Contour Data Solutions Blog » EMC

EMC Celerra NS Series Vs. Netapp FAS Series

roccog — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:22:00 +0000

Spec Comparison

Specifications

NetApp FAS/V-Series

EMC Celerra NS Series

Operating System

Data ONTAP

DART

(Data Access in Real Time)

File System

WAFL

UxFS

Simple Management & Installation

Yes

Yes[1]

High Performance RAID 6

Yes

No[2]

Snapshots in base system

Yes

Rapid recovery from Snapshots

SnapRestore

SnapSure

Flexible Volumes

FlexVol

Celerra AVM[3]

Integrated Cloning

FlexClone

Workload Prioritization

FlexShare

Virtualized Partitions

MultiStore

Virtual Data Movers

Mirroring

SnapMirror

Celerra Replicator / MirrorView[4]

Max. systems in a cluster

2-8[5]

Competitive Alignment

NetApp

EMC

FAS2040

FAS2050

NS-120

FAS3140

FAS3160

NS-480

FAS3170

FAS60×0

NS-960

Feature Comparison

Feature

Notes

Efficiency

NetApp: High-performance RAID DP with industry leading space efficiency.

EMC: Use of standard RAID 10 or 5 with performance and capacity limits.

EMC Competitive Analysis

Overview

Recognized brand, large installed base
>50% of sales are through channel and OEMs, including Dell and Fujitsu-Siemens
40% revenue increase YoY

Strengths

N+1 clustering for high availability
“All-in-one” NAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel connectivity
File-level deduplication
File-level retention (FLR), similar to SnapLock Enterprise
Thin Provisioning with Automated Volume Manager
Fully Automatic Storage Tiering (FAST) with FileMover Appliance for files
Unified Management GUI with Celerra Unisphere
Disk spin down

Weaknesses

At least two operating systems to manage
DART on Celerra
FLARE on CLARiiON
RedHat Linux on Celerra Control Station
No true Unified Storage
Weak performance with Out-of-the-box install
20% less performance with RAID-6 compared to RAID-5
Highest Availability (5×9s) only for CLARiiON
Async replication process for NAS with non-transparent failover
Deduplication not supported on iSCSI and with VMware
CLARiiON virtually provisioned LUNs are not supported and cannot be provisioned to Celerra
Limited SSD drive capability (15 per NS-120/NS-480, 30 per NS-960)
With FLR-C (Compliance) a CLARiiON admin can still delete the underlying LUN

Why NetApp vs. EMC

Highest performance in per-node throughput and overall response time
Highly efficient snapshots
FAS/V-Series exceeds NS performance as reported via third-party specSFS benchmark results
Lower total cost of ownership
IDC Storage Tracker reports NetApp NAS cost less than EMC NAS quarterly and YoY
FlexVol and RAID-DP greatly increases utilization
Simple upgrade path
More cost-effective mirroring and disaster recovery
Simplest to manage
One management interface
Less equipment to manage
Less software to configure
Highly reliable and available
FAS/V-Series meets and exceeds Five 9’s availability validated by IDC report
RAID-DP provides tolerance to multiple simultaneous disk failures without performance penalities commonly found in competitor RAID 6 deployments
Choice of FAS/V-Series asynchorous, synchronous or semi-synchronous mirroring versus NS asynchronous approach for file replication
Easily, quickly recover from errors and disasters
No single point of failure vs EMC NS Control Station or active/active controller configurations
NetApp Cloud, NDDC and ITaaS provides non-disruptive availability of business data and repeatable processes
Muitlstore provides secure and transparent pools of storage, with Lifetime Key management with Decru
Operations, Protection and Provisioing Managers provide seamless cloud-enabled automated provisioining and management
SANScreen provides superior capacity management and chargeback
Data Motion enables movement of storage pools non-disruptively

Questions To Ask

Storage Utilization

· What level of thin provisioning does EMC NS provide?

· How does EMC’s double parity RAID 6 perform?

· How much capacity does EMC need for SnapClone?

Disaster Recovery

· Should I use SnapSure or SnapView?

· How do you do backup and recovery from snapshots?

Performance

· Does Celerra do workload prioritization like FlexShare?

· How many Snapshots can I take without any performance loss?

Reliability & Availability

· What level of availability can I expect from EMC NS and what third-party has validated this? Four 9’s? Five 9’s? Six 9’s?

· How do you protect against a double disk failure while ensuring performance? Can you do it without mirroring the RAID groups?

Archival and Compliance (if EMC proposes Celerra plus Centera)

· Wouldn’t it make sense to include a CAS/compliance option on existing storage platforms (like NetApp does with SnapLock)?

· How many dissimilar management interfaces and software are required?

Enterprise-ready requirements

· What is your strategy to support automatic disaster recovery?

Support

· How will you support my 24×7 production environment – go through partners that support other vendors?

[1] Celerra Unisphere delivers not all functionality

[2] EMC delivers RAID 6 but with performance penalties

[3] Without the ability to shrink volumes

[4] Celerra Replicator for NAS/iSCSI, MirrorView for FC/iSCSI

[5] NS-120 w/ 2 Data Mover, NS-480 up to 4, NS-960 up to 8. One Data Mover is passive for failover

Creating a new datastore in VMware from your EMC disk via iSCSI

dougc — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:27:34 +0000

Ok, I will admit that most people know how to do this already but I still know of companies that are just getting on the VM wagon therefore might need this information. I have searched around the web and not found one complete document or a series of documents that will help you get from a raw disk on your EMC down to an actual functioning datastore in VMware. This article assumes you have already configured your EMC and VMware host(s) with the iSCSI initiators and that you have vCenter running and you are using vSphere client. The first part is provisioning the disk and presenting them to the VMware environment. Below is a link to a wonderfully written EMC web page on how to get the raw disk into the Celerra so there is no point in me recreating that. Once this is done come back to this page. As a note, you need to make the ID 16 or higher in order for it to be seen by the Celerra. I like all of my information from the RAID group ID to the LUN ID in Navisphere to the Celerra LUN ID in Celerra manager. I also have a format that makes sense to me at least so I offer it to you. All this is, is basic formatting that months after you do the initial creation will help when troubleshooting, aside form that it is honestly pointless. Here is what I use:

If you are making a RAID group that will result in a single iSCSI LUN when done then do the following

Start at 20 for the RAID group ID, use the same number in the LUN ID and in the HOST ID (all of which is explained on the link below)

If you are making a RAID group that will result in multiple iSCSI LUN’s when done then do the following

Start at 100 for the RAID group ID, use the same number in the LUN ID and in the HOST ID (all of which is explained on the link below)
Before creating you next RAID group find out what the last iSCSI LUN number used from the step(5.1) below in this post and start at the next interval of 10. Example if step(5.1) below in this post ended at 108 then start this next group at 110, if it ended at 114 then start the next group at 120 and so on.

http://corpusweb130.corp.emc.com/ns/common/post_install/Config_storage_FC_NaviManager.htm

Ok, you’re back. So now you have rescanned the Celerra which will result in your defined storage pools now having the available space you just configured in Navisphere. A few more steps and you will have a functioning datastore(s).

Click on File Systems and click on NEW
Check Storage Pool in the create from, then type in a file system name (anything you want, some people type what it will be for “SQL Logs” some like what it is “RAID5”, other like the location “Bus 1 Enclosure 1 Disks 0-4”), choose the pool that has the disks you just created, type in the size of the storage (should be 100%), choose your options of Auto Extend; Virtual Provisioning; Deduplication if you choose to, leave Slice checked, choose your data mover, and leave mount point at Default.
Click OK if you are only doing 1, if you have multiple click Apply and then repeat step 2 as much as needed.
Click on iSCSI and click on NEW
Choose your data mover, choose your target (would be the target you created for your ESX environment), type in a LUN number (this should match the number you choose in the above steps during the RAID group setup, see note below before proceeding), choose your file system (the one you just created), type in the size you want it to be, choose the option of read only; virtual provisioning if you choose to.

NOTE: if you are creating a single iSCSI LUN from the file system then make the number match should be a number between 20 and 99 if you followed from above. If you are going to make multiple iSCSI LUNS from the single file system then start creating the iSCSI LUN’s with the number you choose (should be between 100 and 999) moving up in increments of 1 for each additional defined iSCSI LUN.

example of multiple LUN’s: First iSCSI LUN from a file system on RAID group 100 is 100, the next iSCSI LUN is 101 and the next is 102 and so on.

Click OK if you are only doing 1, if you have multiple click Apply and then repeat step 5 as much as needed.
When done click on the Targets tab on the top of the iSCSI screen
Right click on your ESX target and choose Properties
Click on the tab LUN Mask
Right click the initiator for the ESX host you want to see the new LUN(s) and choose Properties
In the line Grant LUNs type in the new LUN(s) you have defined above in step 5

You can use a comma between LUN numbers or a dash between a range

example 20, 22, 30, 100-107, etc..

Click OK
Repeat from step 10 for each host that needs to see the new defined LUN(s)
Open vSphere Client and navigate to the datastores view
Right click on your datacenter and choose Rescan for Datastores
At the Rescan screen uncheck Scan for new storage devices and click OK
When that completes right click on your datacenter and choose Add Datastore
Choose a host and click NEXT
Choose Disk/LUN and click NEXT
Click on the iSCSI LUN your are trying to configure (if there is more than one pick one to start with) and click NEXT
Click NEXT at the Current Disk Layout screen
Enter a name for your datastore (this can be whatever you like) and click NEXT
Choose your block size and capacity and click NEXT
Verify the information and click FINISH
Repeat from step 17 as many times as needed
You are done!

Nominal capacity vs. Formated capacity

mikeg — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:35:41 +0000

Nominal capacity, also know as the "advertised" capacity, is based on the standard base 10 numbers instead of the base 2 mathematics that disk drives use. In bae 10 one Megabyte equals one million bytes while one Gigabyte equals one billion bytes. This isn't too much of a problem with small numbers such as a Kilobyte, but each level of increase in the prefix also increased the total discrepancy of the actual capacity compared to the nominal capacity.

Check out the table below which has some rough estimates of the formatted capacity of standard disk drives.

Nominal Capacity	Formatted Capacity (520 bytes/sector, 1MB=1,048,576bytes)	Rotational Speed	Interface
73 GB 4 Gb/s	72.67 GB	N/A—Solid State	FibreChannel
400 GB 4 Gb/s	372.5 GB	N/A—Solid State	FibreChannel
146 GB 4 Gb/s	135 GB	15,000 rpm	FibreChannel
200 GB 4 Gb/s	186.31GB	N/A—Solid State	FibreChannel
300 GB 4 Gb/s	272 GB	15,000 rpm	FibreChannel
450 GB 4 Gb/s	408 GB	10,000 rpm	FibreChannel
450 GB 4G FC	409 GB	15,000 rpm	FibreChannel
600 GB 4 Gb/s	545 GB	10,000 rpm	FibreChannel
600 GB 4G FC	545 GB	15,000 rpm	FibreChannel
1 TB 4 Gb/s	932 GB	7,200rpm	SATA
1 TB 4 Gb/s Low Power	932 GB	5,400 rpm	SATA
2 TB 4 Gb/s Low Power	1,852 GB	5,400 rpm	SATA

Renaming a Celerra CIFS Server, while preserving local groups, shares, and file system permissions

mikeg — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:59:12 +0000

Here are the commands to rename a Celerra CIFS server:

Be sure putty session has a lot of lines of scroll back set so you can scroll up to see previous commands/results

testserv - Original server name

testservnew – new server name

get existing CIFS server data:

> server_cifs server_2

> server_cifs server_3

1. Unjoin the original compname from the domain, type:

server_cifs server_2 -Unjoin compname=testserv,domain=contourds.local,admin=adadmin

2. Delete the compname from the CIFS configuration of the Data Mover, type:

server_cifs server_2 -delete compname=testserv

3. Add the compname back to the CIFS configuration of the Data Mover as a NetBIOS name, type:

server_cifs server_2 -add netbios=testserv,domain=contourds.local,interface=192_168_191_65

4. Rename the NetBIOS server to the new name, type:

server_cifs server_2 -rename -netbios testserv testservnew

5. Delete the renamed NetBIOS name from step 4. from the CIFS configuration of the Data Mover, type:

server_cifs server_2 -delete netbios=testservnew

6. Add the new compname to the CIFS configuration and active directory (AD) domain, type:

server_cifs server_2 -add compname=testservnew,domain=contourds.local,interface=192_168_191_65

7. Join the new compname to the CIFS configuration and active directory (AD) domain, type:

server_cifs server_2 -Join compname=testservnew,domain=contourds.local,admin=adadmin

That's it!

HP MSA and EMC AX Comparison

roccog — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:48:00 +0000

HARDWARE COMPARISON	EMC	HP
HARDWARE COMPARISON	CLARiiON AX4	MSA1500	MSA1510i
Connectivity	Fibre Channel or iSCSI	Fibre Channel	iSCSI
Host ports	2 x 4 Gb Fibre Channel or 2 x 1 Gb IP per SP	2 x 2 Gb Fibre Channel per controller	2 x 1 Gb IP per controller
Maximum hosts (high availability)	64	20
Controllers	1 or 2 SPs	1 or 2
Drive options	146, 300* GB 15k SAS 400 GB 10k SAS 750 GB 1TB* SATA	36, 72, 146, 300 GB 15k SAS 73, 146, 300 GB 10k SAS 160, 250, 500, 750 GB SATA
Drives	4 to 60	Up to 96
Raw capacity	584 GB to 60 TB	Up to 64 TB
Cache	1 GB per SP	256 or 512MB per controller
Operating system support	Windows 2000 Windows Server 2003 Linux HP-UX AIX Solaris Netware VMware	Windows 2000 Windows Server 2003 Linux HP-UX Netware SCO Open VMS Tru64 VMware	Windows 2000 Windows Server 2003 VMware

ARRAY BASED SOFTTWARE	EMC CLARiiON AX4	HP
Snaps	SnapView	Host-based only
Clones	SnapView	None
Management	Navisphere	Separate software
Snaps/clones per array	256 / 128	–
Snaps/clones per LUN	8	–
Snaps/clone of same LUN	Yes	–
Snaps from clones	Yes	–
Local copy from remote replica	Yes, clone	–
Dedicated snap area	Yes	–
Access to source LUN during copy	Yes	–
Consistent splits	Yes	–
Protected Restore	Yes	–
Snap rollback	Yes	–

ARRAY BASED REPLCATION	EMC CLARiiON AX4	HP
Products	MirrorView	None
Cross-generational platform support	Yes	Yes
Management	Navisphere	Command View
Synchronous mode	Yes	No
Asynchronous mode	Yes	Yes
Replication over IP	Only via bridges	only via bridges
Extended distance with Asynchronous mode	Yes	No
Bidirectional replication	Yes	Yes
Copies per array	100	256
LUN fan-out	1 or 2	–
Array fan-out	1:4	1:2
Array fan-in	4:1	2:1
Consistency technology	Yes	Yes

Job Opening for Systems Administrator (Desktop and Windows Server)

roccog — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:41:01 +0000

Job Title: Systems Administrator (Desktop and Windows Server)

Department: Technology Operations

Reports To: VP of Technology

The following document outlines the job description and duties for the position above.

The Systems Administrator will primarily be responsible for the day to day operation and maintenance of the our Clients Desktop support and open systems. The position will report into the VP of Technology. The goal of the position is to maintain a high level of availability and end-user satisfaction that meets or exceeds the performance requirements. Much of this work is currently spread across external vendors and internal staff. This position also needs to be focused on making the most efficient use of time and the environment. This should include all of the day to day hands on activities for desktop support, basic server administration and management and escalation of issues with vendors involved in the managed services. As a part of the managed services offering Penn Treaty will leverage the call desk services provided by Contour. Those services will augment and provide ready access and tracking for support issues. This includes extended coverage and backfill for the onsite resource when that resource is not available due to illness or other absence. This position will also function as an escalation tier for network operations issues. This will help network operations fulfill their responsibilities in addition to the dedicated desktop support.

He/She will be responsible for the following on a day-to-day basis:

Manage current desktop environment

o Resolve any hardware related issues

o Alert and resolve any performance issues and notify end-users

o Function as an escalation point and remote hands for the call center

o Manage issues with the vendors

o Work with the IT staff to respond to and resolve alerts related to systems and/or integration with the managed services offering.

o Monitor current environment usage, performance, and availability

o Install, configure, test, and implement software and components as necessary on a day to day basis. Larger projects such as organization wide upgrades amy be identified as out of scope and defined as a separate project.

o Applicable patch releases and maintenance are included in the day to day responsibilities of the resource.

o Responsible for planning and coordination of any new systems installation as it relates to the overall offering from Contour

o Perform any host-level tasks needed to access the systems

Application support

o Work with application developers and Contour to assist in troubleshooting infrastructure related issues

Backup

o Maintain proper backup schedule

o Restore and recover data as requested including the management of snaps and replication

o Coordinate with off-site storage as necessary

Strategic Planning

o Capacity planning and forecast growth

o Identify processes and policies that will improve the overall performance of the project. Work with management to implement these initiatives

o Work with IT staff to identify upcoming needs and report back to management

o Review tools regularly to identify abnormal growth

o Provide input on vendor proposals

Network Operations

o Escalation point for server and system related issues.

o Second Tier advisory role to desktop support call center

o Validation of tasks completed by the administrators as needed

o Lead and/or participate in the creation and maintenance of system related policies

Qualified Candidates must have

o At least 5 years experience in Windows desktop support and customer service

o At least 1-2 years experience with basic Mac desktop functionality

o At least 3 years windows server administration

o Familiarity with basic concepts around Back-up maintenance and Disaster Recovery Procedures.

o Experience with Help Desk software and ticket management procedures

o Experience with Trouble ticket escalation and vendor management

o Excellent interpersonal and communication skills

o The ability to work independently and provide documentation in compliance with Contour and Customer needs.

Interested Candidates should provide their resume and cover letter to:

Att: Recruiting

640 Freedom Drive

King of Prussia, PA 19406

Or email to: careers@contourds.com

EMC Avamar – Pros and Cons

roccog — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:26:00 +0000

Company Overview:
EMC’s $165m purchase of Avamar Technologies in 2006 provided the company with valuable de‐duplication technologies that were proven in the remote office/branch office (ROBO) data protection space. EMC then repackaged the technology into an easy‐to‐deploy hardware appliance (Avamar Data Store) that can back up data at remote offices and funnel it into centralized repositories at the data center.

• Launched Avamar 4.1 in December 2008
• Launched Avamar Data Store Gen 2 in May 2008

Key Products/ Services:
Software: Avamar 4.1

In late 2008, EMC introduced Avamar 4.1. This software‐only product deduplicates data globally and at the source for fast, secure backup and recovery across your enterprise—including VMware environments, remote offices, and data center LANs.

Software: Avamar Virtual Edition for VMware This product is an Avamar server deployed as a virtual
appliance—the industry’s first fully virtualized de‐duplication backup and recovery solution.
Hardware/Software: Avamar Data Store Avamar Data Store Gen 2 is a complete backup and recovery package — including de‐duplication software agents, backup software, (EMC‐certified) physical servers and disk storage, and high availability.

Avamar backup and recovery solutions utilize patented global data deduplication technology to identify redundant data at the source, minimizing backup data before it is sent over the LAN/WAN. With Avamar, you can achieve new levels of data reduction and enable fast, secure backup for your VMware environments, remote offices, and data center LANs. In the process, you’ll reduce backup time, growth of secondary storage, and network utilization.

Supported Platforms:

Client Operating Systems
Supported Application Modules
1) Windows Server 2003: Standard and Enterprise Microsoft Exchange 2000, 2003, 2007 Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server
2) Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, 2000, 2005 Windows XP, XP Professional, Vista

3) Oracle 9i, 10g, 10gR2
4) Red Hat Linux 9.0
5) IBM DB2 8.2.x, 9.5
6) Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 3.0, 4.0, 5.0
7) NDMP (EMC Celerra) DART 5.5, 5.6 NDMP

8) (NetApp) Data ONTAP 6.5, 7.0.4, 7.0.5, 7.0.6, 7.1x. 7.2

9)Solaris 8, 9, 10
10) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8.2, 9, 10

11) VMware Infrastructure VMware ESX Server versions 3.0.x, 3.5, 3i

12) IBM 5.2, 5.3, 6.1
13) HP‐UX 11.0, 11iV1, 11iV2, 11iV3
14) Mac OS X 10.4x, 10.5x
15) NetWare 6.5
16) Free BSD 6.2
17) Novell Storage Services (NSS) OES 2

Strengths

Global deduplication at the source and the target minimizes storage footprint
Granular — Small, variable‐length sub‐file segments guarantee effective de‐duplication
Broad platform and application support
High availability and reliability – Fault tolerance across nodes with RAIN architecture improves reliability
Centralized management allowing users to control multisite backups from a single location and automate policy based management Weaknesses
Avamar software agents can negatively impact application and server performance (Up to 15%)

Weaknesses

Must use Avamar branded or EMC‐certified hardware
The technology was not designed to meet the high performance requirements of enterprises
Difficult to restore an entire RAIN architecture after a disaster. (lots of deduplicated data scattered)
Dependent of the node: before backing up / restoring a check is made to verify the deduplicated blocks available. This can lengthen the time for backup and restores
Permanent activity on Nodes: Data is permanently moved from node to other

Need a Strong Senior Systems Engineer

roccog — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:05:00 +0000

Need help.. I am looking to hire an Sr Systems Engineer that knows the following technologies inside and out:

1) EMC – Clariion, Celerra, Avamar, and ideally knows SYM

2) VMware – ESX, View and SRM

If you know of anyone that has at least 5 years of experience and willing to join a growing company please have them send a cover letter and resume to careers@contourds.com

Thanks

Rocco

EMC Celerra NS Series Vs. Netapp

roccog — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:15:00 +0000

Spec Comparison

Specifications

NetApp FAS/V-Series

EMC Celerra NS Series

Operating System

Data ONTAP

DART

(Data Access in Real Time)

File System

WAFL

UxFS

Simple Management & Installation

Yes

(NO) Celerra Startup Assistant Provisioning Wizard[1]

High Performance RAID 6

Yes

No[2]

Snapshots in base system

Yes

Rapid recovery from Snapshots

SnapRestore

SnapSure

Flexible Volumes

FlexVol

Celerra AVM[3]

Integrated Cloning

FlexClone

Workload Prioritization

FlexShare

Virtualized Partitions

MultiStore

Virtual Data Movers

Mirroring

SnapMirror

Celerra Replicator / MirrorView[4]

RecoverPoint*

Max. systems in a cluster

2-8[5]

Competitive Alignment

NetApp

EMC

FAS2050

NS-120

FAS3140

FAS3160

NS-480

FAS3170

FAS60×0

NS-960

[1] Installation from one GUI, Management from different GUI’s

[2] EMC delivers RAID 6 but with performance penalties

[3] Without the ability to shrink volumes

[4] Celerra Replicator for NAS/iSCSI, MirrorView for FC, Recoverpoint scheduled for release Q4

[5] NS-120 w/ 2 Data Mover, NS-480 up to 4, NS-960 up to 8. One Data Mover is passive for failover

EMC Competitive Analysis

Overview

· Recognized brand, large installed base

· >50% of sales are through channel and OEMs

· 50% revenue increase YoY

· Strong Customer Base

Strengths

· N+1 clustering for high availability

· Integrates into existing EMC storage installations

· “All-in-one” NAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel connectivity – Separate OS*

· File-level deduplication – Gen 1 Released in 09

· File-level retention, similar to SnapLock Compliance

· Thin Provisioning with Automated Volume Manager

· Async replication process for iSCSI and NAS with non-transparent failover

Weaknesses

· At least two operating systems to manage

DART on Celerra
FLARE on CLARiiON
RedHat Linux on Celerra Control Station

· Multiple management software products

Celerra Manager for NAS/iSCSI
Navisphere Manager on CLARiiON

· No true Unified Storage

· Deduplication not supported on iSCSI and with VMware

· CLARiiON virtually provisioned LUNs are not supported and cannot be provisioned to Celerra

· Celerra Raid andDrive configurations are based on templates and are limited

Netapp Competitive Analysis

Overview

· Up and coming

· YOY market share increasing

· Strong customer base

Strengths

· Easy Implementation and Management

· N+1 clustering for high availability

· True “All-in-one” NAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel connectivity – Single OS*

· Block-level deduplication

· File-level retention

· True Thin Provisioning – Virtual Provisioning for dynamic increase and decrease of Volume sizes

· True NAS File Management

Weaknesses

· Storage Utilization based in Raid DP

· Time based Snaps do work with VMware Managed Storage

Need RDM to do Snaps
LIMITATIONS ARE AROUND SRM

· Still Growing into large enterprise solution

Comparison of EMC AX4 and Netapp FAS2020

roccog — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:42:00 +0000

Comparison

Technology Highlights

NetApp FAS2020

EMC CLARiiON AX4-5

SAN Protocol Support

Integrated dual function FCP and iSCSI

Separate FCP model (AX4-5)
or iSCSI model(AX4-5I)

Network Protocol Support

NFS V2/V3/V4 over UDP or TCP, Microsoft® CIFS

None; SAN block only

Max. Raw Capacity

65TB

60TB

Dual Parity RAID

Yes; RAID-DP

No, RAID 0/1, 3 and 5 only

Max. Number of Total Disk Drives

Drive Types Supported

SAS: 144GB, 300GB
FC: 144GB, 300GB
SATA: 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB

SAS: 144GB, 300GB
SATA: 400GB, 750GB, 1TB

LUNs

Up to 1,024

Up to 512

Snapshot Copies

Up to 256 per LUN, and up to 51,000 per controller

Only 1 per LUN and 16 per array

EMC CLARiiON AX4-5 Competitive Analysis

Strengths

Strong FC SAN vendor partnerships
Resells through Dell as a channel (30% of revenues)
Virtual LUN capability; ability to non-disruptively migrate LUNs internally (Virtual LUN) and externally (SANcopy)
Cache de-staging
Support for consistency groups with remote mirroring function
PowerPath host multipath software for path and workload management

Positioning

Aimed at small to medium businesses (SMBs)
AX4-5 key claims:
Performance, scalabilty, ease of use
4Gb/s end-to-end architecture
Connectivity with iSCSI or FC

Simplify the IT environment and support VMware infrastructure

High Scalability
EMC claims high raw capacity utilization
I/O optimization via PowerPath MPIO host application
Virtual LUN Technology
Data movement between FC & SATA
Resiliency & Availability
fully redundant with cache des-stage to disk
Dual controller option to provide HA
Snap & Mirror Consistency
Supports both sync and async replication, as well as consistency groups

Weaknesses

legacy design, requires disruption to scale up (CLARiiON CX range)
SAN only; FC (Fiber Channel) or iSCSI, not both
Management gaps; limited integration of management software
No single operational workflow for managing both the system and its data.
Limited product breadth and scalability
Double-parity RAID-6 protection not available
No multi-protocol support in a single array; NAS support for file data requires expensive, add-on gateway controllers requiring other mgmt
No thin-provisioning, no data deduplication
Snapshots copies – copy-on-write / performance penalties (see SPC-1)
No support for SnapView clones
Limited number of Snapshots (1 per LUN); limited number of Snap Sessions per LUN (1) and per system (16)
No SnapSuite-like benefits; EMC Replication Manager provides an integrated environment for managing point-in-time copies, remote mirroring, and data migration services; but no Operations Manager.
No Oracle HARD support (vs. NetApp SnapValidator)
No integrated compliance solution (SnapVault, SnapLock, LockVault)
Requires 4 pre-allocated drives for OS; using for data impacts performance
External battery backup to destage cache is weak link

Why NetApp FAS2020 vs. EMC CLARiiON AX4-5

Higher performance under snapshot (SPC-1), capacity utilization (RAID-DP, Thin Provisioning & Deduplication) & data protection (SnapSuite)
lower total cost of ownership
NetApp easier to install, configure, deploy, and manage
Flex and Snap-suite dramatically simplify administration and allocation of storage
Staff only needs to be trained in one technology for the complete storage infrastructure, reducing training costs and skill levels required
NetApp enables Business Agility with:
Greater versatility with multiprotocol support and upgrade paths in a single storage system
Cascade original investment into new technologies as released by NetApp; for example, deduplication
Common compatible architecture across the entire product range
Gaps in functionality require customers to use disparate pieces of non-integrated software to address key areas of management, including…
Files, Archives, Disk backup (D2D), Security, SRM
Challenges in provisioning and re-provisioning capacity
AX offers poor volume mgmt and limited disk pooling
MetaLUNs must be configured based on strict guidelines — a labor-intensive and inflexible process.
Performance impact can be negative as LUN count increases and existing LUNs are re-provisioned.