EMC's XtremIO

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kdh

Gawd
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Mar 16, 2005
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Anyone using this stuff? Looks like EMC picked them up about a year ago, and they made a pretty big splash at EMC world this year.

http://www.crn.com/news/storage/240...rage-with-xtremio-all-flash-storage-array.htm

I'm pretty happy with the 3 V-max's I've installed and with FastVP I get about 98% of the performance I need. However, I have a 14T Oracle OLTP DB that every once in awhile gets punched with a huge amount of Random I/O Reads or Writes, or Both. I start getting response times of around 15ms instead of the 5ms or better I'm required to keep. The easy answer is throw more efds into my vmaxs, change fastvp percentages and be done with it. I have some additional open slots in all 3 of my 2 engine configs with dual drive bays, but then I max them out leading me to add additional engines and drive bays down the road. If I have to add another set of engines to my 3 v-max's and drive bays that means more data center power, and cost.. Those who work with V-Max 20, and 40ks know the kind of cost I'm talking about.

My emc sale guy hooked me up with a few tech folks from XtremIO. It looks like it'll do what I need it to do, but wondering if anyone here has used it.

I'm only here in this thread to talk about EMC, XtremIO, or V-Max. I don't really care about anyones suggestions towards any zfs solution, netapp, hitachi, or any other storage vendor.
 
i have SEEN one of the EMC flash arrays in use, the place i took the tour of bought the EMC kit to be used only for a DB and bought the EMC stuff because the spinning disk array it was on before was not fast enough. i do not know if it was IOP, I/O or latency related. i only know that they had a massive array with thousands of disks (assuming combinations of clustering, RAID, ETC, there was rows of cabinets with fiber for both network and array attach) that could not keep up, so they moved to an EMC flash array with what looked to be maybe 100 flash disks, and said they were well over the performance they needed for the time being.

my only other experiences have all been on vendors you don't have any interest in so i won't offer up opinions on that stuff.
 
Good info. But its easy to replace rows of stuff with a single cab when they don't tell you the specs of what the original config was. Could be Iscsi, or 2Gig FC.. who knows. The techs I talked to said each node is connected via an internal infiniband network, each node has its own FC ports and processors. So as you add nodes, it scales. Sounds a lot like Isilon and Nas but EFDs and FC/Iscsi on steroids.

My current storage nails what I need it to do about 98% of the time.. its those huge bursts of random io that I can't seem to keep up with. Its not like I'm punching my arrays in the face either. I can do about 200K Iops nonstop and its cake.. but those bursts of 40K random IO is my issue.

Found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Vti18uH-8

Its a little dated, but interesting. If its as good as it looks, then running Oracle Rac behind VMWare would be a no brainer.

There are a few other lurkers in this forum who I know do a lot of EMC stuff so I'm hoping they answer up.
 
how much of that 200K average load is from oracle?

reason i ask is if i were your CFO i would cut your dick off buying a new super expensive EMC based flash array only to find out later that the already gargantuan sum of money spent on the current system is now being 'wasted' as the system just offloaded 100K or more IOPs and is now grossly under utilized.
 
About 85% of the IO is oracle and oltp. Rest if VMware. I'm also using FTS and hosting another 150Ts of external storage on top off the internal stuff I've got. In my first post I said I could buy another 16 EFDs and most likely be done with it. I have the slots for it. I'm not using the super dense cabs at this point in time. But the cost of 16 EFDs+ Licenses + Support X3 because I have 3 arrays I need to put it in. (Primary, Standby, Offsite Standby) is definitely up there. If the cost of a 3 XtremIo installs is cheaper then 48 EFDS, then its a no brainer for me. I would only move 1 database of about 14Ts over to XtremIO, and the rest would stay put.

My CIO definitely wouldn't cut my dick off for something like that.

Hence why I'm asking if anyone has used it.

Besides.. after this thread:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1720735

I'm not going to debate with you. If you have zero experience with it, then stay out of my thread.
 
i have emc experience, not with xtremeio i'll grant you that. i don't need to spend that kind of money to get performance.

have fun with that though.
 
kdh,

I work for XtremIO in Santa Clara, CA and it sounds like you've already been in touch with some of my colleagues. But if there is anything we can do to provide you with more information, please let us know. You can submit a contact form here. Just let us know it is kdh from HardForum and when the information comes through I'll see it.

We can put you in touch with other customers doing similar things and help you understand the advantages we offer as well as price points. It sounds from the thread that the perception is that XtremIO would be very expensive, but I think you'll find that for high performance database and virtual server environments it is quite attractive.

Regards,

XtremIO
[email protected]
 
yeah, have them set you up with a tour of an installed facility. you will be able to talk to people who are using it. at the time i did a tour it was so far out of our price range i just kind of wondered around and drooled on stuff. thats not to say its expensive for the performance, just that we did not need the performance. i should have been on a tour of the local staples looking for a 300$ consumer NAS. the place i worked had visions of enterprise hardware with the budget of a kindergartener.
 
@Xtremio, thanks for the welcome. I'm already working directly with EMC, and will follow that route for now.

@Zedicus, good info.
 
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