Virtual Provisioning price-list somewhere where the sun doesn't shine! I finally got costs for Virtual Provisioning and I think that EMC have got their heads so high in the Atmos-sphere that they've lost all sense and reason! On a cost per terabyte basis, the Virtual Provisioning license adds somewhere between 15-20% to my Tier 1 costs; so to break even on the cost I need to be recovering 15-20% of my storage and to be really saving I need to be recovering 30-40% of my my storage due to VP efficiencies. The situation is worse if I look at 450Gig 15K drives. Okay, for low-cost/Fibre; the cost halves but it is a substantial pecentage uplift on the cost per terabyte.
And this for an implementation which is currently still fairly flawed; if I add disk to my VP pool, it doesn't automagically relay the disk out at the moment for example. Now I may joke about PowerPath being free but Virtual Provisioning really should be part of the foundation costs of the array. I get the feeling that EMC don't want me to use the Virtual Provisioning with Fibre disks in a DMX and if I do, they are going to make damn sure that they continue to get their pound of flesh!
The Clariion cost is a lot more sensible BTW!
To say that I'm annoyed is an understatement, I could have posted this yesterday but I thought I'd let the guys in EMC who have worked so hard on Atmos/MAUI have their day in the sun without me being negative, so really I'm a nice guy!!
But please guys revisit your Virtual Provisioning pricing!
p.s Hi to all my new EMC readers who turned up after the Atmos announcement!
I guess we took the right approach in charging 0% additional licensing for Thin Provisioning :)
Posted by: Barry Whyte | November 11, 2008 at 11:22 AM
Rant received.
But with all due respect: if you are not going to reclaim AT LEAST 30% of your usable capacity, then you probably don't really need Thin Provisioning now, do you?
You have my email if you'd like to discuss further.
Posted by: the storage anarchist | November 11, 2008 at 12:28 PM
We'll add in dedupe on all tiers of storage at 0% too. :-)
The comment from storage anarchist that you need to save at least 30% otherwise it's not worth doing is so yesterday. Thin is industry standard provisioning.
Or am I missing somethng? Is EMC virtual provisioning pixie dust that different that it's worth more than $0 on any EMC platform?
Posted by: Alex McDonald | November 11, 2008 at 08:15 PM