Our database administrators had to run some manual process twice a week since the disk performance of our previous storage unit was not able to respond to the requests fast enough.
This process took approximately four hours and it had to be done manually twice a week by the DBAs. After the implementation, the time to run the process was reduced to minutes and it did not require any manual intervention from our DBAs.
Performance, deduplication, compression, and fast response time for requests from servers and applications.
I have not been able to find one yet.
We did, but it was partially due to our environment. We were running outdated firmware in the HBAs for our HPE Blade Servers and an old version of vSphere that it is not supported by VMware.
We decided to keep these servers under with the previous storage array to avoid disconnects and system outages.
No, the unit that we bought contains 40TB of usable space and we are using 10TB so far.
Technical support is great. They will dive in deep with your team to figure out what is causing the problem for them and find the root cause.
I wish they could collaborate more with the other vendors internally, instead of us opening cases with Cisco, HPE, VMware, etc.
We have another platform using spinning disk 600GB 15K RPM SAS drives, but our applications and servers have grown so much that the storage was getting saturated with the requests from the applications.
We discussed the option to add more SAS disk and memory to the controllers of that array versus buying a Solid State Drive Array (SSDA).
We concluded that it would be more beneficial for our company to invest in an SSDA, and the results paid off.
The initial setup was straightforward and very easy to implement, as long as you have all the information that you need ahead of time.
For instance, IP addresses, iSCSI IPs and adapters, switch configurations and ports enabled, etc.
The price seems fair according to the market. We analyzed multiple All-Flash Arrays (AFA) in the market, but Pure came at the top in many areas.
The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it. I love the Evergreen model to replace any parts after three years with a newer part as part of your support contract. The licensing is based on your capacity.
We researched other products from Kaminario, NetApp SolidFire, Nimble Storage, EMC XtremeIO, and HPE.
I always recommend a company to start with a proof of concept. That way, you can test your applications directly with the unit. It is critical to get a baseline of the before with your current storage array and after with an SSDA or an AFA.
Original posted at https://www.freeitdata.com/.
Buzzwords suck. That’s right, I said it. Hybrid, All-flash, Converged, Hyper-converged, Data-aware, VM-aware, Software-defined, Object Storage, BigData, Scale-out – we get it, but why is it all so confusing? Or better yet, why is it all so similar?
In Spite of the Buzz - A Win for the Customer
Despite the overuse of buzzwords and re-classifications, the storage industry has actually seen dramatic improvements over the last 3-4 years. All of these changes are great for the customer. More efficient technologies & more competition have lead to lower operating cost, better pricing, and better solutions. But what good is saving all that time and money implementing and using these products, if it takes just as long to weed through all the jargon to find the right one?
Technology-Defined-Storage
There are plenty of options and a ton of overlap, but each of these unique solutions has a place in today’s modern data centers. Let’s take a moment and weed through the buzzwords to get a better understanding of where each one fits best.
Below we have dissected a few of the industries leaders to look at IOPS, Capacity, cost and how they compare. This is a great snapshot, but doesn’t by any means tell the entire story.
Software Makes All the Difference
It’s all in the software. Obviously, reliant to some extent upon the hardware, the software really determines how the important stuff is handled...the data. De-dupe, compression, hot data, cold data, these features all play a big role in the IOPS and capacity capabilities of each solution. Not to mention the reporting and administration capabilities provided by these unique and elegant software platforms. Many of the hardware components inside each of these “boxes” are virtually the same. They are manufactured by the same companies, assembled in the same manner, with same CPUs, the same RAM. The software layered on top of this hardware really defines its capabilities.
Fit-Defined-Storage
In a perfect world, we just look at the speeds and feeds, features and functionalities and find the best technology to fix the problem, but there are many other business considerations when evaluating data center technologies. Installation, integration, usability, performance, the list goes on and on, but budget is often the biggest one.
Uh oh. More buzzwords - TCO, cost per GB, cost per IOP. All just ways to assess whether those features are worth the money. We couldn't just look at cost as a single determinant on picking the right solution, but looking at it relative to the performance and capacity is one easy way to determine “value.” Here is a look at the same data above by cost per GB.
How about looking at it by cost per GB, per IOP.
One size doesn’t fit all. At least not when you factor in more than just size. The process of evaluating solutions can become long, complex, and costly.
Scale-out, IOPS, TCO, cost per GB…all of these things together with budget, timing, integration & ease of use factor into finding the right fit. By themselves they’re just features, much like buzzwords.
I'm an happy Pure User, and after 2 non-disruptive upgrade I agree with this comment, the bad side is the reporting (used space, performance etc.)