Sign in / up

VSAs and flash

This topic was created by Chris Mellor 1 .

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Chris Mellor 1

    VSAs and flash

    NetApp is spreading its Virtual Storage Appliance -in the shape of ONTAP-V, NetApp\s O/S instantiated as a virtual machine which turns its host servers disks into a NetApp array. HP has its LeftHand VSA and VMware has its poor, mis-shjapen VSA which just provides private-to-ESX storage.

    Suppose Dell and EMC produce VSAs too. HDS could do the same and then would EMC follow suit?

    Do VSAs threaten the monolithic array?

    What's the impact of a VSA in a server which uses PCIe interface SSDs?

    Interesting times.

    0 0
  2. Erik (TMS)

    Re: VSAs and flash

    (Disclaimer: I work for Texas Memory Systems.)

    My perspectives on your points:

    1. Almost all storage array vendors run a software-based front end on x86 platforms. I would expect all the software-heavy array players to produce VSAs as it is a trivial way to get more market presence.

    2. VSAs will never deliver the performance of dedicated hardware. You cannot add performance with software. Given that potential VSA customers are therefore not performance-centric:

    a. VSAs allow physical storage to be managed like virtualized servers.

    b. Therefore, VSAs allow consolidation of hardware and personnel.

    c. High-end arrays and virtualized arrays already provide that consolidation appeal—little benefit from virtualizing the virtualized.

    d. So VSAs threaten low-end arrays with high licensing costs.

    3. A VSA would generally serve as a bottleneck for PCIe-attached SSDs. Dedicated hardware SSD arrays will nearly always win when performance is the #1 goal.

    0 0
    1. Chris Mellor 1
      Reply Icon

      Re: VSAs and flash

      I don't see how a VSA would bottleneck PCIe SSDs. Couldn't it be their device driver?

      Chris.

      0 0
      1. Erik (TMS)
        Reply Icon

        Re: VSAs and flash

        Both are often bottlenecks. In general, native PCIe SSDs provide fast hardware performance that is then limited at some level by software running on the host.

        0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.