2.040: dmx gets some fast love!
(Title intentionally modeled after Chris Mellor's articles on The Register) 
Last quarter EMC gave V-Max customers a couple of pretty special Christmas/Holiday gifts. First, there was FAST for Symmetrix V-Max, followed closely by new hardware (8Gb FC/FICON) and several new software features.
This week, in a timely show of love for DMX customers (Sunday is Valentine's day, after all), EMC delivers a software update for the DMX-3 and DMX-4 platform that includes FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) for Symmetrix DMX.
Like FAST for Symmetrix V-Max, FAST for the DMX platform automates the movement/relocation of Open Systems LUNs and CKD Volumes across different storage types based on performance requirements. FAST can both promote data to faster storage types (like flash drives) to maximize the ROI, and it can demote data to other storage types (like SATA drives) to leverage lower-cost/high-capacity storage for less-frequently accessed data. With FAST, systems will typically require fewer total drives to meet their performance and capacity requirements, making for a smaller footprint and more energy-efficient storage solution.
fast is catching on – fast!
Customers have been actively deploying FAST on both V-Max and CLARiiON since it was released on both platforms last quarter. FAST enables customers to spend less time and effort on performance tuning, management, and monitoring, while maximizing the utilization, efficiency, and performance of the overall system.
now they can realize the same efficiencies on dmx!
As with FAST for V-Max, the DMX implementation is simple and elegant. DMX administrators use Symmetrix Management Console to define a group of existing volumes (devices) configured on enterprise flash, Fibre Channel and/or SATA drives as candidates to be swapped between storage types based on their changing performance profile. After a period of analysis, the busiest volumes will be automatically (or through user approval mode) elevated to flash drive; relatively idle volumes will be “demoted” to SATA. The swaps are transparent and non-disruptive, with no effect on business continuity or availability. There are few limitations to the DMX implementation as compared FAST on V-Max – most notably, FAST for DMX cannot change the RAID protection of a volume.
Customers with installed DMX systems can deploy FAST to achieve essentially the same TCO benefits (hardware and software acquisition, power/cooling/floor space operating costs and management time) as with V-Max. And customers can apply FAST to either their existing configuration or newly-installed system capacity.
fast availability
In the spirit of total transparency, FAST for Symmetrix DMX is a licensed product. FAST is available as part of the Symmetrix FAST Suite for DMX, which includes FAST and the Advanced Tiered Storage Management (ATSM) Bundle components (Symmetrix Priority Controls, Dynamic Cache Partitioning, and Symmetrix Optimizer). This suite, available for purchase this quarter, provides the complete set of FAST performance management products at a substantial discount over the individual products.
Alternatively, customers that already have Optimizer or ATSM licensed on their DMX-3 or DMX-4 arrays can purchase the FAST add-on license for Symmetrix DMX. Contact your EMC sales representative for pricing.
but wait! there's more!
In addition to delivering FAST for Symmetrix DMX, this latest Enginuity update also adds several requested features for DMX Virtual Provisioning (VP) and replication – both local (TimeFinder) and remote (SRDF).
For VP, DMX administrators can now "drain" data off of members of a VP Storage Pool, allowing the devices to be removed from the pool and repurposed. This process is non-disruptive, and though seemingly small, is a feature that many competitor's thin provisioning solutions do not support today.
Among the replication-related enhancements, TimeFinder/Clone is now supported on SRDF/A Virtual Provisioning R1 & R2 LUNs and TimeFinder/Snap is now supported on SRDF/S R1 & R2 LUNs and on SRDF/A R1's. SRDF/A MSC and SRDF/S Consistency Groups now also support thin volumes.
In the SRDF area, the new "R22" device introduced on V-Max is now available on DMX, and you can also now add or remove devices to an active SRDF/A group on-line and without disruption. And Finally, several of the new status indicators introduced with V-Max are now also implemented on DMX, such as the SRDF timestamps and site consistency flags.
All of the above enhancements are included in the latest Service Release for Enginuity 5773 – the official release ID for is this 5773.155.107 (or greater). Solutions Enabler version 7.1 and/or SMC version 7.1* is required to utilize the new features on DMX – these are the same versions released in December along with the V-Max updates referenced at the beginning of this post.
* Here's a shout-out to Symmetrix customer Thomas Suiter who noticed the references to FAST for Symmetrix DMX in the SMC 7.1 release notes last month. Mr. Suiter notified me of the leak in January, but voluntarily did not publicize his discovery in deference to the GA of this Service Release. Thanks, Thomas!
See, there is real value if you take the time to read the documentation!
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This is great news. After talking with people at EMCWorld, etc I basically got the statement of "no that's going to be vmax only and won't come back to the DMX".
I thought the fast v2 for DMX was great news but... having jumped on the thin-provisioning bandwagon so the fast for DMX is *excellent* (as we have lots of terabytes of non-thin storage that was older or not thin appropriate we still will be able to use fast on the DMX)
To me the software changes for the thin is the big great news. Being able to drain freespace in the pool is excellent, excellent news and was the one paintpoint I ran into last year in trying to move 60TB of one thin pool raid type to another without scoring new storage. You called it seeminly minor... seeminly is very apropo, it would have been a major, major time saver for me last year that directly affects the business as I had to basically get all the luns unbound but the last few tens of gig out of the to finally get the first datadev free.
At the expense of sounding like a fanboy, I love the fact that EMC is continuing to give love to the DMX line. To me this is further proof that EMC has changed some of their old ways and is looking to keep me happy as a customer. The things that EMC has recently given for free, continuing to add/back port features to old products (especially when there is a new replacement out), really make me think the old *Evil* Machine Corporation of old is no longer. As a customer please, please continue doing this; these are good foils that I can use to show value to executives who constantly are wondering why storage costs more than the 1TB usb drive at Best Buy.
Posted by: InsaneGeek | February 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM