Thin Provisioning with the XP Disk Array

[#1]

By Tilman Walker,  HP Enterprise Storage Consultant

Imagine a customer that is the world leader in their market (no specifics, but they are in the environmental friendly energy business). The customer environment is very (!) dynamic - and this is mostly due to their fast business growth. In their environment it is hard to perform proper capacity planning.

About 12+ months ago the customer had outgrown their EVA installed base and was looking at some "big iron" - so the account team offered the HP StorageWorks XP24000 with Thin Provisioning (THP) on the complete frame. HP and the customer perception was that THP was the ideal approach for this environment:

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  Allowing them on-demand fast creation/allocation of additional LUNs (change comes unpredictable in their environment)

  
  


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  Ensuring optimal performance by leaving data distribution to the array (largely offloading the data layout work from the storage administrators)

  
  


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  Brings the EVA ease-of-use to the high-end environment

  
  

Said and done: THP was implemented on ~400TB spread across 2x XP24000 with ~300 servers (mainly Windows, some VMware, some Unix). Data was migrated from the EVAs using External Storage/AutoLUN. What worried the customer originally was to run out of space in one of their THP pools. Since then, their worries have ceased and space utilization is under control - of course, the first capacity upgrades are already under way.

Net result is that the customer is very happy with THP (just confirmed in a meeting!). THP is a perfect fit to allow them to survive in their dynamic environment. Performance measurements show a perfect average response time across all LUNs (as you would expect from THP). But, of course, a big part of this superb customer satisfaction is owed to the great HP Services personnel on-site.

So all in all, a well-working, stress-free XP Disk Array with THP environment.  All I wonder is: why don't we use THP in considerably more customer environments!?!?!?!

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[#2]

ThP is a great feature on the XP and in my humble opinion the future of XP storage.

From a predominantly customer point of view Im disappointed its not FOC - I honestly believe it will become that standard a feature over time that it will be "at no additional charge".  

In these tight economic times Ive worked on two projects that would have benefited hugely from it (with Zero Page Reclaim as well) but they just could afford the license fee and additional maintenance.

Do HP offer a space reclamation service around ThP migrations and Zero Page Reclaim.  If not they should.  Entice people on to it and offer them capacity reclamation as part of the migration.

In a recent piece of work where storage support was offshored (and dire might I add) ThP would have saved them such a headache as it removes the need for storage admins to "think" and "plan" when provisioning.  Anything to make things simpler for the storage support team would have been a huge benefit from and estate management point of view.  But the up front $$ cost put them off.  Obviously you cant give everything away and stay in business though!

Good to see the XP getting some air time.

Nigel

[#3]

Nigel,

Thanks for the comments. I appreciate your work and insight about XPs and Thin Provisioning.

HP does not offer a specific space reclamation service using Thin Provisioning right now. We offer ad hoc storage services that involve space reclamation as part of our considerable storage consolidation services. Offering a specific space reclamation service is definitely worth considering.

I appreciate your comments on licensing charges and what should be bundled at no additional charge.

James Wilson

WW XP Product Manager at HP

[#4]

Last time for XP12000 HP came up a white paper on performance, does anytime soon HP comming up with performance white paper for XP24000 and include Flash disk too.