EMC Clarion CX500 SAN experience

Does anyone have any experiences/stories to tell running IDS on a EMC Clarion storage array. We are considering buying 2 of these for cross-site storage and mirroring. I would be interested in anyone using their Snapshot and BCV facilities. How good are they? How long is the database in backup mode while a Snapshot is taken? etc etc

We just got the CX700 and we are going to use those facilities that you talked about. I will keep this group posted. Sorry I couldn't help you now. -----Original Message----- From: forum.subscriber@iiug.org [mailto:forum.subscriber@iiug.org] On Behalf Of DAVID FORTUNE Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 3:56 AM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: EMC Clarion CX500 SAN experience [4117] Does anyone have any experiences/stories to tell running IDS on a EMC Clarion storage array. We are considering buying 2 of these for cross-site storage and mirroring. I would be interested in anyone using their Snapshot and BCV facilities. How good are they? How long is the database in backup mode while a Snapshot is taken? etc etc ____________________________________________________________________ This e-mail and its attachments may contain Forest Laboratories, Inc. proprietary information that is privileged, confidential or subject to copyright belonging to Forest Laboratories, Inc. This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering this e-mail to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying or action taken in relation to the contents of and attachments to this e-mail is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any printout.

We have been using EMC for several years. We use BCV splits frequently to refresh systems, we rarely do onbar tape restores (well, just when I demand to test it). We also use SRDF to our hotsite. Works like a charm. We used to SRDF from Chicago-suburbs to Texas (hotsite), but now we SRDF from chicago-suburbs to chicago-downtown. EMC is awesome!! We had symmetrix(sp?) but we have moved to clarion for a lot. I'm not sure we 'snapshot', can you explain what that means to you?. HTH, Norma Jean -----Original Message----- From: forum.subscriber@iiug.org [mailto:forum.subscriber@iiug.org] On Behalf Of DAVID FORTUNE Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 3:56 AM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: EMC Clarion CX500 SAN experience [4117] Does anyone have any experiences/stories to tell running IDS on a EMC Clarion storage array. We are considering buying 2 of these for cross-site storage and mirroring. I would be interested in anyone using their Snapshot and BCV facilities. How good are they? How long is the database in backup mode while a Snapshot is taken? etc etc ============================================================ The information contained in this message may be privileged and confidential and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reproduction, dissemination or distribution of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer. Thank you. Tellabs ============================================================

EMC is awesome, if you got the bucks, do it !! I, as a DBA, am thrilled with it. I'm not sure about the snapshots.. .I have asked my unix buddies here (the ones that do the EMC stuff). >> How good are they? Awesome!!! I am not involved in the purchase, just a happy "end user". >>How long is the database in backup mode while a Snapshot is taken? etc etc We run with onbar for our IDS 9.4, 1.3TB database (SAP implementation). Taking a BCV split is a matter of seconds or at the most 1-2 minutes. If we want a "clean", onbar external backup, we simply use "onmode -c block" to block the database, then the unix guy splits the BCV, and I unblock.... Done. We do this a lot for project go-lives and maint weekends, but we still take a nightly onbar tape backup (better safe than sorry). Our main way of refreshing our SAP systems (copy from PRD to test) is via EMC BCVs. It takes maybe 3-4 hours to move a full copy of our 1.3TB database from PRD to test. We don't block the PRD DB on a copy-to-test system... We "rip" the BCV, but since Informix is so hardy, it figures it all out and comes up anyway :) There has been very few times when it didn't work on the first cut. Keep in mind, you may have to throw out any notion you have about "checkpoints should be less than 3 seconds!". BAH... Checkpoints take as long as they take... any duration is ok as long as the customer is not complaining. It is common for us to see checkpoints in the 20-30 second range... it doesn't matter... We have 6 GB of DB memory, at least 4 GB of SAP memory, and piles of EMC cache... our users do not complain. (this is SRDF that slows us down on checkpoints). I hope you do it, it certainly was worth it to us. Norma Jean -----Original Message----- From: forum.subscriber@iiug.org [mailto:forum.subscriber@iiug.org] On Behalf Of Rajasekaran.... Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 7:55 AM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: RE: EMC Clarion CX500 SAN experience [4119] We just got the CX700 and we are going to use those facilities that you talked about. I will keep this group posted. Sorry I couldn't help you now. -----Original Message----- From: forum.subscriber@iiug.org [mailto:forum.subscriber@iiug.org] On Behalf Of DAVID FORTUNE Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 3:56 AM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: EMC Clarion CX500 SAN experience [4117] Does anyone have any experiences/stories to tell running IDS on a EMC Clarion storage array. We are considering buying 2 of these for cross-site storage and mirroring. I would be interested in anyone using their Snapshot and BCV facilities. How good are they? How long is the database in backup mode while a Snapshot is taken? etc etc ____________________________________________________________________ This e-mail and its attachments may contain Forest Laboratories, Inc. proprietary information that is privileged, confidential or subject to copyright belonging to Forest Laboratories, Inc. This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering this e-mail to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying or action taken in relation to the contents of and attachments to this e-mail is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any printout. ============================================================ The information contained in this message may be privileged and confidential and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reproduction, dissemination or distribution of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer. Thank you. Tellabs ============================================================