Information,Please,On EMC connected to IBM RS/6000 boxes?

[JoeZ]

Another group in our company is testing out a storage setup between an AIX sever and EMC storage. Wondering about info,pitfalls,benefits,etc. THANKS!

 

[bjverzal]

I've got an EMC 3830 connected to 3 AIX servers. One is via fiber, the other are via SCSI. One of the SCSI is an SP. All three run AIX 4.3.3.

Performance is pretty good. Upgrades are very pricey (around $1.50 per megabyte for my last upgrade).

We have triple mirroring on the EMC unit:
Data
Mirror
"BCV", which is copied to our backup server for backups.

What more can I offer ?

Bill.

 

[JoeZ]

Thanks for the Info. Any reason you or your company went with EMC instead of the "Shark"? We are a IBM shop but this one division is looking into EMC,nothing wrong with that, just looking for all possible pluses or minuses

 

[bjverzal]

We also have an F20 Shark with 1.7TB in it.

We like it much better.

Bill.

 

[odellj]

Can Bjverzal explain the likes and dislikes between EMC Symmetrix and IBM Shark. I am working with an AIX cuatomer in the process of comparing the 2 units...

 

[bjverzal]

The Symmetrix and Shark, IMHO, are both solid peices of hardware. The cost of the EMC is very high (dislike). The EMC unit requires intervention from EMC to reconfigure disks and move storage around (dislike). The Shark is very aggressively priced from IBM (like) and moving storage around is a web browser away (like).

Honestly, I like both units. EMC's latest version of ours is basically the same, only it supports more total storage.

For the most part, there is not much more that can be done to dramatically change the technology of a storage unit, short of running the entire backplane on Fiber. Even then, the box would still be the same, but faster.

Bill.

 

[odellj]

Thank You Bill...

 

[pmwut5]

I agree with the above. Although the difference is a political one not a technical one. E.g. The coporate stratergy for storage is EMC so only buy EMC, seems to be the norm.
I've not heard any bad things about IBM storage solution and if left to a technical/cost decision more would be sold.

We used IBM storage for our Mainframes and EMC for Unix/NT.

 

[colint]

The EMC unit does not require intervention from EMC to reconfigure disks and move storage around. Although most customers like EMC to do this as it is a very powerful tool in thw wrong hands.
There are SYMCLI tools to allow the customers to perform these activities; change the personality and presentation of volumes.

Traditionally, EMC has been an expensive option, however, the hardware is bullet proof. With the increased competition in the storage market you'll find EMC now compares favourably against all other vendors on price.