ENTERPRISE STORAGE SELECTION

What is enterprise storage? One way to define it would be: 'Enterprise storage systems can manage large
volumes of data as presented by a variety of different types of server, and also support large numbers of
concurrent users'. These days, the two essential server types are Windows and Linux, especially when
virtualised with a product like VMware. z/OS and UNIX are still here and are essential for many
companies too.
The data storage environment has changed dramatically over the last few year, with Flash
devices replacing spinning magnetic disk. Storage Virtualisation can make it difficult to figure out exactly
what sort of storage you are actually accessing, while NVMe is replacing the older connectivity protocols
inside the storage devices. Then along comes Storage Class Memory (SCM), faster and more expensive
than Flash, and just a proposal a couple of years ago. Now it's here and the big vendors are adopting it
as a fast cache for flash disks.
The Cloud seems to be changing everything too. It is said that no-one is building data centers anymore
(except Cloud providers), and if you don't build data centers you don't need disk subsystems. Of course,
your Cloud provider will be hosting your data on disks of some kind, but one of the Cloud benefits is that
you don't worry about that, as long as you can store and access your data. There are two dimensions to
Cloud support; if you are a cloud provider then you want your subsystem to support partitioning, so you
can isolate your customers data. As an end customer, you might want your subsystems to support the
Cloud as an ultimate archive tier.
There are some new players coming onto the field and they are definitely ones to watch. Gartner ranks
Pure Storage as best Flash Storage provider, and Huawei are entering the scene with their ES3000 V5
NVMe SSD disk. Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) is providing a step change in performance and all
the storage vendors are updating their product ranges to include NVMe as a storage tier, or even
producing all-NVMe storage arrays. NVMe supports PCI Express, RDMA and Fibre Channel, and can
support much higher bandwidths than SATA or SAS.
The links below will take you to discusions of the enterprise products from the six big enterprise vendors;
Pure Storage, EMC, HDS, IBM, HP and NetApp. The final link is to a table that compares some of their
products.
Pure Storage
EMC disks
HDS disks
IBM disks
HP disks
NetApp disks
Vendor comparison tables

Pure Storage

History
Pure Storage is the new kid on the block, founded in 2009 and started releasing products in 2011. They
initially produced one of the first all-flash arrays for datacentres, the FlashArray 300 series, then added
encryption, redundancy, and the ability to replace components like flash drives or RAM modules
In 2015, Pure Storage introduced some new hardware that used 3D-NAND and later added artificial
intelligence software that automates the configuration of the storage-array.

Architecture
The latest models are the Pure FlashArray//X, which were designed from scratch to work with flash
storage, using the NVMe protocol to deliver very good performance. Pure uses a log structured file
architecture to allocate the data. Data is initially held in NV-RAM cache, where it is deduplicated and
compressed. Dedup and compression are not optional, they always happen. Pure uses a lookup data unit
size of 4KB, which is smaller than other implementations. The lookup data unit alignment is 512B, and for
data comparison Pure uses the matched 4KB data unit as an anchor point to which it then extends the
match comparison before and after the anchor point in 512B increments until a unique segment found.
Pure claim a 5:1 reduction ratio with compression and deduplication only, and 10:1 with thin provisioning.
Once Pure works out the actual data to be stored, it splits the data into segments and uses a flash
translation layer to map logical addresses to physical locations. The segments are distributed over the
flash devices with RAID redundancy, but the original data is never overwitten, segments are written to
unused space. The RAID system used is called RAID 3D, and it calculates parity in two directions. Pure
uses QLC NVMe Flash storage, and NVMe internal connectivity for speed.

Models
The //x models are:
//x10,  22TB raw,    73TB effective
//x20,  94TB raw,   314TB effective
//x50, 185TB raw,   663TB effective
//x70, 662TB raw, 2286TB effective
//x90, 878TB raw, 3300TB effective
thin provisioning, encryption and snapshots are supported

Software
Pure1 storage management software is a SaaS-based provisioning, management, and monitoring
solution that integrates with Pure’s proactive support. It leverages machine-learning and predictive
analytics to help advise customers on optimisation and what-if situations, including capacity planning, and
performance simulation.
Pure1 capabilities are built on a global predictive intelligence engine called Pure1 Meta that leverages the
accumulated data from the thousands of FlashArrays currently deployed. Pure1 Meta is the AI engine
within Pure1 that provides the intelligence to manage, automate, and proactively support the FlashArray.
Pure1 Meta collects more than a trillion telemetry data points of performance data per day. Part of the
intelligence of Pure1 comes by way of its ability to recognize usage patterns. Pure1 identifies known
patterns that may affect the optimal operations of FlashArrays, and notifies other FlashArrays with similar
usage patterns of the concern. This way, customers are aware of potential impacts to their arrays and can
proactively take preventive measures.
Pure1 is browser-based so you can manage, monitor, and analyze your storage from anywhere with any
device, including mobile devices.
Pure supports remote clustering, with ActiveCluster. This allows you to link two different data center sites
up to 150 miles apart in an active-active stretch cluster with transparent failover, zero recovery point
objective (RPO) and zero recovery time objective (RTO).
Pure’s ActiveCluster solution includes Pure1 Cloud Mediator, which is a software-based third entity that
monitors the link between the two sites, and declares which site becomes the primary site, should the link
fail. Pure1 Cloud Mediator runs in the Cloud, so no extra software and no extra hardware, and its
associated maintenance, is needed. It can be used to provide rack-level active clustering inside a data
center as well as linking separate data centers.
A remote third data center can also be added for asynchronous replication, which is accessible and live
for replication from both of the primary arrays in the ActiveCluster.

VMware support
VMware is supported

z/OS support
z/OS is not supported
Dell EMC

History
EMC started out producing cache memory and developed solid state disks, memory devices that
emulated spinning disks, but with much faster performance. These solid state disks were usually re-
badged and sold by StorageTek.
Around 1988, EMC entered the storage market in its own name, selling symmetrix disk subsystems with
what at that time was a very large, 256MB cache fronting 24GB of RAID 1 storage. Their mosaic
architecture was the first to map IBM CKD mainframe disk format to standard FBA open system backend
disks, and as such, could claim to be the first big user of storage virtualisation. In those days, EMC
developed a reputation for delivering best performance, but at a price.
In 2008, EMC became the first to use flash storage in an enterprise subsystem, for high performance
applications. EMC introduced their latest addition to the symmetrix range, the V-MAX, in April 2009.
In September 2016, Dell bought out EMC and the company is now called Dell EMC.

Architecture
The PowerMax series is all Flash and SCM, with faster CPUs, NVMe internal connectivity. PowerMax
comes in two models, the 2000 and 8000. The Directors and cache are combined together into a
PowerMAX engine. Each PowerMAX engine contains two controllers and each controller contains Host
and Disk ports, a CPU complex, cache memory and a Virtual Martix interface. The building blocks od the
PowerMAX are called PowerBricks, controlled by PowerMax OS Software and delivers end-to-end
encryption of data from the host to the PowerMax storage media..
The 2000 can have one to two PowerBricks and the 8000 can have up to eight. According to EMC, the
faster CPUs means that the maximum speed jumps to 15 million IOPS in the PowerMax 8000, with read
response times of under 100 ms. These devices are the first to use deduplication, and inline compression,
which EMC say will deliver up to 5:1 data reduction. The maximum effective capacity is 1.2PB and 4.5PB
respectively. EMC also claims that the combination of NVMe and SCM will improve response times by 50
per cent.
The PowerMax archtecture is described in more detail in the PowerMAX Architecture section
One interesting feature for hybrid systems is the storage tiering, based on Tier0 SCM and Tier1 Flash
storage
EMC FAST, or "fully automated storage tiering" checks for data usage patterns on files and moves them
as required between SCM and flash drives to optimise cost effectiveness and performance requirements.
Supported subsystems include the V-Max, the Clariion CX4 and the NS unified system.
FAST can also be configured manually to move application data to higher performing disk on selected
days of the month or year. This could be useful for a monthly payroll application , for example.
EMC introduced FAST2 in August 2010, which introduced true LUN tiering and can manage data at block
level.
The tiering concept has been extended further by adding a 'Cloud' layer, the EMC Cloud Array.

Models
The PowerMax series are all flash and SCM, with 2 different models, the PowerMax 2000 and 8000.
Capacities are quoted as 'effective', which assumes a 5:1 increase over usable capacity after data
reduction. Storage is supplied in 'PowerBricks', which includes a PowerMax engine and 53 TB of base
capacity. Flash Capacity Packs let you scale up in 13 TB increments.
The 2000 support up to 2 V-Bricks and has an effective capacity of 1.2PB
The 8000 also supports up to 8 V-Bricks with an effective capacity of 4.5PB

Software
DMX software includes EMC Symmetrix Management Console for defining and provisioning volumes and
managing replication. The Time Finder products are used for in-subsystem and PIT replication, and
SRDF for remote replication. SRDF can run in full PPRC compatibility mode, and can also replicate to
three sites in a star configuration.
Enginuity 5784 adds new features including SRDF/EDP (Extended Distance Protection) which is similar
to cascaded SRDF except that it uses a DLDEV (DiskLess Device) for the intermediate hop.
EMC was lacking in z/OS support for some years, but they have now licensed PAV and MA software from
IBM, and have provided z/OS Storage Manager to manage mainframe volumes, datasets and replication.
GDPS support is provided, except for GDPS/GM or a three site GDPS/MGM solution.

VMware support
EMC VMAX3 and EMC VMAX support VMware and VMware Virtual Volumes, but look in the VMware site
for the latest up to date list of VMware product names, supported devices and firmware levels.

z/OS support
EMC historically had an issue with supporting z/OS features like FlashCopy and PPRC mirroring, as the
equivalent EMC features were introduced earlier, and were arguably (at least by EMC) better. This
became a problem when GDPS came along as while Timefinder and SRDF worked fine, they did not
work with GDPS. GDPS manages remote mirroring and site failover, but it does much more than just
manage the storage, but also manages the failover of z/OS LPARS and applications too. A lot of big sites
use it and require that any disk purchase must be 100% GDPS compatible. EMC therefore licenced some
of the IBM code to ensure good compatibility.
The EMC implementation of PPRC is called Symmetrix Compatible Peer and is built on SRDF/S code.
Some minor differences are:
PPRC needs Fiber Channel path definitions between each z/OS LCU. A DS8000 uses the WWN for each
FC adapter to define the links, but the VMAX does not use WWNs, it uses the serial number. This means
that in the GEOPLEX LINKS definition of the GDPS Geoparm, you need to specify the link protocol as 'E',
then define the links with the serial number (This was how ESCON links were defined, hence EMC uses
the 'E' protocol).
Symmetrix Compatible Peer does not support cascaded PPRC, PPRC loopback configurations or Open
Systems FBA disks.
For GDPS FREEZE to work correctly, the GDPS / PPRC CGROUP definitions must exactly match the
SRDF GROUP definitions and link definitions in the VMAX config file.
If you use Hyperswap and FAST tiering, then the FAST performance stats are copied over when a
hyperswap is invoked, so the disk performance will be maintained.
GDPS requires small dedicated utility volumes on each LCU to manage the mirroring. These volumes
should not be confused with EMC GDDR Gatekeeper volumes, they have completely different purposes.
The VMAX will also support XRC, which means that it will support 2 sites synchronously mirrored with
PPRC, then a third site asynchronously mirrored with XRC.
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HDS

History
HDS, now Hitachi Vantara was always known as the company that manufactured disks that were exactly
compatible with IBM, but worked a little faster and cost a little less. HDS broke that mould when they
introduced the 'Lightning' range of subsystems in 2000, which was a merging of telephony cross-bar
technology and storage subsystem technology. They extended and developed that architecture further
with the USP (Universal Storage Platform), released in September 2004.
In September 2010 HDS released the Virtual Storage Platform (VSP), a purpose built subsystem that
provides automated tiering between flash and spinning disk drives. This model was augmented in late
2015 with the VSP F range, all flash systems.
 VSP 5000 series
The Architecture of the VSP 5000 Series in built on controller blocks and each controller block has two
nodes, each with two controllers. High availability is achieved as resources can fail over across node
controllers, across nodes and across controller blocks with quad redundancy.
The base controller block contains a pair of node interconnection switches and these provide the
backbone of the new Hitachi Accelerated Fabric. These switches create data paths between all the
controllers in a system, which enables performance and capacity to scale up and out for efficient use and
sharing of resources across the system. It also allows the tiering of data across controller blocks for
improved price-performance. This is a PCI-Express Gen3 4Lane link (4GB/s). Each controller has two
fabric acceleration modules, each with two ports. Four interconnect paths link the controller to four
separate infrastructure switch ports.
Each controller block can also include a Media chassis, for storage device attachement.
The media chassis supports SAS SSD, PCIe NVMe SSD, SCM media1 or Hitachi’s FMD flash modules.
Unusually, the media chassis also supports standard HDD disk drives. Each media chassis is connected
to the two nodes in the same controller block for availability, scale up capacity and performance growth.
The VSP 5500 can grow up to three controller bocks in multiple of 2, and can support any combination of
SAS, NVMe or diskless controller blocks. The 2-node VSP 5100 model can be upgraded non-disruprively
to the 6-node VSP 5500
The power of the fabric acceleration modules comes from the field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)
that are embedded in the interconnect on the controllers. FPGAs allow the controllers to offload
processing functionality to them, so SVOS RF 9 can make use of flash-optimized code paths. This means
that we use fewer CPU cycles to offer more I/O than anyone else in the storage market, with a peak of 21
million IOPS. For applications that need the fastest possible response times for retrieving critical data,
these systems can reach as little as 70 microseconds of latency. It is only with Accelerated Fabric that we
reach these performance milestones.

Models
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5100
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5100H
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5500
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5500H
The H models are hybrids and use 2.4TB 10K and 14TB 7.2K SAS HDD drives for the lowest tier.

Software
Hitachi High Availability Manager provides non-disruptive failover between VSP and USP systems and
means instant data access at remote site if primary site goes down. This is aimed at non-mainframe SAN
based applications.
Mainframe availability uses Truecopy synchronous remote mirroring and Universal replicator with full
support for GDPS.
The Storage Command suite includes.
 Hitachi device manager for disk and storage configuration
 Hitachi replication manager
 Hitachi Storage Capacity Reporter for usage trending
 Hitachi tuning manager

VMare support
The VSP systems support VMware virtual volumes throught the Hitachi Storage Provider for VMware
vCenter product
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IBM

History
The original IBM hard drive, the RAMAC 350, was manufactured in 1956, had a 24 inch (609mm) platter,
and held 5 MB. The subsystem also weighed about 1 ton. That was a bit before my time, but when I
joined IT, the storage market was dominated by IBM, the mainframe was king, and the standard disk type
was the IBM 3380 model K, a native CKD device which contained 1.89 GB. IBM lost its market leader
position to EMC sometime in the 1990s. CKD or Count Key Data was based around accessing physical
tracks on spinning disks. CKD is now virtualised on FBA disks.
IBM introduced the DSxxxx series in late 2004 in response to competition from EMC and HDS. They
updated their internal bus architecture to increase the internal transfer speed by 200% plus over the
ESxxx series, and also abandoned their SSA disk architecture for a switched FC-AL standard. The
DS8800 series is essentially a follow-on from the ESS disk series, and re-uses much of the ESS
microcode.
IBM is now going all-Flash, with the DS8900 range and the DS9200 Flash plus SCM

DS8900 Architecture
The DS8900 is an all-flash appliance that comes in 2 basic models, the 8910F and the 8950F. When an
expansion frame is added to the 8950F, it can hold up to 2TB of cache, and up to 8PB of usable capacity
when fully configured. The flash devices come in two flavours, a high performance device that holds up to
800GB, and a high capacity device that holds up to 3.84 TB.
It uses Power9 processors and supports up to 64 ports delivering 16Gb Fiber Channel.
The DS9200 series is also all Flash, but it uses the newer, faster devices. The Flash modules can be a
mixture of SCM, NVMe flash and SAS Flash, thus providing three potential performance tiers. The
capacity is quoted as 32TB effective with a 1.5TB cache. External connectivity support in 16/32 Gb/s
Fiber channel and 10Gb/s Ethernet for iSCSI connections.

DSxxxx Software
The DS software includes Flashcopy for internal subsystem point-in-time data copies, IBM Total Storage
DS Manager for configuration and Metro/Global mirror for continuous inter-subsystem data replication.
The older ESS subsystems supported two kinds of z/OS Flashcopy, a basic version that just copied disks,
and an advanced version that copied disks and files. DS only supports the advanced Flashcopy.
Flashcopy versions include;
multi-relationship, will support up to 12 targets;
Incremental, can refresh an old Flashcopy to bring the data to a new point-in-time without needing to
recopy unchanged data;
Remote Mirror Flashcopy, permits dataset flash operations to a primary mirrored disk;
Inband Flashcopy commands, permits the transmission of flashcopy commands to a remote site through
a Metro Mirror link;
Consistency Groups, flash a group of volumes to a consistent point-in-time. A consistency group can
span multiple disk subsystems.
Remote mirroring versions include;
Metro Mirror, synchronous remote mirroring up to 300km, was PPRC;
Global Copy, asynchronous remote data copy intended for data migration or backup,was PPRC-XD;
Global Mirror, asynchronous remote mirroring;
Metro/Global Mirror, three site remote replication, two sites being synchronous and the third
asynchronous;
z/OS Global Mirror, z/OS host based asynchronous remote mirror, was called XRC;
Z/OS Metro/Global Mirror, three site remote replication, two sites being synchronous and quite close
together, the third asynchronous and remote.
 VMware support
The DS8880 supports the VMware vSphere Web Client, but not VMware virtual volumes. However this
may change so consult the IBM documentation for an up to date position. (the IBM FlashSystem V9000
does support VMware virtual volumes)
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HP

History
HP entered the disk market with the HP 7935. They also introduced the first ever commercially produced
hard drive in a 1.3 inch form factor in 1992. It had a capacity of 20 MB. HP has long produced its own
range of open systems disk storage, and resells a modified version of the Hitachi VSP, called the the
XP8, for high end and mainframe connectivity. HP annouced the release of the Primera range in 2019,
most likely intending it to eventually replace the 3PAR storage range.

HPE Primera 600 Storage

Controller nodes are central to the Primera 600 architecture. A single system is configured as a cluster of
two or four controller nodes. The minimum system has two controller nodes, so the system will survive
one node failure, but is expandable to four nodes for future growth.
The controllers are connected by a high-speed, full-mesh backplane to form an all-active cluster. In every
HPE Primera storage system, each controller node has at least one dedicated link to each of the other
nodes, which results in a single, highly available system with all the storage accessable from any
controller node. This low-latency full-mesh backplane enables a system wide global unified cache which
is fault tolerant. The links use dedicated PCIe Gen 3 connections and run full-duplex at 8 GiB/s, driven by
specialised ASICs designed to drive the data at NVMe speeds. A Primera storage system with four nodes
has 16 ASICs totaling 128 GiB/s of peak interconnect bandwidth.
There are up to four ASICs, called slices, per node, and each ASIC is a high-performance engine, and is
more than just a data mover. They also have a dedicated hardware offload engine to accelerate RAID
parity calculations, perform inline zero detection, calculate deduplication hashes and perform the CRC
checks that validate the data held on the storage drives.
One ASIC slice is dedicated for internode communication, completing the full-mesh all-active architecture.
Each controller node may have one or more paths to hosts—either directly or over a SAN via 32 Gb/s or
16 Gb/s Fibre Channel links. As the controller nodes are clustered and each can see all the storage, the
pimera presents hosts with a single storage system. This means that servers can access volumes over
any host-connected port—even if the physical storage for the data is connected to a different controller
node.
The controller nodes can have up to 12 host ports, 8 drive enclosure ports, 40 CPU cores, and 4 HPE
Primera ASICs to facilitate the massive parallelism necessary. The controller nodes support Fibre
Channel (FC), iSCSI, or NVMeoF protocols.
As every volume can be accessed from any cluster. The Primera is able to use system wide data striping
to eliminate volume hotspots, and also ports, cache and processors. The system-wide striping of data
over flash drives, means that I/O patterns are uniform, so spreading wear evenly across the entire
system.

Models
The Primera comprises three models: HPE Primera 630, HPE Primera 650, and HPE Primera 670. Each
model is available as an all-flash version (A models) or converged flash version (C models). Maximum
cache size is 4TiB. The different storage capacities and drive types of the different models are:
Primera A630: 250 TiB / 700 TiB Effective
Primera A650: 800 TiB / 2200 TiB Effective
Primera A670: 1600 TiB / 4900 TiB Effective
Primera C630: 250TiB (SSD only) / Effective 700 TiB (SSD only) / 750TiB (HDD and SSD)
Primera C650: 800TiB (SSD only) / Effective 2200 TiB (SSD only) / 2000TiB (HDD and SSD)
Primera C670: 1600TiB (SSD only) / Effective 4900 TiB (SSD only) / 4000TiB (HDD and SSD)
HP defines effective capacity as assuming a 4:1 estimated data compaction rate.
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NetApp

History
NetApp was founded in 1992 and started out producing NetApp filers. A filer, or NAS device has a built in
operating system that owns a filesystem and presents data as files and directories over the network.
Contrast this with more traditional block storage approach used by IBM and EMC, where data is
presented as blocks over a SAN, and the operating system on the server has to make sense of it and
carve it up into filespaces.
NetApp use their own operating system to manage the filers, called Data ONTAP, which has
progressively developed over the years, partly by a series of acquisitions. In June 2008 NetApp
announced the Performance Acceleration Module (or PAM) to optimize the performance of workloads
which carry out intensive random reads.
Data ONTAP 8.0, released at the end of 2010, introduced two major features; 64-bit support and the
integration of the Spinnaker code allow clustering of NetApp filers.
According to an IDC report in 2010, at that time NetApp was the third biggest company in the network
storage industry behind EMC and IBM
NetApp released the EF550 Flash array device in 2013. This is an all flash storage array, with obvious
performance benefits. The current (2020) all flash array, the AFF A800 2-node cluster, will hold 3.16PB
raw, on NVMe SSD drives.
NetApp is positioning itself as the company for Hybrid Clouds. Their products support Public Clouds,
including those supplied by Alibaba, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft Azure. They also support
private clouds with the NetApp Storage Grid. The Cloud support allows you to automatically tier cold data
to the cloud with FabricPool and backup and recover Cloud data with cloud-resident NetApp Data
Availability Services..

Architecture

FILE SYSTEM
Data ONTAP is an operating system, and it contains a file system called Write Anywhere File Layout
(WAFL) which is proprietary to NetApp. When WAFL presents data as files, it can act as either NFS or
CIFS, so it can present data to both UNIX and Windows, and share that data between them.
All Flash systems use FlashEssentials, a variant of WAFL that is optimised for Flash. It includes things
like amalgamating writes to free blocks to maximise performance and increase the flash media life; a new
random read I/O processing path that was designed from the ground up for flash; and inline data
reduction technologies, including inline compression, inline deduplication, and inline data compaction.
This means that the raw subsystem capacities quoted below can be multiplied by 4 to get the effective
capacity.

SNAPSHOTS
Snapshots are arguably the most useful feature of Data ONTAP. It is possible to take up to 255
snapshots of a given volume and up to 255,000 per controller. UNIX Snapshots are stored in
a .snapshots directory or ~snapshots in Windows. They are normally read only, though it is possible to
form writeable snapshots called Flexclones or virtual clones.
Snapshots are based at disk block level and use move-after-write techniques, based on inode pointers.
SnapMirror is an extension of Snapshot and is used to replicate snapshots between 2 filers. Cascading
replication, that is, snapshots of snapshots, is also possible. Snapshots can be combined with SnapVault
software to get full backup and recovery capability.
SyncMirror duplicates data at RAID group, aggregate or traditional volume level between two filers. This
can be extended with a MetroCluster option to provide a geo-cluster or active/active cluster between two
sites up to 100 km apart.
Snaplock provides WORM (Write Once Read Many) functionality for compliance purposes. Records are
given a retention period, and then a volume cannot be deleted or altered until all those records have
expired. A full 'Compliance' mode makes this rule absolute, and 'Enterprise' mode lets an administrator
with root access override the restriction.

Models
The NetApp models are grouped into 3 series, All-Flash, Hybrid and Object stores. Detailed and up to
date specifications can be found on the NetApp web site, but in general terms, the difference between the
models are shown below. Each model uses in-line data reduction, which increase the raw capacity by a
factor of 5-10. Data updates use redirect-on-write techniques and all have Cloud connectivity for data
archiving. Replication can be provided using Metro Cluster (synchronous) or Snap Mirror (asynchronous)
and these can be combined into a three site configuration. The all-Flash and Hybrid models come in HA
pairs and more pairs can be added to form a scale out cluster. It is possible to combine all-Flash and
Hybrid models in the same cluster.
Subsystem type Model Max Capacity Maximum SSDs Connectivity
AFF A800 (12 HA pairs) 316PB 2880 NVMe/FC, FC, iSCSI, NFS, pNFS, CIFS/SMB, Amazon S3
AFF A700 (12 HA Pairs) 702PB 5760 FC, iSCSI, NFS, pNFS, CIFS/SMB, Amazon S3
All Flash
AFF A400 (12 HA Pairs) 703PB 5760 FC, iSCSI, NFS, pNFS, CIFS/SMB, Amazon S3
AFF A250 (12 HA Pairs) 35PB 576 FC, iSCSI, NFS, pNFS, CIFS/SMB, Amazon S3

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Storage Subsystem Features table

This first table is a simplistic attempt to contrast some of the all-flash subsytems from the traditional
vendors, and one new one. It's difficult to get meaningful comparisons yet, as some of these subsystems
are targeted at different applications, so this should be considered an indication of what is available.
NVMe systems have been selected where possible, and the EMC PowerMax 8000 is the only one here
with FICON (and therefore Mainframe) support, but there are other all-flash mainframe systems out there.
The HP StorServ 9000 is the only SAS/SSD system on the list. HP do provide NVMe storage for servers,
so if they do not have an NVMe subsystem available now, then doubtless they have one in the pipeline.

All Flash Subsystems

Vendor Pure Storage EMC HDS HP IBM NetApp
Primera FlashSystem
Device //X90 PowerMax 8000 VSP S500 AFF A700
A670 9200R

Flash Disk
Types NVMe Flash, NVMe Flash, SAS
NVMe Flash, SCM NVMe Flash, SCM NVMe Flash NVMe Flash
SCM Flash, SCM
How much data can you cram into the box? Can be quoted as 'raw' capacity, 'usable' capacity once RAID overhead is
calculated, and 'effective' capacity after compression. 'PiB' is multiples of 1024, PB is multiples of 1000
Capacity raw, 8,106TB 1.6 TiB raw,
878 TB Native, 3.3 PB On a 4-way cluster;
4.5 PB Effective FMD, 4,356TB 4.9 TiB 702.7 PB; 623.8 PiB
Effective up to 32 PB usable
SSD usable
Internal See the previous page for details of disk connectivity.
Connectivity NVMe NVMe NVMe NVMe NVMe NVMe
What kind of cables you can plug into the box. A good box will support a mixture of protocols.
External 16/32 Gb/s FC, 10/25/40 32 Gb/s FC, 10 Gb/s 176 FC; 176 24x16GbFC, NVMe/FC, FC,
Connectivity 48 * 32Gb/s
Gb/s Ethernet, 10 Gb/s Ethernet (iSCSI), 16 FICON; 176 12x25GbE, FCoE, iSCSI, NFS,
16GB/s FC
NVMe/RoCe Gb/s FICON FCoE; 88 iSCSI 8x10GbE pNFS, SMB

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Enterprise Disk
 Disk Architecture
 Large storage disks
 3390 disks and ch. speeds
 FICON channels
 RAID levels
 PAV and MA
 PowerMAX overview
 VMAX overview
 VMAX CLI commands
 DS8K overview
 DS8K configuration
 ESS Config.
 NAS storage
 Flash Storage
 SCM storage

Disk Protocols
 NVMe protocol
 Parallel and Serial ATA
 Serial ATA 2
 SCSI

Lascon updTES
I retired 2 years ago, and so I'm out of touch with the latest in the data storage world. The Lascon site has
not been updated since July 2021, and probably will not get updated very much again. The site hosting is
paid up until early 2023 when it will almost certainly disappear.
Lascon Storage was conceived in 2000, and technology has changed massively over those 22 years. It's
been fun, but I guess it's time to call it a day. Thanks to all my readers in that time. I hope you managed
to find something useful in there.
All the best
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