debut
Read more posts categorized as Storage, Tech

So the journey of Symmetrix systems started with Moshe Yanai (along with his team) joining EMC in late 80’s. A floating story says, the idea of a cache based disk array was initially pitched to both IBM and HP and was shot down.  EMC was predominately a mainframe memory selling company back in the late 1980’s. The Symmetrix products completely changed the direction of EMC in a decade.

Joe Tucci comes in at the end of 90’s from Unisys with a big vision. Wanted to radically change EMC. Through new acquisitions, new technologies, vision and foremost the integration of all the technologies created today’s EMC.

Symmetrix has always been the jewel of EMC. Back in the Moshe days, the engineers were treated so royally (Have heard stories about helicopter rides and lavish parties with a satellite bus waiting outside for a support call). Then comes the Data General acquisition in late 90’s that completely changed the game.

Some people within EMC were against the DG acquisition and didn’t see much value in it. While the Clariion DG backplane is what changed the Symmetrix to a Symmetrix DMX – Fiber Based Drives. Over this past decade, EMC radically changes its position and focuses on acquisitions, support, products, quality, efficiency, usability and foremost changing itself from a hardware company to an Information Solutions company focusing on software as its integral growth factor.  New acquisitions like Legato, Documentum, RSA, kept on changing the culture and the growth focus within EMC.

Then came VMware and it changed the rules of the game, EMC’s strategic move to invest into VMware paid off big time.  Then happens the 3-way partnership between VMware – EMC – Cisco, to integrate next generation products, V-Max (Symmetrix), V-Sphere and UCS are born.

Here we are in 2009, almost at the end of 20 years since the inception of the Symmetrix, the name, the product, the Enginuity code, the robust characteristics, the investment from EMC all stays committed with changing market demands.

Jumping back into the Symmetrix, here are a few articles you might find interesting, overall talking about various models, serial numbers of the machines and importantly a post on Enginuity Operating Environment.

• To read about EMC Symmetrix Enginuity Operating Environment
• To read about EMC Symmetrix Serial Number naming convention,
• To read about EMC Symmetrix Models in a previous blog post
• To read about various EMC models based on different Platforms
• To read about all EMC Clariion models since the Data General Acquisition

Symmetrix Family 1.0

• ICDA – Integrated Cache Disk Array
• Released 1990 and sold through 1993
• A 24GB total disk space introduced

Wow, I was in elementary school or may be middle school when this first generation Symmetrix was released….

• Symmetrix 4200

Symmetrix Family 2.0

• ICDA – Integrated Cache Disk Array
• Released 1991 and sold through 1994
• A 36GB total disk space
• Mirroring introduced

• Symmetrix 4400

Symmetrix Family 2.5

• ICDA – Integrated Cache Disk Array
• Released 1992 and sold through 1995
• RSF capabilities added

(I actually met a guy about 2 years ago, he was one of the engineers that had worked on developing the first RSF capabilities at EMC and was very instrumental in developing the Hopkinton PSE lab)

• Symmetrix 4800:

Symmetrix Family 3.0 also called Symmetrix 3000 and 5000 Series

• Released 1994 and sold through 1997
• ICDA: Integrated Cache Disk Array
• Includes Mainframe Support (Bus & Tag)
• Global Cache introduced
• 1GB total Cache
• NDU – Microcode
• SRDF introduced
• Supports Mainframe and open systems both
• Enginuity microcode 50xx, 51xx

• Symmetrix 3100: Open systems support, half height cabinet, 5.25 inch drives
• Symmetrix 5100: Mainframe support, half height cabinet, 5.25 inch drives
• Symmetrix 3200: Open Systems support, single cabinet, 5.25 inch drives
• Symmetrix 5200: Mainframe support, single cabinet, 5.25 inch drives
• Symmetrix 3500: Open Systems support, triple cabinet, 5.25 inch drives
• Symmetrix 5500: Mainframe support, triple cabinet, 5.25 inch drives

Symmetrix Family 4.0 also called Symmetrix 3000 and 5000 Series

• Released 1997 and sold through 2000
• RAID XP introduced
• 3.5 Inch drive size introduced
• On triple cabinet systems 5.25 inch drives used
• Supports Mainframe and Open Systems both
• Timefinder, Powerpath, Ultra SCSI support
• Enginuity microcode 5265.xx.xx, 5266.xx.xx

• Symmetrix 3330: Open Systems Support, half height cabinet, 32 drives, 3.5 inch drives
• Symmetrix 5330: Mainframe Support, half height cabinet, 32 drives, 3.5 inch drives
• Symmetrix 3430: Open Systems Support, single frame, 96 drives, 3.5 inch drives
• Symmetrix 5430: Mainframe Support, single frame, 96 drives, 3.5 inch drives
• Symmetrix 3700: Open Systems Support, triple cabinet, 128 drives, 5.25 inch drives
• Symmetrix 5700: Mainframe Support, triple cabinet, 128 drives, 5.25 inch drives

To read about EMC Symmetrix Hardware Components

Symmetrix Family 4.8 also called Symmetrix 3000 and 5000 Series

• Released 1998 and sold through 2001
• Symmetrix Optimizer Introduced
• Best hardware so far: least outages, least problems and least failures (not sure if EMC will agree to it, most customers do)
• 3.5 inch drives used with all models
• Enginuity microcode 5265.xx.xx, 5266.xx.xx, 5267.xx.xx

• Symmetrix 3630: Open Systems support, half height cabinet, 32 drives
• Symmetrix 5630: Mainframe support, half height cabinet, 32 drives
• Symmetrix 3830: Open Systems support, single cabinet, 96 drives
• Symmetrix 5830: Mainframe support, single cabinet, 96 drives
• Symmetrix 3930: Open Systems support, triple cabinet, 256 drives
• Symmetrix 5930: Mainframe support, triple cabinet, 256 drives

Models sold as 3630-18, 3630-36, 3630-50, 5630-18, 5630-36, 5630-50,3830-36, 3830-50, 3830-73, 5830-36, 5830-50, 5830-73, 3930-36, 3930-50, 3930-73, 5930-36, 5930-50, 5930-73 (the last two digits indicate the drives installed in the frame)

To read about EMC Symmetrix Hardware Components

Symmetrix Family 5.0 also called Symmetrix 8000 Series

[ 3000 (open sytems) + 5000 (mainframe) = 8000 (support for both) ]

• Supports Open Systems and Mainframe without BUS and TAG through ESCON
• Released 2000 and sold through 2003
• 181GB Disk introduced
• Enginuity microcode 5567.xx.xx, 5568.xx.xx

• Symmetrix 8130: Slim cabinet, 48 drives
• Symmetrix 8430: Single cabinet, 96 drives
• Symmetrix 8730: Triple cabinet, 384 drives

Some models sold as 8430-36, 8430-73, 8430-181 or 8730-36, 8730-73, 8730-181 (the last two digits indicate the drives installed in the frame)

To read about EMC Symmetrix Hardware Components

Symmetrix Family 5.5 LVD also called Symmetrix 8000 Series

• Released 2001 and sold through 2004
• LVD: Low Voltage Disk Introduced
• 146GB LVD drive introduced
• Ultra SCSI drives cannot be used with the LVD frame
• Mainframe optimized machines introduced
• 4 Slice directors introduced with ESCON and FICON
• FICON introduced
• Enginuity microcode 5567.xx.xx, 5568.xx.xx

• Symmetrix 8230: Slim cabinet, 48 drives, (rebranded 8130, non lvd frame)
• Symmetrix 8530: Single cabinet, 96 drives, (rebranded 8430, non lvd frame)
• Symmetrix 8830: Triple cabinet, 384 drives, (rebranded 8730, non lvd frame)
• Symmetrix 8230 LVD: LVD frame, slim cabinet, 48 LVD drives
• Symmetrix 8530 LVD: LVD frame, single cabinet, 96 LVD drives
• Symmetrix 8830 LVD: LVD frame, triple cabinet, 384 LVD drives
• Symmetrix z-8530: LVD frame, Single cabinet, 96 drives, optimized for mainframes
• Symmetrix z-8830: LVD frame, Triple cabinet, 384 drives, optimized for mainframe

Some models sold as 8530-36, 8530-73, 8530-146, 8530-181 or 8830-36, 8830-73, 8830-146, 8830-181 (the last two digits indicate the drives installed in the frame)

To read about EMC Symmetrix Hardware Components

Symmetrix DMX or also called Symmetrix Family 6.0

• Released Feb 2003 and sold through 2006
• Direct Matrix Architecture (Data General Backplane) introduced
• DMX800 was the first DMX system introduced
• 4 Slice directors introduced
• RAID 5 introduced after being introduced on DMX-3
• First generation with common DA / FA hardware
• Introduction of modular power
• Enginuity Microcode 5669.xx.xx, 5670.xx.xx, 5671.xx.xx

• Symmetrix DMX800: Single cabinet, DAE based concept for drives, 96 drives (I swear, a customer told me, they have ghost like issues with their DMX800)
• Symmetrix DMX1000: Single cabinet, 18 drives per loop, 144 drives total
• Symmetrix DMX1000-P: Single cabinet, 9 drives per loop, 144 drives total, P= Performance System
• Symmetrix DMX2000: Dual cabinet, modular power, 18 drives per loop, 288 drives
• Symmetrix DMX2000-P: Dual cabinet, modular power, 9 drives per loop, 288 drives, P=Performance System
• Symmetrix DMX3000-3: Triple cabinet, modular power, 18 drives per loop, 3 phase power, 576 drives

To read about EMC Symmetrix DMX Hardware components

To read about EMC Symmetrix DMX models and major differences

Symmetrix DMX2 or also called Symmetrix Family 6.5

• Released Feb 2004 and sold through 2007
• Double the processing using DMX2
• DMX and DMX2 frames are same, only directors from DMX must be changed to upgrade to DMX2, reboot of entire systems required with this upgrade
• RAID 5 introduced after being introduced on DMX-3
• 64GB memory introduced
• 4 Slice Directors
• Enginuity Microcode 5669.xx.xx, 5670.xx.xx, 5671.xx.xx

• Symmetrix DMX801: 2^nd generation DMX, Single cabinet, DAE based concept for drives, 96 drives, FC SPE 2 (I swear, a customer told me, they have ghost like issues with their DMX800)
• Symmetrix DMX1000-M2: 2^nd generation DMX, Single cabinet, 18 drives per loop, 144 drives
• Symmetrix DMX1000-P2: 2^nd generation DMX, Single cabinet, 9 drives per loop, 144 drives, P=Performance System
• Symmetrix DMX2000-M2: 2^nd generation DMX, Dual cabinet, 18 drives per loop, 288 drives
• Symmetrix DMX2000-P2: 2^nd generation DMX, Dual cabinet, 9 drives per loop, 288 drives, P=Performance System
• Symmetrix DMX2000-M2-3: 2^nd generation DMX, Dual cabinet, 18 drives per loop, 288 drives, 3 Phase power
• Symmetrix DMX2000-P2-3: 2^nd generation DMX, Dual cabinet, 9 drives per loop, 288 drives, P=Performance System, 3 Phase power
• Symmetrix DMX3000-M2-3: 2^nd generation DMX, Triple cabinet, 18 drives per loop, 576 drives, 3 Phase power

To read about EMC DMX Symmetrix Hardware components

To read about EMC Symmetrix DMX models and major differences

Symmetrix DMX-3 or also called Symmetrix 7.0

• Released July 2005 and still being sold
• 8 Slice directors
• 1920 disk (RPQ ‘ed to 2400 drives)
• DAE based concept introduced
• Symmetrix Priority Controls
• RAID 5 introduced and then implemented on older DMX, DMX-2
• Virtual LUN technology
• SRDF enhancements
• Concept of vaulting introduced
• Enginuity microcode 5771.xx.xx, 5772.xx.xx

• Symmetrix DMX-3 950: System Cabinet, Storage Bay x 2, 360 drives max, Modular Power, 3 Phase power
• Symmetrix DMX-3: System Cabinet, Storage Bay x 8 (Expandable), 1920 drives max, RPQ’ed to 2400 drives, 3 Phase power

To read about differences between EMC Symmetrix DMX3 and DMX4 platforms

Symmetrix DMX-4 or also called Symmetrix 7.0

• Released July 2007 and still being sold
• Virtual provisioning
• Flash Drives
• FC / SATA drives
• RAID 6 introduced
• SRDF enhancements
• Total Cache: 512 GB
• Total Storage: 1 PB
• Largest drive supported 1TB SATA drive
• Flash drives 73GB, 146GB later now support for 200GB and 400GB released
• 1920 drives max (RPQ’ed to 2400 drives)
• Enginuity microcode 5772.xx.xx, 5773.xx.xx

• Symmetrix DMX-4 950: System Cabinet, Storage Bay x 2, 360 drives max, Modular Power, 3 Phase power
• Symmetrix DMX-4: System Cabinet, Storage Bay x 8 (Expandable), 1920 drives max, RPQ’ed to 2400 drives, Modular power, 3 Phase Power

Some models sold as DMX-4 1500, DMX-4 2500, DMX-4 3500 and DMX-4 4500

• To read about a blog post on EMC Symmetrix: DMX4 Components
• To read about differences between EMC Symmetrix DMX3 and DMX4 platforms
• To read about different drives types supported on EMC Symmetrix DMX4 Platform
• To read about differences between EMC Symmetrix DMX4 and V-Max Systems

Symmetrix V-Max

• (Released April 2009)
• Enginuity Microcode 5874.xxx.xxx
• Total number of drives supported: 2400
• Total Cache: 1 TB mirrored (512GB usable)
• Total Storage: 2 PB

All features on the V-Max have been discussed earlier on the blog post linked below

• Symmetrix V-Max SE: Single System Bay, SE=Single Engine, Storage Bay x 2, 360 drives max, cannot be expanded to a full blown 8 engine system if purchased as a SE, 3 Phase power, Modular Power
• Symmetrix V-Max: System Cabinet, Storage Bay x 10, 2400 drives max, modular power, 3 phase power

• To read about differences between EMC Symmetrix DMX4 and V-Max Systems
• To read about different drives types supported on EMC Symmetrix V-Max Platforms
• To read all about the EMC Symmetrix V-Max Platform

Conclusion

I could have easily added total memory capacity per frame, total number of dedicated DA/DAF slots, total slots, total universal slots, total memory slots, but then I didn’t know information on some of the old systems and didn’t want to be incorrect on them.

Hope you have enjoyed reading this post, with a bit of history related to the Symmetrix platform. I am pretty positive, as of today you will not find this consolidated information on any blog or the manufacturers website.

I really wish, EMC decided to open blogging to some Symmetrix, Clariion, Celerra, Centera specialist that support these systems on a day to day basis, the information that could come out from those guys could be phenomenal. Barry Burke writes a lot of stuff, but again a lot of FUD from him against IBM and HDS, its great reading him, but only a controlled amount of technical information comes from him.

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | EMC Symmetrix, 20 Years in the making
Read more posts categorized as Featured, Storage

Here are some requirements and limitations related to using the RAID-6 technology on the EMC Clariion platforms.

• RAID-6 is only supported with Flare Release 26 and above on Clariion systems.
• Flare 26 only works on the EMC Clariion CX300, CX500, CX700, all CX3-xx platforms and all CX4-xxx platforms.|
• Any systems running below Flare Release 26 (example Release 13, 16, 19, 24) are not compatible to run RAID-6 (Clariion Systems like CX200, CX400 and CX600).

• Minimum disk required to support RAID-6 with Clariion systems is 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 or 14 data disks with 2 Parity disks (Your typical configuration would look like 2D+2P or 4D+2P or 6D+2P or 8D+2P or 14D+2P, where D = Data Disk and P = Parity Disk)
• To configure RAID-6, you will need even number of disk drives in the RAID Group that you are trying to configure.
• RAID-6 is supported on either EFD (Enterprise Flask Disk) or Fiber (FC) or ATA or SATA drives on EMC Clariion Systems.
• RAID-6 Raid group (RAID SET) can be implemented within an enclosure or expanded beyond a single enclosure
• RAID-6 can co-exist in the same DAE (disk array enclosure) as a RAID-5 and/or RAID-1/0 and/or other RAID types.
• RAID-6 supports global hot sparing like other RAID technologies.
• Supports MetaLUN expansion through concatenated or striped expansion only if all the meta member LUNs are RAID-6 devices (LUNs).
• RAID-6 configuration is possible through Navisphere and naviseccli only.
• With RAID-6 traditionally supported CLI interfaces like Java CLI and Classic CLI have been retired.
• Defragmentation with RAID-6 is currently not supported on Flare Release 26.
• You cannot add new drives to an existing RAID-6 LUN, but you can expand the LUN through RAID-6 MetaLUN technology. Example of this will be, if you have a 6D+2P RAID-6 set and would like to add 16 more drives to the same RAID Group, you cannot accomplish it, but if you manage to create either 2 sets of 6D+2P or 1 set of 14D+2P, and then run a MetaLUN concatenate, you will be able to necessarily achieve the same end result.
• You can have Clariion systems with various different RAID group technologies in the same global domain, but again from a management perspective certain traditional CLI interfaces will not work with RAID-6.
• Using the Virtual LUN Technology with Flare Release 26, now customers can migrate various LUNs (RAID-5, RAID-1/0) to RAID-6 technology. The technology allows the new RAID-6 LUN to assume the exact identity of the previous LUN making the migration process much easy.
• Traditional replication and copy software’s like SANCopy, SnapView, MirrorView, and RecoverPoint are all supported for RAID-6 technology.
• Never use RAID-6 technology with a mix of EFD, FC, ATA and SATA drives in the same RAID Group.
• Never use RAID-6 technology with a mix of various drive speeds like 15K or 10K or 7.2K RPM, drive speed should be exactly similar.

• Oh the most important note: 2 drive failures in the same RAID Group and no data loss or data unavailable (DU / DL), making this a very robust RAID technology. There are some performance overhead related to use of RAID-6 systems with small and random writes. While there is an added penalty with Row Parity and Diagonal Parity calculations on the Clariion.

If you would like to see any further post on RAID-6 workings on Clariion Platforms, please feel free to leave a comment.

To read about other RAID-6 implementations with various platforms, please see below.

EMC Symmetrix RAID 6

SUN StorageTek’s RAID 6

HP’s RAID 6

NetApp’s RAID–DP

Hitachi’s (HDS) RAID 6

Different RAID Technologies (Detailed)

Different RAID Types

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | EMC Clariion RAID-6 requirements and limitations
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In fact, it’s difficult to tell exactly what High Availability Manager (we’re calling it HAM for now) really is. As noted by our own Chris Evans (USP-V – So Long And Thanks For All The Fish), HAM isn’t the next-generation USP-V with more-granular thin provisioning, automatic storage tiering, and expanded scalability. It isn’t HDS’ answer to the EMC Symmetrix V-Max and it’s forthcoming FAST technology.

So what is HDS up to here? For one thing, they’re not pre-announcing technology that won’t be delivered for some time. HAM appears to be in use at beta customers now, and will no doubt be generally available in short order.

As Storagebod tweeted, “it’s a teaser…the technology to move is part one but you need something to move to. New USP will be part two!”

This Can’t Be All!

Although I have no inside information, it is simple to speculate on what HDS will deliver soon. If I was the product manager for USP-V-II, here’s what I would demand:

1. The next-generation USP-V must be far more scalable than anything we’ve seen yet. This means it must surpass the 8 “engines” and 2,400 drives of the current V-Max from EMC.
2. It must also offer automatic tiering of storage from flash/SSD to Fibre Channel to SATA. In fact, HDS can one-up everyone else (except maybe IBM) by extending tiering to older, external, and even third-party storage arrays. Now that would be something!
3. It must include next-generation datacenter Ethernet support, including 10 Gb FCoE and iSCSI.
4. It must integrate with VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, including native multipathing and full API support for snapshots and replication.
5. It must be an easy upgrade from current storage systems, especially USP-V but also third-party arrays.
6. Since it’ll be huge, it must have template-based management for hosts, LUNs, and HA features.

Ham It Up

My fear is that HAM will be used to provide some of these features in a not-exactly-integrated fashion. It will certainly be used for the upgrade path, but let’s hope it’s not the final word for the others. Consider that the “clustering” features of HAM would allow HDS to claim extreme scalability across geographies between multiple USP instances. Although this would not pass the sniff test of many who are hip-deep in enterprise storage, it would likely satisfy the sales-pitch one-upmanship needs when competing with EMC.

On reflection, all of the features mentioned sound exactly like what EMC announced last month! So HDS must have more up their sleeves. Even this USP-II can’t be all HDS has to offer!

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2009. | HDS’ HAM-Fisted Announcement Can’t Be All
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This is the second in a series of articles on Sun Microsystem’s Unified Storage System, also known as Amber Road.  Previous post(s):

Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System – Part I

So in the first post in this series I discussed the USS and gave a basic overview of the hardware.  In this post I’ll discuss the disk components of the hardware in more detail and look at the use of flash (SSD) drives and ZFS to produce a commodity storage device.

Traditional storage arrays permit the configuration of multiple disk types within a single array.  This can range from solid state disks (SSDs), through to fast fibre channel drives and slower high capacity SATA drives.  USS operates a slightly different model – all drives in the USS array are high capacity SATA.  SSD drives are then used to ameliorate performance on read and write activity in combination with the ZFS file system, by using the SSDs for read caching and write logging.  

How ZFS & SSD Are Used

OK, I’m not going to post a long diatribe about ZFS (although I may in the future), however it’s worth just having a look at the basic concepts in order to understand how ZFS impacts USS performance.  So, ZFS (originally called “Zettabyte File System”) is a high performance, high capacity filesystem introduced into Solaris about three years ago.  It is more resilient than UFS, not requiring filesystems checks after a system crash.  It also integrates the features of a standard filesystem and volume manager, pooling physical disks into groups from which filesystems can then be created.  ZFS supports RAID protection, including RAID-1 and RAID-Z, a proprietary implementation of RAID-5.  RAID-Z doesn’t suffer the same performance penalty as traditional RAID-5 as ZFS uses a Copy-on-Write (COW) methodology to write data into new locations rather than overwriting the original position.  

ZFS uses two features (which relate to USS) to improve performance.  Firstly, disk reads are held in cache (called ARC  - Adaptive Replacement Cache).  Second, disk writes are journalled  (or logged) into the ZIL (ZFS Intent Log).  The ZIL provides resilience in the event of a system crash, however it also offers the opportunity for increased filesystem write performance.  Have a look at the graphic on the right, which is heavily used in the Sun documentation on USS.  This shows how traditional storage pools would be allocated with RAM and disk.  The USS model implements ARC for cached reads (which is stored in RAM), L2ARC, a level 2 ARC which extends ARC and is stored on read-biased SSDs and the ZIL, which is stored on write-biased SSDs.  

L2ARC allows cache reads to be improved by creating an intermediate tier of read cache between disk and main memory.  ZIL improves writes by logging them to SSD and periodically flushing them to physical disk.  In the event of a system crash, integrity is still maintained as the ZIL is non-volatile.

In the USS, SATA drives are used in the main disk pool.  STEC SSD drives are used for the L2ARC and ZIL.  The model I reviewed had 36GB of ZIL cache, deployed as two 18GB SSD modules in standard disk enclosures.  The current implementation of USS only allows for a single disk pool, which means all data has to be protected with the same RAID level.  This is an annoying restriction, but I expect it will change in a future release as creating separate pools is simply a ZFS feature.

Why SSD and SATA?

It’s worth touching on why the USS is different to a traditional storage device.  In a typical general storage array there will be LUNs presented to hosts which are very active, some moderately active and some totally inactive.  If the LUN activity is plotted on a graph with the busiest LUNs on the left, the least active on the right and the Y-axis showing the degree of activity on each LUN in IOPS, the profile of a normal system will follow the “Long Tail” model.  This variation in activity is why savings can be made from operating a tiered model in a large storage array , placing LUNs on the appropriate tier of storage based on their activity level.  

However, the trouble with taking I/O profile snapshots is that they’re just that – a snapshot.  They represent the I/O activity at that point in time.  Take a sample at another time of day or day of the week and another profile results.  This may show a very different set of busy LUNs compared to those highlighted previously.  One option is to average out the profiles over a suitable interval – say a day, a week or a month.  Whilst this will show on average the busiest LUNs, it will also mask any potential peaks in I/O demand as they will be averaged out over the period.  The shorter these peaks are, the less likely they will be noticed.  

Deployment of tiering has one other problem and that is determining the amount of storage required in each tier.  It may well be that the ratios of each storage tier required changes over time as an array grows in size.  Perhaps the consumers of storage on the array realise that tier-1 storage is expensive and ask for more tier-2 or a new project comes along that needs a large volume of tier-0 SSD.  Typically, traditional arrays are inflexible at physically swapping tiers of storage on demand.

The USS provides one option to the Long Tail model.  By accepting all writes into SSD and destaging later to SATA, it ensures that high performance non-volatile storage is available at the time of the write and for multiple successive reads.  Fronting disk access with SSD ensures that high performance is dynamically provided to LUNs as it is needed.

Now it would be possible to compromise the SSD write cache by flooding a USS array with writes and this would be true for any array.  The question is at what point the USS would fail.   Unfortunately with my testing, I wasn’t able to generate sufficient  workload to overwhelm the 7210 I tested.  However I can say that in the testing I performed, the array coped easily with the workload I threw at it.  Clearly there’s still a requirement to manage the ratio of SSD to SATA based on the workload profile of the array.

Value Proposition

So what’s the value of using SATA and SSD in combination as the USS does?  There are a number:

• All data is stored on cheap, high capacity SATA drives, reducing the overall cost of the solution.
• I/O performance demands are managed by a small incremental cost in SDD.
• Variations in I/O workload performance is dynamically managed, removing the need to implement multiple storage tiers, significantly reducing management overhead.
• Array expansion is simplified – there’s no need to spend time planning how additional storage should be assigned to an array by tier.

Next time I’ll look at the analytics provided by the USS and how it allows detailed device reporting.

© Chris for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System – Part II
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Like clockwork, VMware has cranked out another update to their flagship enterprise product, ESX 3.5. The last update came out in early November, 2008, and included some major new functionality. What’s in store this time to intrigue storage folks? Not much.

For more information on earlier updates, see my articles:

• Storage Fixes in VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 2
• Storage Changes in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3

Expanded Support for Enhanced vmxnet Adapter

Not specifically a storage change, but the enhanced vmxnet adapter introduced back in the original release of ESX 3.5 now works with most versions of Windows Server 2003 and XP Pro. Look for improved performance when using guest-side SMB and NFS as well as the guest iSCSI initiator. Note that you cannot select this driver when configuring non-Enterprise Edition machines; you have to select Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) regardless of which version of Server 2003 you are using.

Expanded SAS and SATA Controller Support

If you’d like to install ESX on a server equipped with a PMC 8011, Intel ICH9 or ICH10, CERC 6/I SATA/SAS Integrated RAID Controller, or HP Smart Array P700m Controller, you’ll find happiness in Update 4.

The Intel controllers are especially important, as we’re seeing them used more and more and this driver is more full-featured than the earlier Broadcom HT 1000 and Intel ICH7 drivers. The Intel ICH9/ICH10 is a dual-mode (IDE/ATA and AHCI/SATA) driver, supports SATA hard drives, SSDs, and optical drives, and now enables VMFS support when in AHCI/SATA mode. It’s not clear whether VMware actually supports VMFS datastores on ICH9/10 SATA, but it says it works. Anyone want to try it out? One thing is certain: You can’t use SATA drives in a shared/clustered environment because SATA does not include reservations. See this tech note and especially this question:

Earlier, it was mentioned that we can create VMFS if we use AHCI/SATA mode. If so, why did VMware not claim VMFS support when using SATA controller running in AHCI/SATA mode?

VMware might decide to add support in the near future. There is no strong need to have VMFS support on a SATA drive, because native SATA protocol does not support reserve/release. Reserve/release is needed if VMFS is used as clustered file system in a shared disk environment.

PXE Boot Support

Rich at VM/ETC points out that Update 4 includes experimental PXE boot support for ESX and ESXi. As he notes, this has major implications for cloud computing platforms, since it means that ESX servers can boot guests without local storage at all. Very interesting! Let’s bet that Update 5 (expected in June or July) will include this as a supported option.

Updated QLogic, Emulex, and LSI Drivers

Like most ESX updates, this one included updated Fibre Channel drivers.

• The QLogic Fibre Channel Adapter driver and firmware (versions 7.08-vm66 and 4.04.06, respectively) include bug fixes and enhanced NPIV support.
• On the Emulex side, driver version 7.4.0.40 supports the company’s HBAnyware 4.0 management software.
• Users of SAS and SCSI LSI MegaRAIDs will find driver version 3.19vmw (megaraid_sas) and 2.6.48.18 vmw (mptscsi) which improves performance and enhances event handling capabilities.

Expanded Sun Storage Array Support

All you StorageTek loyalists out there will be happy to see support for Sun’s low-end StorageTek 2530 SAS array as well as the modular 6580 and 6780 Fibre Channel arrays. It looks like just about every model in Sun’s current storage lineup is now supported in ESX.

Expanded Network Card Support

Support for Gigabit cards is greatly expanded, including HP’s quad-port NC375i and dual-port NC362i and NC360m, Intel’s Gigabit CT and 82574L, and NetXtreme’s BCM5722, BCM5755, BCM5755M, and BCM5756. Intel’s widely-used 10-gig 82598EB cards are now supported as well.

Tweaks and Fixes

Looking through the release notes, a few storage-related tweaks and fixes stand out:

1. WMware can optionally automatically throttle back the queue depth when congestion is encountered. See Controlling LUN queue depth throttling in VMware ESX for 3PAR Storage Arrays for more information.
2. VMklinux module heap size can now be adjusted as LUN queue-depth values are increased. Since tuning LUN queue depths is one common trick of the storage trade to improve performance, especially in queue-stingy systems like ESX, this is welcome news. But call VMware support before you monkey with it!
3. An RDM-related issue where SCSI inquiry data over 36 bytes was truncated or corrupted (for example when using Microsoft VSS and NetApp SnapDrive) has been resolved.

Well, that’s all folks. I suggest you all read the release notes for yourself, and please leave a comment if you see an error in what I wrote here or have something to add!

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Storage Changes in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 4
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With latest announcements from NetApp, IBM and EMC (Next Generation Celerra) in early Feb 2009, EMC’s DMX announcement might come right around EMC World 2009, plus or minus a month.

With the absence of Barry Burke from the Storage Blogosphere community over the past 3 months, it seems like he is busy working on strategy for the new generation of DMX machines. 

Here is my wish list or expectations on the new DMX Platform.

Strategy, Cost, Marketing, Support…….

Do less with more!!!! This will have to be the reality of the new generation of DMX’s. In this tough economy and financial distress, if a new product is pitched with same efficiencies and overall similar ROI and TCO models, it will be hard to sell.

Some important CIO, CFO pitches would include, less foot print with more data, higher efficiency, delivered at 2/3^rd the cost of previous generation of machines, energy savings, etc. Key Differentiators would be the cost per TB of data storage, cost per TB of management (Storage Administrators, OpEx), a savings of 20 to 30% in this equation might come into play.

The cost of warranty of each DMX is pretty high, during the warranty phase EMC Support Labs in Hopkinton, Sydney, Cork and Bangalore are supporting these boxes on a 24 x 7 basis. If EMC can manage to bring down the cost of in warranty repair including labor, parts, labs, engineering support, the savings from all these can be passed on to the customer. In this market, EMC might offer an extension of a 3 year warranty to a 4 year warranty that might help with ROI and TCO models.

Partners……

Support for new generation DMX’s installs extended to ASN Partners.

Some portions of Enterprise channels will be designed to work like Commercial channels promoting premier partners and ASN partners to perform some work on the enterprise machines. 

Model Numbers……

The million dollar question, will it be called Symmetrix DMX-5?

Or will it be called
DMX-5-XP (Extra Performance),
DMX-5-EF (EFD optimized machine),
DMX-5-V (extended support for Virtualization),
DMX-5-950 (same naming convention as before),
DMX-5-8 (8GB I/O),
DMX-V (You can think its V for virtualization or V for roman letter 5)

Let’s not get hung up on the model numbers though.

Names…….

Will EMC for the first time drop the name Symmetrix from this generation of machines, this name comes from the Moshe days.

Technology…..

EMC is known to make a big bang with technology with all its new product releases and has been a leader in bringing new technology to the market. Let’s talk about a few technological aspects to look forward to in the new generation of DMX.

The underlying DMX-3 design has been different than the DMX and DMX2 generation of machines. The DMX-4 design has been pretty similar to the DMX-3’s.

The point I am trying to make, EMC had a time frame of 5 years since the DMX2’s to come up with a radically changed DMX-5 design. Will a completely new design come to fruition with this generation of machines?

Enginuity Code……

A new Family Code is possibly due with this generation of DMX. May be an Initial release level of 5874.xx.xx.

Continued NDU (Non Disruptive Upgrade) Everything concept.

Introduction of PaPS (Plug and Play Support) with disk.

Size…….

2 Cabinet: where one Cabinet is for Controllers, and the other for 2.5 inch Flash Disk. This model will be optimized for Flash Drives only and will be lighting fast.

2 or more Cabinets where the 1^st Cabinet is for Controllers and the other ones for drives, the additional drive cabinets can be used for 3.5 inch drives or for 2.5 inch drives depending on the cabinet type you purchase. Also supported with Flash Drives.

Total Raw Storage……..

2048 TB (Double the capacity from DMX-4)

Cache…..

1024 GB Cache (First Enterprise Storage Array to hit 1TB of Cache)

Maximum usable memory: 512GB

Controllers…….

Each DAF, GbE, FICON, ESCON controllers might be subdivided into 8 slices (ports, processors) creating further condensation of controllers, I/O, footprint, drives per DAF.

Additional backend ports will be added with this.

Each processor might be 2.4 Ghz PowerPC Chip.

Introduction of Clariion Type Concepts in Enterprise Storage…….

Plug and Play for disk replacements, where presence of an EMC CE onsite might not be required. This is pretty common with Clariion and NetApp Systems today.

Conceptual change of Global Memory to Local Memory, where memory is part of the controllers and not a global memory pool and Flash drives are used for certain memory operations as a vault.

Microcode upgrades being performed by the customer like its done for the Flarecode today.

EFD’s……..

After support for 73GB and 146GB Flash, will might see 200GB , 400GB  and 500GB disk on this new generation of machines?

With the use of EFD’s in Enterprise storage would the concept of IOPS with Storage change to GHz & MIPS.

Introduction of 2.5 inch drives…….

With some OEMs introducing support for 2.5 inch drives, we might see EMC moving in the same direction.

The next generation Clariion’s might have similar drives in them too.

Symapi…….

Today the Symapi database resides on the Service Processor. Service Processors die; crash or get interrupted in middle of a change (provisioning, allocation, and configuration) and all of sudden the customer finds themselves in middle of crisis. All the change windows scheduled will have to be rescheduled, PSE’s dialing into the boxes to troubleshoot and fix issues, etc.

Introduction of an IP based (ethernet) connection to the DMX (talking about the DMX and not the SP) with multiple paths of communication. The SYMAPI databases will be locally stored on the DMX rather than the SP. This is similar to the VCMDB and the SFS volumes which already reside on the DMX.

Introduction of VMware ESXi into the Service Processor Environment to run multiple instances of SP Software and Windows for diagnostics, remote call home, etc. May be One VMware install can call home on the highest priority errors to location 1 and the second calling home with low to medium errors at location 2 and create two different queues for support priority.

Ethernet…..

As mentioned earlier, an introduction of IP based Ethernet management port, allowing SMC (Symmetrix Management Console) to interface, ECC and other Components can communicate through the same infrastructure.

Hardware……

Channel support which would include FICON, ESCON, GbE, FC, iSCSI, RF and some initial support for FCoE.

2048TB of storage in 5 cabinets can only be achieved with 2.5 inch drives.

Introduction of LP SATA Drives…..

Introduction of Low Power SATA Drives to conserve energy.

Plug and Play Support……

It sounds unreasonable, but if this can be incorporated into the DMX Platform, it will really take the overall platform to new levels with configuration, provisioning, customer interface, management, etc. Imagine if you want to add new drives to your current DMX, no BIN file change, just plug the drives in and configure through SMC.

High Efficiency….

At least 30% increase in efficiency, usage, savings, power and reduction in administration, management, support.

Added interface friendliness for SMC usage.

I/O Improvements……

8GB I/O per second Backend?

Improved Cache Partitioning , Mirroring and Priority Controls……

Further enhancements related to cache partitioning and cache mirroring, allowing customers to prioritize cache based on applications, times of the day, etc to certain set of drives or interfaces.

New Conceptual Design with BCV’s, DRV’s, Snaps and Clones……

As I say conceptual, I am not sure if history can change with this new generation of DMX machines or the new code. The mirrors, bcv’s, drv’s, snaps, clones are all treated as mirrored positions, configuration like RAID-5, RAID-6 is hard to manage.

If the code has been completely rewritten using new technologies this might be a reality, working more at a lun level rather than drive levels.

EFD’s and Optimizer…….

With EFD’s the use of Symm Optimizer is not deemed necessary, will optimizer become history?

Policy based support for Atmos…….

This will be one of the best features to look forward with the release of new DMX’s. Will DMX have native support for Atmos or will it be through a policy based engine as additional physical hardware.

Enhanced Support for VMware……..

This is a given, limitations with DMX and VMware with usage of LUN #’s, with the new DMX we will see additional native support for VMware integration features.

Enhanced RSA Integration…..

A lot was seen with DMX-3 and DMX-4 with access controls, etc. Further enhancements to security aspects of the storage.

Enhanced Support for RAID 5 / RAID 6, possible modification of one of the RAID designs to make the product faster………

Introduction of a new RAID type with this generation of DMX’s to compete with NetApp’s RAID-DP.

Storage Virtualization…….

This is really questionable, not sure where EMC wants to take Storage Virtualization.

Virtual Provisioning licensing…….

Virtual Provisioning included as part of the microcode and at no additional cost.

Native support for Deduplication?

Could this happen with the latest DMX’s

Built in SRM tools?

Some support for build in SRM tools into SMC, will help customers identify issues with the DMX.

Advancements with Green Infrastructure……..

This is a given, big marketing pitch, energy savings of 30% at least.

Advancements in Workflow and Automation…….

Further advancements with Workflow, Automation in new versions of ECC and SMC.

Initial Support for FCoE…..

Initial FCoE support has been released on the Clariions. We will see some initial support for FCoE on the new DMX generation. 

EMC has discussed this topic so many different ways in the blogosphere, I am pretty sure we will see some early adaption of it in this generation of DMX’s.

Hope I did cover a lot of ground in terms of new technology that we can look forward from EMC. 

As usual comments always welcome. 

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Expectations with new Generation of DMX Technology
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Am I expecting dramatic things from the big boys; almost certainly! Now, it is too soon for the economic downturn to have dramatically impacted what are often very long R&D cycles; so much of what we will see will have been in the labs for a long time. The downturn may have impacted some final feature sets with things like efficiency rising up the stack but these features were well up the list anyway.

When we talk about efficiency what do we mean? We can focus on the amount of storage we can actually use in our array, can we use 50% of that slow SATA disk before performance tails off and it becomes unuseable for anything else? Cheap/=efficient. We could focus on operational efficiency, how many heads does it take to manage your disk? How quickly can we service the business? What level of complexity do we expose to the business, what level of complexity is exposed to the storage administrators.

Actually, I’m expecting the big product announcements to focus on all these things. How do I make SSDs and SATA work efficiently and effectively? Note, SSDs and SATA; not FC! FC as disk technology will head to the toilet and look concerned about it’s prospects of being flushed! How do I automate storage provisioning and tiering? The gravy train for basic storage admin will come off the rails, there will be some delays in this due to the wrong type of rain/snow/leaves but automation will become prevalent.

This with a whole raft of server virtualisation announcements will change the IT Infrastructure environment; I already see server/network admins looking greedily at the storage domain, wanting to take charge of this key part of the infrastructure. I don’t see the currently harassed storage admins looking greedily the other way, I see a lot of wagons starting to go round in circles.

If you work in storage and want to continue to work in storage, it’s time for you to start getting ready for a different world and start to prepare yourselves to move away from Hypers, Metas. LSSs, RDF, PPRC etc, etc; time to get ready to manage more end-to-end. Sure, you’ll still be storage specialists but you’ll need to know a lot more, it’ll be fun!

An old manager of mine used to say ‘A Career isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon’; he was wrong, ‘A Career isn’t a sprint, it’s a series of them’. Had another one who used to say ‘Get focused or get f**ked’; he was more right but you’ve got to worry about the Bokeh, not just the focus!

© Martin for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Ready?
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