I’m working on a DMX-3 installation at the moment. For those who aren’t aware, EMC moved from the multi-cabinet Symmetrix-5 hardware (8830/8730 type stuff) to the DMX which was fixed size – DMX1000, 2000 and 3000 models of 1, 2 and 3 cabinet installations respectively. I never really understood this move; yes it may have [...]

I had the pleasure of a tour around the EMC manufacturing plant in Cork last week. Other than the obvious interest in attention to quality I experienced, the thing that struck me most was the sheer volume of equipment being shipped out the door. Now I know the plant ships to most of the world [...]

I’m working on Cisco fibre channel equipment at the moment. As part of a requirement to provide data mobility (data replication over distance) and tape backup over distance, I’ve deployed a Cisco fabric between a number of sites. Previously I’ve worked with McDATA equipment and Brocade (although admittedly not the latest Brocade kit) and there [...]

OK

I’ve got Tuning Manager up and running now (this is version 5). I’ve configured the software to pick up data from 5 arrays, which are a mixture of USP, NSC and 9980. The data is being collected via two servers – each running the RAID agent.

After 5 days of collecting, here are my [...]

So as everyone is probably aware, Brocade are buying McDATA for a shedload of shares; around $713m for the entire company. That values each share at $4.61, so no surprise McDATA shares are up and Brocade’s are down. It looks like McDATA is the poorer partner and Brocade have just bought themselves a set of [...]

I’ve been off on holiday for a week (Spain as it happens), now I’m back. I’m pleased to say I didn’t think of storage once. Not true actually; the cars we’d hired didn’t have enough storage space for the luggage – why does that always happen?

So back to work and continuing on virtualisation. For [...]