On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 03:29:11PM -0400, Thach, Kevin G wrote:

> I know there are numerous people on this forum using EMC storage, and
> I'd appreciate it if a few of you wouldn't mind giving me your opinion

For disk storage, we have an EMC Symmetrix in an Open Systems-environment.
The SAN consists of EMC-labeled Brocade-switches. Attached to the SAN are
several AIX boxes and IBM xSeries. The AIX boxes have rootvg on internal
disks, the xSeries are completely diskless.

For tape storage, we have an IBM 3584 library, fibre-connected but not via
the SAN: each drive has its own HBA in the AIX box.

We are very pleased with the performance and support of the Symmetrix. It
works (and is supported) on every relevant AIX version. A nice touch is
the TimeFinder-feature (a la FlashCopy): it can split off mirrors without
needing to quiesce the original in a few tenths of a second. For an Oracle
database that means: only having to put the tablespaces in BEGIN BACKUP
for a second.

Also, the EMC technical support is quite good. Contrary to IBM technical
support (at least our experiences with it), EMC technical support can
quite easily (and often on-the-spot) involve a higher level of support.
This is not often necessary though.

As for software support: our Symmetrix has caused no problems on any
version of AIX we've used, and that's with PowerPath (the EMC equivalent
of SDD). Unfortunately, we weren't that lucky with our 3584. Driver and
firmware problems have caused our TSM machine (AIX 5.2) to crash hard
several times. (Fortunately this is solved now, but now we're getting
nonsensical TapeAlerts from the 3584. This case is now open for several
months.)

--
Jurjen Oskam
Jurjen Oskam
"I often reflect that if "privileges" had been called "responsibilities" or
"duties", I would have saved thousands of hours explaining to people why
they were only gonna get them over my dead body." - Lee K. Gleason, VMS sysadmin