Dandelions, DMX's and USP's (updated)

Even when Im snowed under, like I am at the moment, I try to keep half an eye on what's being said and spread in the blogsphere.  But despite being so busy, I feel a need to call attention to some of the foibles and FUD that is currently being tossed around like spring pollen by USP wanna-bees.

Stay with me on this...........  With the spring and pollen analogy in mind, there's not a many things better than a nice deep green lawn.  But on the flip side, there's not much that is more soul destroying than a lawn covered in dandelions!  The same can be said of blogs.  There are some blogs out there that have the potential to be as satisfying as a lushous green lawn, were they not littered with dandelions and broad leaved weeds that take over and spoil the content!

Where am I going with this........

Our favourite closet USP fan Barry Burke (he owns one, uses it daily, has the latest microcode and its licensed for everything - seriously!), has been busy sowing his blog with dandelion seeds by spreading more FUD about Hu and the USPV.  Barry, speaking as though he were an authority on Hitachi storage, accuses USPV Dynamic Provisioning of not being able to see external storage.  In his own words "..... cant see external storage.  Nada.  Nothing. Kaput ".  (you will have to read the comments to see his statement)

He even goes on to suggest that because he can't get HDP to see external storage, the integrity of Hu's posts , suggesting that it can, are damaged!

I even offered to get it working for him, but for some strange reason he didn't take me up on the offer Tongue out

Then in another more recent post , Barry talks about the so called EMC SPEED gurus.  Apparently Barry has been arming them with in-depth understanding of DMX internals and performance characteristics.  Fair enough.  But apparently he has also been arming them with the same in depth know-how of the competitions kit.  The same guy who cant get HDP and external storage to work.  He says we ought to consider these SPEED gurus "armed and dangerous".  Im just hoping Barry's knowledge of the DMX that he has been passing on to them is superior to his knowledge of the USP.

So, a word of warning - expect the EMC SPEED gurus to be out and about in a neighbourhood near you, littering the streets and vandalising walls with scurrilous and inaccurate statements about the competition.

Oh, and one has to wonder why the EMC SPEED gurus would need to be trained up on the competition??  If you were to believe the propaganda that is coming out of the Hopkinton blogketing machine these days, you could be forgiven for thinking the DMX doesn't have any competition.  But I trust none of us really believes that.....right!  Its only when you read between the lines that you realise that they are well aware of the battle that's going on at the top.

Why else would Barry have a USPV with the latest code, licensed for everything that he uses every day?  I can only think of 3 possible reasons -
1.    He is closet fan of Hitachi storage
2.    EMC are big users Hitachi storage
3.   The EMC engineering guys are trying to copy/emulate the quality and functionality of Hitachi storage.

Oh and much of the above was on a post that is talking about trust!  

I trust none of us takes Barry's word for anything relating to Hitachi storage.  And the same applies to the so called SPEED gurus from EMC.  Its fair enough to hope they know their own product, but lets not think they know anything more than a few memorised sentences about their competition.

Nigel

NB.  Ive just realised that I didn't mention above that the USPV does indeed allow you to use external storage to build HDP (thin provisioning) pools.  Ive just tested it and it works fine.  No special option modes, no hidden buttons.... and all on ucode that is several months old!

UPDATE:  Since writing this post, and as a result of a question raised in a comment, I have successfully tested the following combinations of HDP, COW, normal LDEVs (all HDP volumes were built from pools comprising external storage) in Shadow Image operations - 

LDEV -> COW

HDP -> COW

HDP -> HDP

HDP -> LDEV 

As a result of the above, I would assume (and I am not an authority on this) that HDP will also work with Tiered Storage Manager.  After all, Shadow Image is the underlying engine.  And believe me, they all worked a treat and were extremely simple to set up.