Is 3PAR InServ F- Class and T-Class the right substitute for the EVA ?
It's a well-known secret that the current 3PAR F- and T-Class controllers have only three PCI-X busses with 64 Bit and 133Mhz. They are not capable to support 8Gbps / 16 Gbps Fibre Channel, 10 Gbps iSCSI and 10 Gbps FCoE because of insufficient bandwidth and the unavailability of high-bandwidth PCI-X- based HBAs, NICs and CNAs. This is strongly correlated with the 3rd generation 3PAR ASIC which is PCI-X- based.
The interesting question is therefore what the 3PAR roadmap says regarding the announcement of a PCI Express ASIC- based controller family with increased bandwidth.
The T-Class announcement was at September 2nd 2008 so we should await a new announcement in the autumn of 2011 after the normal 3-year product cycle. But there are some real doubts if 3PAR can realize this target.
The lead of the PCI Express ASIC design group Richard Trauben has left 3PAR in September
2009, he is now Principal Architect at Huawei USA, see the following link :
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rtrauben.
So we suppose some design trouble with the PCI Express ASIC, this can require a time-consuming ASIC redesign or a switch to the new Intel "Jasper Forest" processors with storage-related functions which make the ASIC obsolete. Therefore the 3PAR InServ
storage servers are no near-time substitute for the EVA models and it is realistic to expect
one or two EVA refreshes until the death of this famous, but aged storage system.