Sun StorageTek 9985V – Key Features
Customers are using the Sun ST9985V, Sun ST9990V, Sun ST9990, and ST9985 disk systems to support the
largest and most critical data center environments. These systems provide performance, scalability and
flexibility along with many powerful features that are not found in any other disk systems. These are some of
the most valuable differentiating features.
Universal Volume Manager (UVM)
The Sun ST9900 Series, with UVM option, natively supports external disk virtualization. With UVM, customers can
move their data to other disk systems without disrupting the application . UVM is vendor agnostic, so customers are
not locked into Sun storage and choose the best fit for their requirements. Because UVM is embedded in the
microcode of every ST9900, customers can implement disk virtualization without adding any new devices to their
environment. Only the license key need s to be purschased to make UVM operational. With UVM, a single 9985V
can support up to 96 petabytes of external storage (32 petabytes for ST9990 and 16 petabytes for ST9985)
EMC's DMX-3 product does not support any external disk virtualization. EMC customers would have to buy an extra
virtualization product including new hardware, new networking and new software. EMC has been selling the InVista
SAN Virtualization product, but after a year on the market, only a small handful have been sold.
IBM's DS8000 does not support any external disk virtualization either. IBM sells the SAN Volume Controller
(SVC) which is a virtualization appliance. The SVC is primarily aimed at midrange environments. IBM
customers have to install the SVC in addition to the DS8000. Many SVC's would be required to support large
data center requirements. In practice, the SVC is used primarily for data migrations.
Virtual Partition Manager (VPM
)
Enterprise class disk systems are typically shared by dozens to hundreds of servers. The applications
requirements and quality of service (QoS) vary tremendously, so customers must have control of the disk
resources dedicated to each server. It is essential to fence off the resources required by the most critical
applications, so disk administrators can guarantee their performance, and protect them from demand spikes
from lower priority applications like large batch data transfers.
Sun ST9990/90/85V customers can use VPM to set up as many as 32 (8 for ST9985) separate Virtual Private
Storage Machines or Virtual Partitions to manage complex mixes of application performance requirements.
Instead of buying more disk systems, Sun customers have mature and sophisticated tools to maximize the
systems they already own.
EMC has just announced their initial partitioning features, Dynamic Cache Partitioning and Symmetrix
Priority Control. These new tools are relatively simple and lack the fine-grained, end to end QoS control
available in VPM and unlike the ST9900 VPM that provides up to 32 full virtual partitions of not only cache,
but disk and IO ports, EMC can only partition cache and is limited to only 8 partition at tbat. IBM DS8000's
offer only 2 partitions that divide the array resources in half. Unlike the ST9900 where the virtual partitions
are dynamic and can be configured and changed by the customer, IBM 2 partitions are factory preset and can
not be changed by the customer, There is no flexibility to assign each application the resources and priority that
it needs.
Universal Replicator (UR)
The ST9900 Family Universal Replicator feature leads the industry in robust remote replication. It delivers
completely reliable and consistent replication over vast distances and overcoming instability in WAN
connections. By using disk journaling and pull technologies, UR can survive link outages with complete
consistency at the remote target, and without overloading the local system. Sun's Delta Resync feature allows
three data center configurations to rapidly establish full redundancy following a failover from the primary site.
EMC's SRDF/A remote replication product was designed to store remote writes in local memory. When a link
goes down, local cache can be consumed rapidly. EMC recently introduced disk journaling in a SRDF/A Delta
Just the Facts
October 2007
14
Sun Confidential – For Internal Use and Authorized Partner Use Only
