-----Original Message-----
From:   David A. Lethe [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Thursday, March 19, 1998 9:17 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: EMC Symmetrix drives

On Thu, 19 Mar 1998 17:20:40 -0800, "Charles H. Finley"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

<snipped some of Lee's previous message, and went straight
to Charles'

>I went to a storage presentation at HP about a month ago.  This was my =
>impression of their position on high speed access to storage.
>
>According to HP Several vendors have voiced support for SSA; however, =
>very few have delivered products or solutions. Connor withdrew support =
>for SSA after being acquired by Seagate (which is firmly committed to =
>FC-AL).There are further signals that IBM may be or will be abandoning =
>SSA and migrating to a new extension called Fibre Channel-Enhanced =
>Loop(FC-EL) that will provide all or most of SSA functionality over =
>Fibre Channel.
No, you have fallen for HP's spin. What they didn't tell you is that
FC-EL is a superset of SSA that also combines some of the features of
FC-AL.  It is also
[Charles H. Finley]  
   " fully compatible " 
[Charles H. Finley]  
How often have we heard that in our computer careers.
 with SSA.  FC-AL may or may not
happen in the future.
[Charles H. Finley]  
Ha, but 
IBM has made no announcements on abandoning ssa.  The "further signals
that IBM may be abandoning ...", as you (HP) commented are fantasy.
[Charles H. Finley]  
Call them speculation, or educated guesses.  My fantasies are a lot
more interesting and do not involve IBM or SSA.
 For customers considering SSA, this raises an issue of =
>investmentprotection. The Fibre Channel Loop Community (FCLC) is rapidly =
>growing with many products currently shipping including adapters, =
>drives,cabinetry and components.   In short, the people at the meeting =
>said that HP doesn't think that SSA has much of a future.
SSA has been shipping for several years now and it has proven itself
in the field.  Can the same be said for FC-AL?   IBM also makes both
types of drives.  However, IBM decided to put SSA on everything they
offer, including mainframes.  I wonder why?

>
>Several vendors (EMC, Seagate, Quantum, Symbios Logic, Emulex, HP, Sun =
>and others) are shipping FC-based products including disks, adapters and =
>RAID arrays which further demonstrate that FC is ready for production. =
>FC seems to be the standard and we all know how in love HP is with the =
>standards
True.  By the way, IBM invented BOTH SSA AND FC-AL.  Both are ANSI
SCSI-3 standards. However, SSA is vastly superior.

>Much of the competitive positioning IBM is using against FC is several =
>years old based on prototype products and is not relevant to =
>productsshipping today.
I could probably say the same for HPs positioning against SSA!

>For customers requiring multi-platform and
>multi-vendor support, a quick look at SSA should result in either a =
>Parallel SCSI, UltraSCSI, or Fiber Channel decision.
But an INFORMED and careful look will result in a SSA decision.

>Customers who plan =
>to implement an exclusive IBM shop may find IBM SSA attractive. However, =
>beware of IBM shifting from SSA to FC-EL.=20
>
>Whether IBM abandons SSA or not, HP made it really clear that they have =
>no plans to support SSA.
That remains to be seen -- <grin> ... stay tuned.

>Bottom line, expect no HP support and probably =
>no investment protection with SSA.
You are way off on the investment protection thing, I contend that SSA
provides much more investment protection than anything HP offers....
Can HP's model 20 or JBODS simultaneously attach to MACs, NT, SUN,
HP3K, HP9K, SGI, Netware, SCO, Tandem, DEC, Terradata, and a bunch of
others?  Reconfiguration and rehosting can all be done without turning
off the power, and without interrupting data flow to other devicies?
No CE required?

Investment protection???

>(BTW, some of my facts came from HP and some from MTI.)
Well.  That explains it <grin>

I'm curioius.... did they ever comment on such "minor" topics such as:
 -> SSA performance vs FC-AL & Parallel SCSI?
 -> SSA's ability to allow multiple drives to simultaneously do I/O
across the same channel ... resulting in BETTER performance as drives
are added??
 -> SSA's added RELIABILITY/AVAILABILITY over parallel-SCSI based
    subsystems.
[Charles H. Finley]  
They may have, but that's not the most relevant thing here.  What I was
trying to establish was 
HP seems to firmly commited against SSA support now and in the future
HP seems to be committed to Fibre Channel
If HP will not likely support SSA and a company considering using it  cares about what HP will support, then they should consider not using SSA.
There is some question (my fantisies again, sorry) about IBM's long term committment to SSA.
There is some question about how long SSA will be arround, due to lack of interest on the part of anyone other than IBM (investment protection, sorry, I did it again)
To many HP users, the first and foremost consideration in doing anything is will HP support it.  That said, all of us idiots who "fall for HP's spin", will do what we do because we need a single point of contact for support.

David A. Lethe
compass corporate systems
(972) 208-3660
http://www.compass-corp.com