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back to article What makes a tier-1 enterprise flash array a superior beast?

Enterprise tier-1 storage arrays are a breed apart, focusing on providing fast access to vast amounts of data without either losing data or limiting access to it. This is in contrast to the broad mass of storage arrays, which have dual controllers and thus limit the amount of data they can store and the number of concurrent …

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  1. Nate Amsden

    netapp is scale out

    The 8080 EX is a scale out 2-controller system.

    According to

    http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/fas8000/fas8000-tech-specs.aspx

    "Technical specifications for the NetApp FAS8000 Series unified scale-out storage."

    (there is a hint in there somewhere)

    Max flash capacity is 36TB (in a 2 controller system).

    3PAR is scale up, and they would like to consider scale out (with peer motion) though I think the scale out part isn't so elegant as the netapp scale out.

    I'm going to be ordering a 4-node 7450 pretty soon with the new 1.9TB drives, and the minimum configuration is about 27TB raw flash (16x 1.9(in my case)TB SSDs 8 per controller pair).

    1 0 Reply
    1. Nate Amsden
      Reply Icon

      Re: netapp is scale out

      HP's website is reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally slow maybe they need to reboot their moonshot servers or something.

      But what I was going to say is the 3PAR 7450 goes up to 460TB of raw flash, and the scale up 8 controller 3PAR 10800 goes up to 3PB of raw flash (1,500 x 1.9TB drives which can be ordered starting in October from what I read from Sandisk).

      So comparing 36TB is not really fair. Perhaps hence NetApp working on flashray.

      0 0 Reply
    2. Greg Oommen
      Reply Icon

      Re: netapp is scale out

      Max Flash capacity of 36TB that you mentioned is for a Hybrid configuration (SSD + SAS/SATA)...the SSD capacity for All Flash FAS should be me much higher.... for some reason Netapp has not mentioned the SSD capacity for HA pair in the All Flash FAS datasheet.... it does mention 5PB SSD capacity for a 24 Node Cluster... so it should work out to approx 400 TB SSD per HA pair

      0 0 Reply
  2. M. B.

    We have a couple 3PAR customers running Tier 1 workloads on their mesh-active 10k systems and know many large local orgs using cluster-mode NetApp to run their Tier 1 workloads. Any by Tier 1, we're talking about utilities and hospitals and governments running hundreds to thousands of critical applications. Even with hardware failures or under extreme load they've all been fine (as long as they've been implemented properly, everything sucks with bad design).

    I've been considering them both Tier 1 for a while now. Drives our EMC partner SE mad.

    2 0 Reply

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. M. B.
        Reply Icon

        So long as it drives their margins down!

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  3. shaimaskit

    Kaminario's Checklist

    Let’s put the Kaminario K2 through the checklist of enterprise-class array features mentioned in the article:

    “These have high availability, with data access continuing if a controller fails and no loss of data if a disk drive fails. Updates to the systems software and firmware should be accomplished without hindering access to data.”

    Check: The K2 can support multiple controller failures, and up to 3 SSD failures per SSD shelf, with no loss of data. The K2 is non-disruptive not only with software and firmware updates but also with hardware expansions and upgrades.

    “This class of array also has a rich set of data-management features, such as replication to another array, either local or remote, and snapshots.”

    Check: The K2 has native data-management features, such as snapshots and replication.

    “Suppliers assert that the array operating system needs two or more years of development and real-world testing to be truly reliable. Overall these arrays are highly available and highly reliable.”

    Check: The K2 is a mature product that has now released its fifth generation with increased reliability and isolated fault domains.

    The key components are:

    • More than two controllers

    Check: The K2 has a scale-out architecture that allows non-disruptive expansion of additional controllers and capacity

    • Internal interconnect fabric

    Check: The K2 has a fully redundant active/active Infiniband interconnect between all its storage controllers

    • Scale-up rather than scale-out design

    Check: The K2 has a scale-out architecture as well as scale-up architecture

    •High performance for large number of concurrent accesses

    Check: The K2 has proven without a doubt that it can scale to meet any performance requirements.

    I think the Kaminario K2 has passed with flying colors - don’t you?

    Thanks,

    Shai Maskit

    Senior Product Manager, Kaminario

    0 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Kaminario's Checklist

      Ah yes but everyone always claims these features as being on parity with the big boys, but as many will find to their cost, in storage the devil absolutely is always in the detail.

      0 0 Reply
  4. Dave Nicholson

    Scale what?

    Chris seems to have redefined scale up versus out. Anyone else do a double-take?

    The link below is more in line with how I have understood storage architectures since the dawn of the SAN and onward...

    http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2014/01/understanding-storage-architectures.html

    0 0 Reply

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