I’ve just been reading through the press release from HDS on their new AMS enhancements. Hu Yoshida has blogged about the new features too (it makes a change to hear something different than another discussion on UVM). There’s now HDP support as well as dense storage trays capable of holding 48 drives in 4U. With all the new features, is there any need for enterprise arrays like the USP?
OK, I touched on this subject not that long ago when I criticised the recent USP-V clustering announcement. Looking at what the AMS offers today, it’s not that far behind the enterprise models on the features it offers. Let’s use Martin Glassborow’s (Storagebod) definition of Enterprise Storage:
- Highly Available — 99.99%+ available
- Supports multiple disk-types and sizes within the array
- Supports multiple RAID Levels
- Highly Scalable — Supports 500+ disks and supports many hosts attached
- Highly Performant — Whatever that means
- Non-disruptive upgrades — Internal code and hardware can be replaced/upgraded with no service outage
Does the AMS2000 range support all these requirements? I think it pretty much does (although scalability for numbers of hosts/LUNs may be an issue). Add in the new HDP features, active/active multi-pathing, dense storage trays and AMS2000 becomes a compelling purchase over standard Enterprise arrays.
So perhaps it isn’t necessary to purchase a huge USP-V for all your storage needs. In fact, it may be prudent, depending on cost, to consider a USP-VM for tier 1 applications and the AMS range for tier 2 and below. What do you think?
