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13 Posts
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1448
August 28th, 2007 07:00
HP Storage Essentials?
Hello professionals,
Has anyone ever used the Storage Essentials product based on AppIQ to manage & provision a diverse SAN environment consisting of fabric switches and storage arrays from different vendors?
Personally, I'm unhappy with its interface/GUI and found it to be very limiting and "non-friendly" to the user. I've also noticed that the event log & reporting seem to constantly flood my e-mail Inbox since the reporting is complex and limited on what can be customized. I've also had my share of problems with the "AppStorManager" service. The way HP designed its presentation of storage provisioning seems to disagree with the way how I've always seen it using the native tools.
I was just wondering if anyone else has used other Storage Resource Management (SRM) products and compared it to ECC.
Thanks,
Johnny
Has anyone ever used the Storage Essentials product based on AppIQ to manage & provision a diverse SAN environment consisting of fabric switches and storage arrays from different vendors?
Personally, I'm unhappy with its interface/GUI and found it to be very limiting and "non-friendly" to the user. I've also noticed that the event log & reporting seem to constantly flood my e-mail Inbox since the reporting is complex and limited on what can be customized. I've also had my share of problems with the "AppStorManager" service. The way HP designed its presentation of storage provisioning seems to disagree with the way how I've always seen it using the native tools.
I was just wondering if anyone else has used other Storage Resource Management (SRM) products and compared it to ECC.
Thanks,
Johnny
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StephenKebbell-
12 Posts
0
August 30th, 2007 01:00
here are my answers:
1) Yes, we have Hitachi's HiCommand Storage Services Manager (HSSM)
2) I am more comfortable with native tools, and it's usually a lot quicker. Although that's probably because I'm used to it. Small zoning changes can be done in around 1 minute with the command line. A few more minutes to create a LUN and Map it to a host. To set up a provisioning job in SE, just loading the data for all the hosts takes an eternity (Java!), even if I only want to select one. We have never tried provisioning with ECC, except for configuring Metas and Device Mapping/Masking on our Symmetrix arrays.
3) We have been using HSSM for about 3-4 years, before HP bought AppIQ. First version we had was 3.5, I think. Support is quite good. Whenever I open a support call, I get a call back within 2 hours. They ususally work our cases fairly quickly, and if new service packs are available, we get them almost immediately. But whenever they have to escalate a case to HP (since it's HP's code) it can take a while.
4) Strange, I only get the messages once. I don't know if it has something to do with the SE integration with HP-SIM (which HSSM does not have). In HSSM's policy manager we have an infrastructure policy for the event switch port offline, with a re-arm period of 60 minutes.
ECC's default "Device Validation" Policy for Switches/Ports is set to a 1 Hour polling interval. HSSM uses Brocade's API, which might explain the monitoring time difference.
My mail address is (firstname).(lastname) web.de
(without any brackets).
Regards,
Stephen
StephenKebbell-
12 Posts
0
August 29th, 2007 03:00
we use both ECC and Storage Essentials, although SE is OEMed from another vendor.
We have a fairly large SAN, and have various storage arrays (Symmetrix DMX-3, Clariion, as well as HDS and IBM-ESS storage). But as for provisioning, we only use native tools for that. We use ECC for configuring our DMX3s, but apart from that it's native tools all the way: Navisphere, ESS Web Interface, HDS Storage Navigator or Device Manager, and for zoning we use the Brocade CLI.
To comparing the 2 products: Storage essentials has a great topology display. You want a good overview of your SAN, you can't beat it. Plus you can move objects around and save the positions, and filter them per organisation so certain users only see "their" stuff. Some of the canned reports are really good, like Available Volume Reports, Host Agent / HBA summary. It can tell you what version of multipathing is installed on your hosts (even PowerPath), something ECC cannot seem to do. It also supports HDS' AMS arrays, which ECC does not (yet).
ECC's "Relationship" feature is very good, I just right-click a volume-group and I can find out instantly what storage devices it uses. Performance Manager is also excellent, and I find its monitoring/alarming better. StorageScope is also very detailed, and you can customise it a lot more than SE.
SE is quicker about alarming when a SAN port goes offline. Often I don't get any message in ECC if a SAN-attached server is rebooted - the port is back online before ECC has noticed.
I have also had problems with the AppStorManager service, and memory leaks and whatnot. It's a bit more stable with Win2003 SP2 and the latest service pack for SE. But I still have problems with HP-UX CIM Extensions. I get the occasional hanging process that chews up CPU Resources on the Host. ECC Agents seem a little bit more stable. In Windows it's the opposite. I get messages that ECC Host Agent for Windows is no longer running, although the process mnragent.exe is still running on the host.
That's my 2 cents.
Regards,
Stephen
JohnnyK1
13 Posts
0
August 29th, 2007 08:00
Thank you for your input.
A few questions:
1) Which vendor re-branded/OEM'ed your SE? Hitachi?
2) You seem to have a diverse SAN infrastructure similar to us; why do you choose the native tools to provision and not use Storage Essentials (SE) or ECC to perform provisioning? Have you tried using SE to provision? results?
3) How long have you used SE? How is their support? We find their support "lacking" in solutions. I've seen the topology and tinkered with some reports, but I don't find SE as a good solution to control & manage our mixed SAN environment.
4) When you say SE alarming feature is quicker than ECC, perhaps the "discovery" interval that you set for SE is every 3-5 minutes and? I'm not sure how often ECC polls/scans the network for changes; although EMC assured me it is "immediate" as soon as the change occurs. Also, when I get event messages from SE, it seems to spam my e-mail Inbox since it re-issues the message every 5 minutes; basically, in one day I can get hundreds of emails just for a port going offline.
Lastly, is there anyway I can get your e-mail address? I would like to keep in touch.
Thank you kind sir,
Johnny
JohnnyK1
13 Posts
0
September 4th, 2007 10:00
Thanks again for providing me some insight on how you use both SE/HSSM & ECC to manage your SAN environment, and thanks you for being kind in providing me your e-mail.
I am going to be upfront with you and say that my colleagues and I are unhappy with the design of the Storage Essentials interface. I will admit the topology map is nice but everything else is pretty much useless to us. We haven't used ECC yet, but we are talking with EMC right now to get a test pilot set up for us.
1) I'd like to ask, as a SAN administrator could you do without the HSSM product?
2) Couldn¿t you manage with just one product, ECC?
3) If you could provide a percentage, how would you break down each product use?
E.g., HSSM ¿ 30%, ECC ¿ 70%
In our case, we are desperately in need of a product that will provision all the various storage arrays and fabric switches. As I mentioned in the thread, we have Hitachi arrays, EMC arrays, Cisco and Brocade switches.
Since we cannot provision using SE, we have to resort to using native tools. Other than the topology which looks nice, I feel that the reporting functionality is quite limited. Personally, I don't think SE does a good job on alerting us either; and we have phone home systems setup for those purposes.
The point I'm trying to get at, is with all the expensive licensing & software fees, what type of real value does either HSSM or ECC bring to the picture as far as SAN management is concerned?
I apologize if the post is too long, but I truly appreciate your input and thoughts.
Regards,
Johnny