Disqus - Latest Comments for Pclifford

Re: 3PAR’s Thin Un-Provisioning is Slightly Less Bad

Pclifford — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:44:09 -0000

Hello Stephen,

You mention two glaring issues with Thin Provisioning 1) the inability to make "thin" existing "fat" volumes and 2) runaway volumes consuming space that cannot be recovered. This is a limitation that exists for all vendors that I am aware of, said one - Compellent. Their implementation of Thin Provisioning (they call it Dynamic Capacity) does address both of these issues head on.

When you implement a Compellent Storage Center and bring volumes to the SAN, their implementation allows you to do a "thin import" which will take the existing volume from say an EMC SAN that is allocated at 500GB but only has 44GB of real data, and import that so that only 44GB of space is utilized. This has been operational with Compellent for quite some time.

The second issue is addressable in Windows applications on Compellent today. When space is deleted on a windows volume, you run a simple "clean up" application called "Free Space Recovery" and that deleted space is now completely deleted and reusable. They are working on the other O/S's, but it has been working this way since early this year, and honestly, it simply works.

When I look at the market for Thin Provisioning, there are only two companies who get Thin Provisioning right - 3PAR and Compellent.

Thanks

Paul Clifford
Davenport Group
www.davenportgroup.com

Re: Compellent Does Enterprise SSD Right

Pclifford — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:58:40 -0000

What has set Compellent apart is the manner in which they manage data, truly at the block level, not being constrained by RAID sets. With this announcement, we now have a manufacturer who can take advantage of SSD. Their ability to move data up and down tiers, automatically, based on policy is tremendous, and if they can keep it granular, we will finally be able to use SSD intelligently in the enterprise.

Paul Clifford
Davenport Group
www.davenportgroup.com

Re: Thread

Pclifford — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:45:00 -0000

This article is well written with a spot on focus. it is imperiteve that senior management realize it is their responsibility to provide IT the resources to keep the data protected. Just because you know that things are "backed up" doesn`t mean that you can "get back up". My advise to all CEO`s is to have a serious discussion with your It team and ask the questions -
1 - If the data center was destroyed, how long would it take to get us running again? What data would be lost?
2 - What can we do to shorten the time to recovery?
3 - If Lovebug 2008 crashes our email server, how long till we are back up and running again?

If you ask these questions, you will then understand how vulnerable your organization really is. Then you can make descisions.

Paul Clifford
Davenport Group
www.davenportgroup.com