torledo Posted June 2, 2009 Posted June 2, 2009 Oracle stares into Sun for storage future ? The Register here's an interesting read from a month back, talking about oracle-sun, and the various storage and tape product lines. A lot of guesswork going on, some of it may well turn out to be well off the mark, but i tend to agree about the continuing OEM'ing of storage from the likes of LSI and HDS that sun currently do to fill out the storage lineup. There's definitely still a big market for the medium and high-end storagetek tape products, but Sun - whether it be with the S7000 or another in-house developed product need to be competing with EMC and IBM in terms of VTL and disk based backup products looking ahead. As for primary storage then you'd need a viable alternative to the oem USP kit for the high-end market. If the sun S7000 roadmap is pitching towards the midmarket and does FC san and does it well, then it'd be interesting to see what happens with the OEM'ed products. Especially if they develop a true high-end S7000 product that can scale the way the USP/9900 kit scales. 1
RobFuller Posted June 2, 2009 Posted June 2, 2009 I have a question for Phil or Andy with regards to power protection. The SAN is being powered though a UPS and direct mains, the question I have is in the event of power outage the SAN will have a sudden power loss. The servers accessing the disks should have powered down before this happens so disk access will be nonexistent but is this good for the SAN? Should an agent be loaded onto the SAN to do a graceful shutdown? I currently have APC UPS's with the network management card and the switch protected but the UPS also! Any advice or guides much appreciated. Thanks, Rob
cookie_monster Posted June 2, 2009 Posted June 2, 2009 @ RobFuller Hi Rob, this could become quite a good discussion I was thinking about this issue myself, would it be a good idea to start a new thread and post a link here? Just a suggestion of course
RobFuller Posted June 2, 2009 Posted June 2, 2009 Hi Grant, Good idea, this thread is getting very long now. Please see: Sun Storage 7000 Power Protection Options Thread
PRicho Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 Is the 7110 4TB providing enough storage for everyone? We are trying to work out what size San we need based on currently having 1tb of data spread across servers, and with visualization in mind a 4TB san would nearly be at capacity? doesn't seem like a future proof option, especially as its not expandable? 1
Duke Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 I'd say buy as much as you can afford to. I've got about 2TB in use, but that's constantly growing and I know I'll want room for development when we use it for virtualisation too. Add in the snapshots, room for new projects, archiving old data... I went for a 22TB 7410 with the knowledge I can expand it to 500+TB should I ever need it. We'll probably be using completely different hardware by the time we need 500TB but it's good to know the option is there. Presumably you're only limited by budget? If so, and if you're anything like us, this is a long-term investment that's going to hold your data for a long time. Treat it as such and spend accordingly. Cheers, Chris 1
john Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 Anyone going on the Manchester / Northern Discovery Day next Wednesday at all? I'm booked on it so would be good to meet other Edugeeks if any are going 1
cookie_monster Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 @ Duke: how would you back all of that up even if you were only using say 20Tb, also archiving and offsite storage of the backups?
Soulfish Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 Anyone going on the Manchester / Northern Discovery Day next Wednesday at all? I'm booked on it so would be good to meet other Edugeeks if any are going In a similar vein, is anybody going on the Tuesday Discovery Day in London?
Hebdenlad Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 Is the 7110 4TB providing enough storage for everyone? We are trying to work out what size San we need based on currently having 1tb of data spread across servers, and with visualization in mind a 4TB san would nearly be at capacity? doesn't seem like a future proof option, especially as its not expandable? Hi there. Thanks for the posting on here. you might want to watch this space over the next week or two... We have some announcements regarding "new" stuff that is coming out that will cover off the 4TB discussion. Are you going to the Discovery Day by the way?? Cheers, Phil
Hebdenlad Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 Anyone going on the Manchester / Northern Discovery Day next Wednesday at all? I'm booked on it so would be good to meet other Edugeeks if any are going FYI guys there is a TGI Friday next door if anyone wants to congregate after the Discovery Day. I'm sure i can stretch to a pint or two for those who'd like to imbibe
Hebdenlad Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 Oracle stares into Sun for storage future ? The Register here's an interesting read from a month back, talking about oracle-sun, and the various storage and tape product lines. A lot of guesswork going on, some of it may well turn out to be well off the mark, but i tend to agree about the continuing OEM'ing of storage from the likes of LSI and HDS that sun currently do to fill out the storage lineup. There's definitely still a big market for the medium and high-end storagetek tape products, but Sun - whether it be with the S7000 or another in-house developed product need to be competing with EMC and IBM in terms of VTL and disk based backup products looking ahead. As for primary storage then you'd need a viable alternative to the oem USP kit for the high-end market. If the sun S7000 roadmap is pitching towards the midmarket and does FC san and does it well, then it'd be interesting to see what happens with the OEM'ed products. Especially if they develop a true high-end S7000 product that can scale the way the USP/9900 kit scales. If you look at the Sun storage portfolio then the S7000 adds another layer to our already broad range. We have the ST2500 series for the low end SAS/iSCSI/FC requirements; the ST6000 series for the midrange requirement (16 - 448 drives either FC or SATA with FC host connectivity) and then the ST9900 for the high-end, OLTP, large corporate environment. The S7000 as you know is Network attached at the moment but we have some really exciting things happening with it over the next 6-9 months in terms of connectivity, feature set and all the other good things we can build into it. With the "licence free" software stack and the x86 platform you get the best of latest performance capabilities combined with a 128bit filesystem and all the features you'll (hopefully) ever need it completes our portfolio If you want to know more then let me know on here and I'll be more than happy to share the roadmap (under NDA of course) with you. Look forward to seeing some / most of you at the S7000 Discovery Days on the 9th / 10th June. It's still not too late to register - or just turn up on the day and we'll fit you in! Just ask for me! Warmest regards, Phil
spc-rocket Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 If you look at the Sun storage portfolio then the S7000 adds another layer to our already broad range. We have the ST2500 series for the low end SAS/iSCSI/FC requirements; the ST6000 series for the midrange requirement (16 - 448 drives either FC or SATA with FC host connectivity) and then the ST9900 for the high-end, OLTP, large corporate environment. The S7000 as you know is Network attached at the moment but we have some really exciting things happening with it over the next 6-9 months in terms of connectivity, feature set and all the other good things we can build into it. With the "licence free" software stack and the x86 platform you get the best of latest performance capabilities combined with a 128bit filesystem and all the features you'll (hopefully) ever need it completes our portfolio If you want to know more then let me know on here and I'll be more than happy to share the roadmap (under NDA of course) with you. Look forward to seeing some / most of you at the S7000 Discovery Days on the 9th / 10th June. It's still not too late to register - or just turn up on the day and we'll fit you in! Just ask for me! Warmest regards, Phil Hi there, Can I ask - is there deduplication support on the new 7100 series models? This would be really good feature combined with say Symantec NetBackup to reduce the actual storage needed and also less to backup as well. Thanks in advance. Ash. 1
Soulfish Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 Hi there, Can I ask - is there deduplication support on the new 7100 series models? This would be really good feature combined with say Symantec NetBackup to reduce the actual storage needed and also less to backup as well. Thanks in advance. Ash. I was reading the other day about Dedupe support being added to ZFS on OpenSolaris (think it was currently in testing), so it wouldn't surprise me at all if the feature gets added to the 7000 series soon after 1
Hebdenlad Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 I was reading the other day about Dedupe support being added to ZFS on OpenSolaris (think it was currently in testing), so it wouldn't surprise me at all if the feature gets added to the 7000 series soon after mmm... interesting... so do you think that as we use ZFS as our underlying FS and OpenSolaris as our OS that there's some sort of tenuoous link between them and the S7000??? Whatever next? Phil
Soulfish Posted June 3, 2009 Posted June 3, 2009 mmm... interesting... so do you think that as we use ZFS as our underlying FS and OpenSolaris as our OS that there's some sort of tenuoous link between them and the S7000??? Whatever next? Phil And for those of you wanting to read about it yourselves it was on the OpenSolaris mailing list that I saw the mention of de-dupe ([zfs-code] ZFS and deduplication?). Looks like it's planned for this Summer 1
Hebdenlad Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 And for those of you wanting to read about it yourselves it was on the OpenSolaris mailing list that I saw the mention of de-dupe ([zfs-code] ZFS and deduplication?). Looks like it's planned for this Summer Looks like you've seen the link then.... :-) Be aware though that some of the ZFS and OpenSolaris features might not make it into the Fishworks / S7000 appliance stack. If you see something on the ZFS / OpenSolaris roadmap and want to know if it will make the cut then please contact me on here to get it from the horsese mouth as they say. Cheers, Phil :-)
torledo Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 (edited) If you look at the Sun storage portfolio then the S7000 adds another layer to our already broad range. We have the ST2500 series for the low end SAS/iSCSI/FC requirements; the ST6000 series for the midrange requirement (16 - 448 drives either FC or SATA with FC host connectivity) and then the ST9900 for the high-end, OLTP, large corporate environment. The S7000 as you know is Network attached at the moment but we have some really exciting things happening with it over the next 6-9 months in terms of connectivity, feature set and all the other good things we can build into it. With the "licence free" software stack and the x86 platform you get the best of latest performance capabilities combined with a 128bit filesystem and all the features you'll (hopefully) ever need it completes our portfolio If you want to know more then let me know on here and I'll be more than happy to share the roadmap (under NDA of course) with you. Look forward to seeing some / most of you at the S7000 Discovery Days on the 9th / 10th June. It's still not too late to register - or just turn up on the day and we'll fit you in! Just ask for me! Warmest regards, Phil hi phil i'm aware of the product lineup, but the article raises interesting points about most of that lineup being oem'ed while at the same time sun are pursuing this open source strategy with the S7000 The ST2500 i believe is oem'ed from dothill. Plenty of like-for-like products ie HP MSA. The ST6000 is oem'ed from LSI/Engenio, while IBM also OEM the same midrange LSI arrays. As did SGI although SGI's market share was small in comparison. The ST9900 is oem'ed from HDS, while HP OEM the same high-end HDS USP arrays in the form of the XP series of products. So Sun haven't got a unique distinguisher in terms of the hardware if they go up against IBM or HP in selling this kit, they have to add value added or sell complete server/storage solutions...or sell into existing sun shops. Both IBM and HP already have a significant server presence in wintel and unix environments.... The question raised is one of what do Sun do with these OEM'ed lines if they expand out the S7000 ? If the roadmap is to add fc interfaces [and i don't know either way i'm just guessing because netapp do it and it's the logical extension to a 'multiprotocol' box] to the S7000 range do sun have the confidence in selling that as replacements for what you could call gen 1. fc devices. Or how does a fc enabled S7000 compare against a more expensive advanced gen 2. array like those from pillar. On the one hand the S7000 logical competitor in my view is netapp FAS arrays, but i don't know how effective or common netapps arrays have been used as fibre channel storage. If the S7000 goes down the fc route where is the product going to be positioned seeing as sun already sell fc arrays. Edited June 4, 2009 by torledo
Duke Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 @ Duke: how would you back all of that up even if you were only using say 20Tb, also archiving and offsite storage of the backups? Initially, I'd probably be looking at snapshots to internally backup the data, and we'll be getting another 7410 and mirroring them in different locations across the site. That should cover me for both files being deleted (recover from snapshots) or a critical hardware failure (automatic failover to the other unit). Use NDMP to backup the data to a tape library, then the tapes can be archived and stored offsite. Honestly? I don't know exactly how I'd manage 20TB of data, it's not something I've considered as we're so far away from being there and it'll take a really long time for us to have that much. There's not a huge amount of features that NetApp/EMC offer which Sun don't, so I'm pretty confident that the 7410 and their future products will have something to meet my needs if we do run into issues. To everyone speculating about where the product line is going - take a look at the S7000 roadmap under NDA with Phil. It will answer a lot of questions and probably make a lot of people happy. I can't give away any details, but having seen it I have a lot of confidence in this product range right now. Cheers, Chris
Hebdenlad Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 Work stuff matey! am in our London office today and then on the south coast tomorrow seeing customers!!
cookie_monster Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 I'm worried that allot of these improvements might not apply to the 7110 unit, will they be able to have a JBOD unit connected? or is this info subject to the NDA as well.
Hebdenlad Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 hi phil i'm aware of the product lineup, but the article raises interesting points about most of that lineup being oem'ed while at the same time sun are pursuing this open source strategy with the S7000 The ST2500 i believe is oem'ed from dothill. Plenty of like-for-like products ie HP MSA. The ST6000 is oem'ed from LSI/Engenio, while IBM also OEM the same midrange LSI arrays. As did SGI although SGI's market share was small in comparison. The ST9900 is oem'ed from HDS, while HP OEM the same high-end HDS USP arrays in the form of the XP series of products. So Sun haven't got a unique distinguisher in terms of the hardware if they go up against IBM or HP in selling this kit, they have to add value added or sell complete server/storage solutions...or sell into existing sun shops. Both IBM and HP already have a significant server presence in wintel and unix environments.... The question raised is one of what do Sun do with these OEM'ed lines if they expand out the S7000 ? If the roadmap is to add fc interfaces [and i don't know either way i'm just guessing because netapp do it and it's the logical extension to a 'multiprotocol' box] to the S7000 range do sun have the confidence in selling that as replacements for what you could call gen 1. fc devices. Or how does a fc enabled S7000 compare against a more expensive advanced gen 2. array like those from pillar. On the one hand the S7000 logical competitor in my view is netapp FAS arrays, but i don't know how effective or common netapps arrays have been used as fibre channel storage. If the S7000 goes down the fc route where is the product going to be positioned seeing as sun already sell fc arrays. hi there, thanks for the reply. We OEM the ST2500 from LSI and not Dothill (that was our old 3000 series stuff). We actually manufacture under licence the ST2500 and ST6000 arrays and if you look at the SPC (Storage Performance Council) stats we are faster than the IBM equivalent. In terms of where the S7000 is going then it's a very, very strong roadmap with lots of new features and capabilities appearing over the next 6-9 months (and even more after that). Whilst the S7000 is the fastest growing storage array we have ever had (20PB and growing every day) there is, and always will be, a need for highly performant FC connected storage arrays - otherwise everyone would go down the NAS route or offer a dual connectivity (NAS/SAN) and nothing else. When we engage with customers and partners we always ask the question about workload, application layer and environment to ensure that the customer invests in absolutely the right technology. So, our traditional arrays (ST2500, ST6000 and ST9900) are selling very well indeed and doing sterling work on a large number of customer sites. The S7000 does have a place in the market and will continue to grow but as mentioned above, will be deployed in the right environment to suit the technology. Sorry if this sounds long winded but wanted to make you all aware of what we can do as a tier 1 IT vendor. Regards, Phil PS don't forget we have tape and servers as well :-)
Hebdenlad Posted June 4, 2009 Posted June 4, 2009 I'm worried that allot of these improvements might not apply to the 7110 unit, will they be able to have a JBOD unit connected? or is this info subject to the NDA as well. Hi there. There are lots of things happening with the S7000 range. Regarding the software layer, everyone gets everything so no worries there. In terms of the hardware we are limited by physical capabilities of the hardware but there is a very strong roadmap for the S7000 - under NDA at the moment though. If any of you need to see the roadmap drop me a private message on here any I'll come and see you. Cheers, Phil
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