back to article EMC blogger tears into HP and NetApp

EMC has set out to rubbish its competition on storage capacity efficiency and claimed its new CX4 array is much more efficient than HP and NetApp arrays. Chuck Hollis, EMC VP Technical Alliances It's EMC's VP for Technical Alliances, Chuck Hollis, who is blogging on this topic and not some engineer shooting his mouth off. …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Interesting...

    I had a look at the blog, interesting... I'm in the process of evaluting all the vendors on behalf a client (hence the AC posting) so this makes good reading.

    What did mkae me sit and take notice is I'm not convinced that EMC really played fair in trying to compare apples-with-apples.

    I'm going to dig around and see what kind of responces other folks pitch in with on this.

  2. FathomsDown
    Stop

    Erm...

    It seems that this is a case of the fact that you can prove anything with statistics. I'm not a fan of any of the above storage systems but one thing jumps out at me... with the NetApp OnTAP recommendation for reservation space, this is a very old document and that now NetApp recommend not using any reservation space with OnTAP 7.2.x

    Its a bit like saying "because Windows 3.1 doesn't natively support IP, Exchange 2007 is unsuitable for a modern corporate deployment"! ;-)

  3. James Stetson

    Just plain silly

    That configuration is just plain silly. We've been running NetApps for 4 years now, and with full redundancy, RAID DP, etc. we typically calculate the same 65-70% utilization that EMC claims. Besides, NetApp snapshots are so much more efficient than EMC, it's not even funny. We can retain YEARS of snapshots with no degradation in performance and minimial impact on storage. EMC just can't claim the same. This is FUD at it's worst.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oracle and SQL

    I can't understand why provision has been made for Oracle, SQL and fileshare on the Exchange disks for the HP but not for the NetApp or EMC; if you host these other applications the spare disks come from their own disk groups, not from the Exchange disk groups.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    EMC is ... kinda evil

    Just from my own experience, they snuggled and smooched their way into our datacenter - meaning we had to toss out some perfectly usable NetApp and Hitachi kit.

    Before we had even deployed a single frame, the sales person was using our location as an example of a company that has been deployed for months and was very satisfied with the product - which was, of course, news to us.

    Oh, and their NAS solution sucks balls compared to NetApp.

    AC because (sigh) I'm stuck with the crap.

    The "IT?" symbol because, somedays, I wonder if there is any real technology in these things.

  6. jaycee
    Thumb Down

    @ AC Posted Friday 29th August 2008 14:41 GMT

    @ Posted Friday 29th August 2008 14:41 GMT

    Please for the love of God don't buy EMC. Please. Really. Just don't. *awful*. Just *awful* ...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Netapp 'cool-aid'

    Very interesting that those that have been drinking Netapp 'cool-aid' haven’t yet worked out that Netapp in block (FC iSCSI) deployments requires a 100% fractional reserve thus only obtaining 34% usable space. Interesting thing is that it is their snapshots that are holding them back. Only a small amount of research (not to be confused with Netapp marketing) will provide a clear understanding as to why Netapp is so inefficient in block.

  8. Doctor T
    IT Angle

    Pretty weak Chuck...

    Now I hate both Netapp and EMC as much as the next guy, but EMC set the snapshot reserve to 100% on the netapp filer in Chuck's response, chopping the effective usable disk space in half.

    No storage admin would ever actually do that (nor would their Finance department allow it), which puts the Netapp back up to the tried-and-true, been-that-way-forever, 65-70% usable range, negating Chucks entire post. Which makes EMC's rebuttal that much more comical. Set a value in the test to 5X what it would actually be, and call that a legit comparison? That's all they got???

    Netapp's are in general slow and expensive (having admined 100's of TB of Netapp and EMC over the years, I know, trust me), but at least they published a legitimate face-off with the SPC-1 benchmark.

    The EMC gets it's ass handed to it by a Netapp once you turn on snapshots? Imagine that... That's RAID-6 + WAFL, kicking RAID-5's ass for you. Nothing most storage admins didn't already know.

    EMC, please stick to the big iron, and leave the scraps to Netapp....

    Netapp, please un-fuck your next-gen/GX product, and add block-level features to it before the next millennium, so you can actually compete with the big boys.

  9. Robin Szemeti
    Joke

    @Fathoms Down

    quote:

    Its a bit like saying "because Windows 3.1 doesn't natively support IP, Exchange 2007 is unsuitable for a modern corporate deployment"! ;-)

    Errrm, dude ... I hate to break the news to you but ...

  10. Dirk Munk
    Happy

    They must have invented a new EVA

    Chuck really checked his calculations before he wrote them down. He is talking about a 254 disk EVA, however the maximum disk capacity of the EVA8100 is 240 disks. I wonder where he put the extra 14 disks.....

    Then he makes some wonderful calculations. He could have used the the Storageworks Sizing Tool, it is even downloadable for EMC people. Using that tool, and setting up 7 disk groups with double protection and 90% occupancy, a 240 disk EVA8100 with 35040GB raw disk capacity will give me 24759GB usable capacity, and that is appr. 71% .

    Maybe Chuck should just buy an EVA and set it up. Or ask his engineers to set one up, I'm sure they have an EVA in their lab somewhere.

  11. Claus Møller
    Boffin

    @Doctor T

    I entirely agree with you noticing the snapshot reserve. The more space reserved, the more snapshots you can keep for a longer time.

    If snapshots are to be stored for longer time, naturally more space is needed - as more changes to the data occurs. No one in their right mind would use CX4 snapshots (suffering hard from the performance penalty) extensively, therefor it wouldn't make sense to reserve much space for the purpose. This is a lack of a proper snapshot implementation on the CX4, its NOT a "higher-utilization-rate feature".

    But the part of your post I don't understand is: "Netapp's are in general slow and expensive (having admined 100's of TB of Netapp and EMC over the years, I know, trust me), but at least they published a legitimate face-off with the SPC-1 benchmark."

    You state your belief that NetApp played fair in the benchmark. While providing a higher performance and more useable capacity from LESS drives than a Clariion. Even using raid-levels with protection against double-disk-failures AND using snapshots, the NetApp proved to perform faster than the Clariion. All fair and well ducumented.

    I totally agree with you on the "playing fair" part, I just don't understand, based on the referenced test, that you in the same sentence claims that: "Netapp's are in general slow"..... Now, where does that leave EMC then? :-)

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