On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 03:29:11PM -0400, Thach, Kevin G wrote: > I know there are numerous people on this forum using EMC storage, and > I'd appreciate it if a few of you wouldn't mind giving me your opinion
For disk storage, we have an EMC Symmetrix in an Open Systems-environment. The SAN consists of EMC-labeled Brocade-switches. Attached to the SAN are several AIX boxes and IBM xSeries. The AIX boxes have rootvg on internal disks, the xSeries are completely diskless. For tape storage, we have an IBM 3584 library, fibre-connected but not via the SAN: each drive has its own HBA in the AIX box. We are very pleased with the performance and support of the Symmetrix. It works (and is supported) on every relevant AIX version. A nice touch is the TimeFinder-feature (a la FlashCopy): it can split off mirrors without needing to quiesce the original in a few tenths of a second. For an Oracle database that means: only having to put the tablespaces in BEGIN BACKUP for a second. Also, the EMC technical support is quite good. Contrary to IBM technical support (at least our experiences with it), EMC technical support can quite easily (and often on-the-spot) involve a higher level of support. This is not often necessary though. As for software support: our Symmetrix has caused no problems on any version of AIX we've used, and that's with PowerPath (the EMC equivalent of SDD). Unfortunately, we weren't that lucky with our 3584. Driver and firmware problems have caused our TSM machine (AIX 5.2) to crash hard several times. (Fortunately this is solved now, but now we're getting nonsensical TapeAlerts from the 3584. This case is now open for several months.) -- Jurjen Oskam "I often reflect that if "privileges" had been called "responsibilities" or "duties", I would have saved thousands of hours explaining to people why they were only gonna get them over my dead body." - Lee K. Gleason, VMS sysadmin