At 04:21 AM 10/21/98 GMT, David A. Lethe wrote:
>On Tue, 20 Oct 1998 13:39:24 -0400, Forrest Smith
<snip>
>Several things:
>
>1. HP WILL support customers with SSA attached to both HP3Ks and
>HP9Ks, despite what some people have posted (they did, however,
>qualify that their information was old). If you need names & numbers,
>then contact me offline.
>

Sorry, David, but isn't this a bit obfuscatory?  This issue I have raised
in the past isn't that HP won't support the *customer* but that HP
(currently) won't support the *product*.  I'm still holding out for
official product support by HP even if they simply say "SSA is OK.  Use it
with our blessing."

>2. SSA disks will correctly interact with all HP diagnostic tools
>including the CE utilities, as well as HP predictive support.
>

Yes, but will HP run them for a customer using SSA disks?  If not, aren't
these utilities (except for predictive) password protected?

>
>5. If you need features, buy EMC.  If you need pricing or performance,
>go with SSA.
>

I agree (except for the HP support issues :-)

>6. Be careful about any representations with SSA performance on
>MPE/iX.  On the HP-UX side, it is pretty easy for SSA to double or
>triple performance of Nike, EMC, or Jamaica.  On the 3K, because how
>the O/S just hates to go to disk, you *might* see little performance
>gain.  I could go into this in detail, but the information is very
>system-specific.  I don't want to say that your IBM salesrep might be
>misleading you on performance expectations, but you need to talk to
>somebody who really knows both SSA and how it works with MPE/iX.
>There aren't a lot of them out there.
>

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!  I'm delighted that someone selling and
supporting third-party disk products for MPE/iX officially recognize that
MPE/iX itself does wonderful things with disk I/O and that it is very hard
to improve.  While some enviroments may see performance gain, the best
reasons to look at non-HP disk solutions are more for fault tolerance/high
availability/footprint/ etc. than performance.

>9. HP CSY spent over a month exercising and testing a large SSA
>configuration on a 9x9.  They tested both the IBM 7133, as well as our
>own (non-IBM) SSA disk subsystem.  Both subsystems passed their tests,
>after a few firmware changes were made to the SSA interface adapter.
>

I sure would like to hear more from HP about this.  I have several
questions.  First, did they spend a month exercising and testing or did a
month lapse during their exercising and testing period?  Just exactly how
hard did they work the devices?  What kind of throughput did they
experience?  And so on...

Hopefully, no-one sees my continuing intransigence regarding recommending
SSA as concerns about the product and technology.  My concerns are strictly
support and, as co-chair of the Interex High Availability Forum, I will
continue to,
1) Recommend solutions to HP users that represent the "wisest" (IMHO)
choice for their environments and, 2) Encourage HP to develop relationships
with other third-party disk providers that would allow market competitive
pressures to force prices down and features and functionality up.  As a
performance person, I'll continue to throw cold water on those third-party
disk providers (not David) who communicate to HP users that their solution
will result in fantastic performance gains in an MPE/iX environment.  It's
just not possible, in most situations.


Bill Lancaster