The Storage Architect » Unified Storage http://thestoragearchitect.com Storage, Virtualisation & Cloud Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:08:05 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System – Part IV http://thestoragearchitect.com/2009/12/10/review-sun-storage-7000-unified-storage-system-part-iv/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2009/12/10/review-sun-storage-7000-unified-storage-system-part-iv/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:10:21 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=803 This is the last in a four-part series of posts on the Sun Storage 7000 USS storage arrays.  Previous posts in this series can be found here:

Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System – Part I

]]> This is the last in a four-part series of posts on the Sun Storage 7000 USS storage arrays.  Previous posts in this series can be found here:

Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System – Part I

Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System – Part II

Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System – Part III

Previous posts have discussed the physical hardware and what you can do with it.  Sun also do a simulator version of the 7000 series array, which can be used to evaluate the technology.  The Simulator is available for both VirtualBox and VMware.  I chose the VMware version and deployed it on VMware Fusion on my MacBook.

Installation

The installation process is remarkably simple.  Download and unzip the simulator (link here) and for Fusion, simply use File -> Open to open the file “SunStorage.vmwarevm”.  The configuration process then asks for some simple details – IP address, default gateway, password and so on.  Once this is complete, the simulator starts up and can be accessed via the standard web interface on port 215.  I’ve included a few screenshots at the end of this post that highlight the configuration process.

Configuration

Once logged into the simulator, a disclaimer is presented to the user indicating that this deployment isn’t for production usage or performance measurement. This is pretty obvious; the simulator shows functionally how things work but will never provide the same performance as a dedicated device.

The simulator provides 15x 2GB drives, which although not ‘real’ are more than enough to do evaluation with.  As far as I can tell, the simulator appears to be fully functional.

Summary

Sun have provided a simulator package that appears to pretty much mirror a real USS 7000 array.  Having a fully functional system like this enables new users to gain confidence with it; although not much training is needed, making the mistakes on a simulator is much more preferable to making them on the real thing.  In addition, it’s easy for any potential purchaser to get a real feel for how easy configuring the 7000 Series can be.

The 7000 simulator is probably equal or better than the Netapp simulator, which I’ve raved (and probably ranted) about many times.  It’s a shame that Netapp don’t choose to make their simulator open to all users, but that’s another discussion entirely.  The Sun 7000 simulator simply rounds out what to me is a great product, offering storage and simplicity in a single device.

Disclaimer: Sun Microsystems provided a USS 7000 series array on loan in order for me to evaluate this technology.  The unit has since been returned.  I have not been paid by Sun to write this series of posts or received any other benefit or inducement of any kind from Sun Microsystems.

SunSim1SunSim2SunSim3SunSim4SunSim5SunSim6

]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2009/12/10/review-sun-storage-7000-unified-storage-system-part-iv/feed/ 7 Enterprise Computing: A Myopic View of Unified Storage http://thestoragearchitect.com/2009/07/15/enterprise-computing-a-myopic-view-of-unified-storage/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2009/07/15/enterprise-computing-a-myopic-view-of-unified-storage/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:00:10 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=648 I’ve only just stumbled on Kostadis’ video on Unified Storage.  In case you’re not familiar with the concept, here’s his definition:

A piece of hardware that has CPU, Memory and disk That supports FC, iSCSI, CIFS and NFS That has a common management console for all storage functions that are not protocol specific [...] ]]> I’ve only just stumbled on Kostadis’ video on Unified Storage.  In case you’re not familiar with the concept, here’s his definition:

  1. A piece of hardware that has CPU, Memory and disk
  2. That supports FC, iSCSI, CIFS and NFS
  3. That has a common management console for all storage functions that are not protocol specific
  4. Has a single replication mechanism that is independent of protocol

Quite how and why this narrow definition should define something that is classed as unified, I’m not sure, however if you watch the video you’ll see it’s a direct attack at Netapp’s arch nemesis, EMC.  Does this mean Unified Storage is a real concept or just an attempt to have a dig at the competition?

Here’s a few thoughts:

  1. How many (persistent) storage devices do you know that don’t contain CPU, memory and disk?
  2. What have FICON, ESCON, Infiniband, SCSI, AoE and FCoE (and others) done to deserve exclusion from the term “Unified”?
  3. Why permit exclusions from a common management console?  Surely common means it does everything?  Otherwise it’s not common.
  4. Why is  a single replication mechanism so superior?  Isn’t choice a good thing?

There are other storage vendors out there.  Some of them even use the Unified moniker too – with just cause.  So here’s my more generic definition of Unified Storage:

 

  1. A hardware device dedicated to data storage.
  2. A device which supports all commonly used protocols, including Mainframe and Open Systems standards.
  3. A device which enables *all* configuration to be performed through a single management interface (regardless of whether multiple interfaces are supported)
  4. A device which provides consistent performance/throughput, regardless of the protocol used.
  5. A device which scales.

 

Now does that actually exist?

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