I agree, FlashCopy is a big requirement for me here, I would consider it a "must have" in our configuration. Between FRBACKUP and cloning DB2 systems, I would have a hard time living without it. Any vendor who could not do FlashCopy compatibly would lose out.
>>> Ron Hawkins <ron.hawkins1...@sbcglobal.net> 8/3/2010 12:45 PM >>> Ted, I find your experience to be the exception to the rule. I've been involved in far too many deals, won and lost, where the unique, esoteric functions offered by a particular vendor's technology met the key requirements of the customer and that feature was the deal maker.. When a customer wants to migrate their data centre from London to Sydney, or do real time replication of 100s of TB across an ocean with a 10 second RPO. One example that refutes the "DASD is Generic" argument is a multi-Petabyte customer that recently made their MIM Control file Cache Resident, which almost doubled the IO rate even though it was already 100% cache hit. This had an immediate positive impact on the throughput of the Sysplexes that used MIM. This is a feature that EMC and HDS offer, but IBM doesn't, which makes the "no major technological difference" argument seem a bit odd to me. SSD drives are another example. It could be somewhat futile to install these puppies if the read miss performance of your storage can't crack 50K IOPS, or they fire hose the back-end paths shared with regular disk drives. It would be stretching things to say that all vendor technology is equal in this regard. Even features like PAV are not equal. Have we forgotten when one vendor only supported eight Aliases. Or what about customers that find sixteen FlashCopy V2 sessions on a volume stopped some copies being converted to host based IO, or FlashCopy interoperability means they can change from HDS to IBM, and back again without changing a single piece of JCL. Or how about the small shop that wants to share midrange storage with UNIX and z/OS, but wants it connected to FICON so they can keep on using FDRINSTANT to make volume and dataset copies. Are you trying to say that Mainframe Virtualization is an generic feature offered by all vendors? It seems to me that you are lucky to work in a site that has no unique or esoteric requirements. That is certainly rare for medium and large DASD farms today. I'm certain that we envy you the simplicity of a site where "There is NO one feature, other than cost, that will make me pick one over the other." Ron > interesting. > > I've used the big three vendors (IBM, EMC, and HDS), products and have found > no major technological differences. > > >A lot of details (important ones!), parameters, > options, hard to compare disrctly (incompatible solutions). > > I disagree. > While implementation is slightly different, in each case, one is as good as > another, as long as you are buying current technology. > > I've converted from one vendor to another, as a storage analyst, project > leader, and using outside consultants. > > There is NO one feature, other than cost, that will make me pick one over the > other. > > In my last acquisition, we went line by line over the features, and found not > a single one that was glaring enough to pick one over another. > > Who cared if you needed an extra started task, or slightly different configs > to do remote copy, or if the storage management web interface was slightly > different? > Even within the same vendor, things change in a 3-year period, which was > usually the acquisition cycle due to warrantee periods. > > And, worrying about cache size/algorithms doesn't matter. > What does is response. > So, as long as it has enough space, and responds, the so-called differences > make no difference. > > Gone are the days of when a techno-geek counted cache size, algorithms, and > the like. > > All that matters is space, performance and such features as PAV, HIPERPAV, > MIDAW, and so on. > > And, rarely are implementation details significant -- and rarely are they so > incompatible that they make one vendor impossible to use -- that would not be > in that vendor's interest. > People still can read and learn. > > >Even cache memory is hard to compare. > > No need to compare. > > - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html CONFIDENTIALITY/EMAIL NOTICE: The material in this transmission contains confidential and privileged information intended only for the addressee. 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