IBM FlashSystem A9000
- Thread starter Howell
- Start date
Stereodude
Not really a
Enjoy being a beta tester. 
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
Thankfully that group has a lot of handholding happening. We are hoping to enjoy 500,000IOPs
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
How much does one cost?
We may have had one of those units in-house a few months back for a demo with our own product but I don't recall the exact model number. I don't remember it looking like the picture in the PDF so it might have been a lesser model. The speed and IOps were good enough that it pointed out other degradations in our own system (which also happens to be from IBM). I think it was over $100K for the unit but I'm sure that cost differs based on configured capacity.
Howell, did your company evaluate PureStorage at all before going with IBM? I realize their claimed IOps isn't on par with this IBM array but I'm curious if they were ever a contender.
edit: I inquired and we demoed the IBM FlashSystem 900 that was configured with 57TB flash storage so it wasn't the same unit you're getting and it appears to be much slower relatively speaking.
Howell, did your company evaluate PureStorage at all before going with IBM? I realize their claimed IOps isn't on par with this IBM array but I'm curious if they were ever a contender.
edit: I inquired and we demoed the IBM FlashSystem 900 that was configured with 57TB flash storage so it wasn't the same unit you're getting and it appears to be much slower relatively speaking.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
They evaluated Pure and Nimble. Nimble looked interesting but Pure did not look stable as a company considering how quickly they were losing money. IBM gave us a really good deal along with the usual money back guarantee or free hardware if the system does not live up to the speed or de-dup claims. We will see. We have no control over wide areas of the ERP system so we are hoping to through with hardware. We have 2 of the 57T units. I'm not sure what MSRP is on it and we are under permanent NDA due to the deal we got.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
It probably falls in the category that if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
I went to a Nimble storage presentation a few weeks ago. Their most popular model, the CS300, cost in the low 100,000$ for a 12TB SAN and it's a hybrid unit. The IBM all-flash unit must cost more per TB and since it's more than four times the space, I figure that the MSRP must be around half a million. The dealed price often are between a third and half the MSRP, but I wouldn't be surprised if that particular SAN cost almost 200,000$.
Can it scale as well as Nimble Storage units?
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
I know that the web based management is a CENTOS based VM. I believe otherwise you are CLI on the device itself. I didn't sit in on any of the presentations but my understanding is that if you need more storage you buy another one of whatever size you need and it is integrated into the management console.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Well, yeah. The people I work for can't afford anything. Plus all these setups are going to be customized to hell and probably come with an infinite supply of support engineers, but on the off chance a number could come out, it would've satisfied some curiosity. The accounting for all of the above is probably an impenetrable morass of service and license fees anyway.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
If it's anything like an HP 3PAR, then you're spot on about this. We bought one two and a half years ago and there were at least twenty different part numbers, most licensing-related, on the unit's invoice.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
MSRP for our complete setup is something like 1.1M.
Edit: Actually it turn out that is just for one. Double it for our complete setup.
Edit: Actually it turn out that is just for one. Double it for our complete setup.
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Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
Cisco is up there as one of the worst when it comes to this type of sales and dealings.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
Powerbuilder and SQL based ERP with clients on terminal servers. Approximately 1000 users. Lots of telemetry transmissions to and from the vehicles. Lots of imaged paperwork. Lots of EDI. Approximately 130 VMs.
ddrueding
Fixture
The thought of managing 1000 TS clients scares the crap out of me. I suppose with enough staff it'd be fine.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Mild deviation from topic to follow:
VDI on Server 2012 is a pain in the ass to get running. I've done it for classroom sessions and it is, no joke, worse than setting up Slackware was in 1994. I'm fairly certain that Microsoft's instructions for getting it working probably qualifies as sales documentation for Citrix.
Enterprise IT is the worst when it comes to that. Because you have Oracle/SAP/IBM/HP/Dell and the rest of the usual gang all using the same basic tactics and it's just a matter of who sent the best hookers and blow to the golf retreat with the CIO.
How bad do things have to be when Microsoft is widely considered (relatively) reasonable to deal with?
And honestly, has anyone ever heard of a completed SAP implementation? Does that even happen?
VDI on Server 2012 is a pain in the ass to get running. I've done it for classroom sessions and it is, no joke, worse than setting up Slackware was in 1994. I'm fairly certain that Microsoft's instructions for getting it working probably qualifies as sales documentation for Citrix.
Handruin said:
Enterprise IT is the worst when it comes to that. Because you have Oracle/SAP/IBM/HP/Dell and the rest of the usual gang all using the same basic tactics and it's just a matter of who sent the best hookers and blow to the golf retreat with the CIO.
How bad do things have to be when Microsoft is widely considered (relatively) reasonable to deal with?
And honestly, has anyone ever heard of a completed SAP implementation? Does that even happen?
ddrueding
Fixture
Recently got a quote from a vendor. Someone we already have a functional system with, just needed to add a new module. $22k. $9k in software licenses, $10k in training and labor for setup, $3k in stuff that, even after I asked for clarification, still didn't know what it was. My second request for clarification was "if I don't get these things, does it not work?".
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Is this still being used? It was all the rage back when, early '90s? I thought the company was acquired / went belly up a couple of decades ago.
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
They are re-writing the software in .net and taking longer than expected.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
It is pretty much the same as having the same number of desktops. It becomes more difficult with heavy peaky software but not unbearable. What do you normally have problems with? The top technical solutions for a good implementation are group policy, universal/generic print drivers, server farming, and redirected folders. You are probably doing more than half this already.
I keep arguing against vdi because it is less efficient than rd servers so out haven't looked at the install. I helped run a desktop as a service citrix datacenter before this so I didn't have much reading to do. Though I am looking forward to building our as 2012.
ddrueding
Fixture
You've nailed it. Not having control over the TS clients causes all kinds of trouble. Not being able to train them is an issue as well. After we did a full lockdown with group policy things were a little better. After we went to Citrix and started only exposing apps instead of the desktop things were a lot better. Haven't had the need for a full VDI system, but I do have two different implementations of VMWare Workstation running 3 or 4 Win10 installs that are connected to via GoToMyPC with the workstation itself acting as a file server.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
I'm curious if you tried MS web app before deciding on Citrix and if so what was the deciding factor. I don't manage our RD installation anymore so I've not had a chance to even play with it.
ddrueding
Fixture
Nope, I left the decision with the software vendor. They already had a supported configuration that ran Citrix so we just went straight to that.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
It is very very likely that it will work without Citrix if you want to be a hero and save the company some money. Though I certainly understand staying in a supported state.
Do you have an access gateway of some kind, either Citrix or RD? If not I understand what G2M is for.
Ps. I'm getting more sympathy lunar the phone thought supported should have been soupy eyed, a description I'm not even sure I understand.
Do you have an access gateway of some kind, either Citrix or RD? If not I understand what G2M is for.
Ps. I'm getting more sympathy lunar the phone thought supported should have been soupy eyed, a description I'm not even sure I understand.
DrunkenBastard
Storage is cool
We have a mix of Flash 840 and 900 arrays at work, they sit behind IBM SVCs to virtualize it. Moving our FlashCopy's of our critical Oracle DBs to the flash arrays reduced time to completion from over 6 hours to around 1 hour. Other flash usage is for our EDW systems.
The 840 and 900 both take 2U of rack space, looks like the 9000 takes up 8U of space (I guess to hold all the dedupe processing hardware).
ddrueding
Fixture
It is very very likely that it will work without Citrix if you want to be a hero and save the company some money. Though I certainly understand staying in a supported state.
Do you have an access gateway of some kind, either Citrix or RD? If not I understand what G2M is for.
Ps. I'm getting more sympathy lunar the phone thought supported should have been soupy eyed, a description I'm not even sure I understand.
The new version of the software is natively Windows based with an SQL backend and doesn't puke with WAN-like latency as their old system (some real-time OS with Oracle 8i) did. It will run locally everywhere.
No access gateways; I've built a private WAN spanning a couple mountain ranges and several counties to benefit latency and reliability with a side-effect of better security and decreased connection charges.