Hey, this must be what our STK rep said when he stuck his head in my cube a week or 2 ago. :) I was only listening with one ear, but I will listen now! As a long time STK owner and Snapshot advocate, (then RVA, now old 9393 and newer 9500) this will work well for us. I'm trialed up to my eyeballs, so what's another trial? :)
Kevin -----Original Message----- From: Ledbetter, Scott E [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 4:32 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: SnapVantage Long note warning.......... OK, you've blown our cover. ;') We are in the middle of product launch at this moment. I was actually in the process of writing a note to the list when I saw Neale's note. A bit of history. We at StorageTek have been selling our virtual disk architecture since 1993. The original incarnation was know as Iceberg, and even featured a small stuffed penguin inside the covers of each control unit. I'm not kidding. This must of been some kind of weird premonition. In 1996, StorageTek and IBM entered into an agreement. IBM would become the sole point of marketing for the Iceberg, while engineering and production would remain at StorageTek. The Iceberg was renamed the Ramac Virtual Array(RVA). In 2000 the marketing agreement between STK and IBM came to an end. The RVA became the StorageTek Shared Virtual Array (SVA). The current SVA V960 is capable of presenting 1024 disk images over ESCON or Fibre Channel. The disk images can be 3380J,E,K or 3390-1,2,3,9, or Fibre Channel attached SCSI disk of almost any size. Because the internal architecture is a log structured file, the SVA (and Iceberg/RVA) have a very unique data replication and volume format capability. Our SnapShot can copy a volume of any size almost instantly, with no additional space used in the back end arrays. Instant Format can format a volume or disk almost instantly, also. This technology is very different from FlashCopy(IBM), TimeFinder(EMC), or ShadowImage(HDS) because data is replicated simply by pointer manipulation, not by a physical copy. This avoids most of the limitations of the other 'fast replication' methods, such as LSS restrictions, restrictions on the number of copies that can be made of data, control unit performance limitations, ect. Another key element of Snap is that we can replicate data at a track level. Any track in the SVA can be instantly copied to any other track in the SVA(like device type, usually 3390 these days). So we can leverage minidisks under VM, and use volume pooling in VMSecure or Dirmaint without restriction. What is SnapVantage? We developed a sophisticated VM server to control the creation and administration of Linux images under VM. We gave it a web front end, and a CLI interface accessible from both VM or from any Perl capable client (Linux, Windows, Solaris, ect.) Using SnapVantage, we can consistently clone and boot a Linux system in under 20 seconds. We can do this over and over again, hundreds or even thousands at a time, with no restrictions due to the storage replication facility. These are not preformatted or allocated disks. A prebuilt image is snapped to a minidisk or set of minidisks dynamically allocated from VMSecure or Dirmaint (usually takes .2 seconds) additional user space(if any) is formatted using instant format (another .2 seconds), the system is booted to Runlevel 1, a script is run to update the network parameters, and then the system goes to Runlevel 3 (or whatever Runlevel the user has specified). The system is now fully useable like any other Linux image. Once the system has been created, SnapVantage can send commands to the Linux console and return the results to the central web interface. If a hundred servers are active, SnapVantage can simultaneously send commands to all hundred servers, or to a subset selected by the user. Shutdown and reboot can be controlled from the web interface or the CLI. Once a server reaches end-of-life, it can be physically deleted by SnapVantage and the disk resources returned to the VMSecure or Dirmaint pool. It is intoxicating to have this kind of power. On our test systems we have built over a dozen flavors of Linux, and one can select one, boot it, logon to it and explore, then logout and destroy the system, and replace it with another configuration in 20 seconds. Good example: you can hack the kernel to pieces and then have the image rebooted to it's original state in 20 seconds. Think of the possibilities for education! One of the testers for SnapVantage has been my 10 year old son/Linux hacker. He has learned to compile the kernel, configure Apache and Samba, configure SSL on Apache, ect. No worries, because if something goes wrong, just start over. You don't even have time to get a cup of coffee before your system is back to square one. Will SnapVantage work if you do not have an Iceberg, RVA or SVA? Well, yes...it will invoke DDR to copy the systems, and instead of a 20 second clone, you have a 20 minute+ clone. And you will use physical backend storage on your disk arrays. One of the really cool features of SnapShot is that you can copy a hundred volumes, and the amount of space used on the backend doesn't change. Of course, once those copies are updated, physical space is used on the backend a compressed track at a time. Did I mention that IB/RVA/SVA hardware compresses all data at the channel interface? There is much more than I have space for here. The product is available now. If you already have an Iceberg/RVA/SVA, and you want to try out SnapVantage, you can get a 60-day free trial. Contact your STK marketing channel. If you do not have IB/RVA/SVA, contact your STK rep anyhow. I'm sure we can work something out. ;') There is a white paper I authored on the website. I am currently working on a redbook-type usage guide. And I'll be speaking about SnapVantage at 1:30 on Tuesday August 27 at Share in San Francisco. It would be really great to get some list members to install SV and give us some feedback. We have already improved our product with suggestions from our early look customers, and certainly this list could give us more help. Scott Ledbetter StorageTek -----Original Message----- From: Ferguson, Neale [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: June 04, 2002 11:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: SnapVantage I was just skimming through the latest eWeek publication and saw an article on StorageTek's "SnapVantage" product. I don't recall seeing anything on the list about it: "StorageTek's SnapVantage software, a member of the Virtual Power Suite solutions, facilitates the rapid deployment of multiple Linux virtual servers that reside on StorageTek's Shared Virtual Array disk subsystems. Server management capabilities provided enable you to perform common administrative functions for Linux servers, VM administration, and SVA disk activities...all from within the friendly SnapVantage GUI. After you've made the decision to migrate from physical to virtual servers using Linux for zSeries, use SnapVantage to accelerate the benefits of virtual technology. SnapVantage leverages the power of StorageTek's virtual products, including Shared Virtual Array disk subsystems, Shared Virtual Array Administrator software and SnapShot software, in open systems to optimize your Linux zSeries environment." See: "http://www.storagetek.com/prodserv/products/software/svan/";
