Sam's SAN Diary, Week #3: Vendor Meetings

It also had to upgrade the older, DR site Symmetrix to fiber interfaces for the server-side connection. Because its deployment was based on booting from the storage array, this meant the same drivers had to be on both boot images. They could not be host-bus-adapter (HBA) attached at the production end while leaving themselves SCSI at the DR side.

As to the crucial data replication function, it had its first set of data working. But it wasn't completely working, and it had yet to actually do any real testing. I'd estimate the firm was six to eight months ahead of us.

The visit was helpful in validating that EMC can do the job. However, we were focusing on the lower-cost Clariion line for our needs. (EMC bought the Clariion line from Data General, so this was not an EMC offering when the other firm started its SAN selection four years ago). So this technology solution, especially the remote replication software used, was not directly relevant.

Also this week, HP showed up for its first major presentation. And, yes, the sales force wore suits and ties (but the engineers did not). They were not as polished as EMC, but made a favorable impression on the technical staff (who, so you know, walked into the meeting biased in favor of HP). The storage array HP presented was the EVA family. The team drew on HP's Digital/Compaq heritage in storage for credibility. Their sales pitch was based on their storage virtualization story. This yields ease of deployment, tuning and even cooks a wonderful apple pie. (Maybe the last one was just my imagination.) More on this as we continue to meet with HP.

By the way, did the entire storage industry develop in Boston's 128 corridor? Every product we are looking at came from companies that were part of that late 20th century industrial development: Data General, Digital and EMC! If so, is there a Wang product out there that we have yet to learn about?

NEXT WEEK: After re-evaluating host-based replication (with or without a SAN) for his disaster-recovery site, Sam has some second thoughts.

Sam Blumenstyk is the technology operations manager at Schulte Roth & Zabel, a midsize Manhattan law firm. Each week, follow Blumenstyk along as he upgrades his company's storage infrastructure and builds a SAN.