ECC 6.0 vs HiCommand 6.0?

EMC recently announced the release of ECC (ControlCenter) version 6.0. This version finally meets customer demands for VMware support (which despite the fact EMC own VMware is a long time coming) plus a whole host of other enhanced reporting.

I did a lot of work recently on virtualisation of storage tools using VMware and this version of ECC was planned not only to be the one which supported virtual guests (i.e. could understand how the VMware ESX Server had taken real storage and presented the guest O/S some of that) but also would be the version to run in a virtualised environment. Previous versions of ECC would work virtualised, however EMC were understandably concerned with performance and any negative impact bad performance of ECC on VMware would create. New new versions of ECC also support new features and functionality like other vendor's arrays (there were issues with the 5.x versions supporting NSC55 correctly). I think the enhanced reporting will prove extremely useful and overall ECC is now a great product.

Compare this to HDS' suite of products, HiCommand, currently at version 5.5 (check here for the compatibility matrix for Device Manager dated November 2006, not including the USP-V, check here for the same for Tuning Manager, quoting version 5.1 and other versions in the text, woefully out of date). A new version of this software will be needed in order to support USP-V and the new functionality. Will it be called 6.0?

Device Manager is still a second rate product at the current version. There are so many fundamental problems with the product. Here are just a few:

• Poor agent handling. Multiple products still require multiple agents. No O/S information retrieved from host, no indication whether the agent is running. Single fixed host information "push" from the client, no central scheduling for intra-day host collection. No agent push deployment from the server.
• No integrated (e.g. Active Directory) security.
• Only 2 storage reports, one of which can't understand dual pathed devices.
• Poor integration with other software, including CCI.
• Quirky, inflexible allocation method for assigning storage and for assigning hosts into groups.
• Lack of consistent feel for the products - the GUI has been made more consistent across the product range but agent installations are to differing locations (and change depending on things such as the version of HDLM installed)
• Poor documentation
• Unclear feature definitions (e.g. deletion of a host removes the "host security" - does that actually delete the storage, the HSD, or what?)

This is only a brief list as putting it all here in the blog would be more dull to read than my postings normally are. Also bear in mind Device Manager doesn't have to do that much - it doesn't even support other vendor's hardware. However I made this list to provide a comparison with how far ECC is ahead of HiCommand, bearing in mind they are at similar development levels.

I still think HDS don't get the whole software proposition. I know we all laugh at EMC calling themselves a software company, however at least they are heading in the right direction and excluding the integration issues from the 3 million other software companies they've purchased over the last few years they are turning out good SRM products (caveat, even ECC has issues).

As the storage offerings from HDS get more complicated, we need the tools to be trustworthy, usable, intuitive and unless they start getting there, no-one will want to use thin provisioning and virtualisation because the tools will just not deliver on enabling the productivity savings that those features can achieve.

HDS, pleeeeease tell me version 6.0 will be better? At the same time, you might want to update your website to ensure the compatibility matrix references the latest products.

Tuning Manager CLI

I've been working with the HiCommand Tuning Manager CLI over the last few days in order to get more performance information on 9900 arrays. Tuning Manager (5.1 in my case) just doesn't let me present data in a format I find useful, and I suppose that's not really surprising as, unless you're going to add a complete reporting engine into the product, then you'll be wanting to get the data out of the HTnM database and build your own bespoke reports.

So I had high hopes for the HTnM CLI, but I was unfortunately disappointed. Yes, I can drag out port, LDEV, subsystem (cache etc) and array group details, however I can only extract one time period of records at a time. I can display all the LDEVs for a specific hour, or a day (if I've been aggregating the data) but I can't specify a date or time range. This means I've had to script extracting and merging the data and the result is, it is sloooow. Really slow. One other really annoying feature - fields that report byte throughput sometimes report as "4.2 KB" sometimes as "5 MB" - which programmer thought a comma delimited output would want a unit suffix?

I'm expecting delivery of HTnM 5.5 (I think 5.5.3 to be specific) this week and here's what I'm hoping to find; (a) the ability to report over date/time range (b) the database schema to be exposed for me to extract data directly. I'm not asking much - nothing much more than other products offer. Oh, and hopefully something considerably faster than now.

Software Shortcomings

I was invited last week to speak at the first (of hopefully) many HDS User Forums in the UK. The subject was Storage Resource Management and I talked on the subject and my thoughts for about 30 minutes. One slide generated the most interest and I've included it here. It shows some of the issues current SRM products have and which are not really being addressed by software vendors.

A case in point is the installation of Device Manager I performed this week on a virtual domain. HiCommand Device Manager 5.1 is supported on VMware (2.5) however I couldn't get the software to install at all. I tried the previous version which worked fine, so I was confident the Windows 2003 build was OK. HDS pointed me at a new feature I'd not seen before, Data Execution Prevention which is intended to prevent certain types of virus attacks based on buffer overflows. Whilst this solved the problem, it didn't fill me with a great deal of confidence to think Windows judged HDS's software as a virus. With DEP enabled, the installation got further but still eventually failed. On HDS' advice, re-running the installation again worked.

At the forum, HDS presented their SRM roadmap. If it all comes to fruition then I'll be able to do my provisioning, monitoring and other storage management tasks using my Blackberry whilst sipping Pina Colada's on a Carribbean beach. Back in the real world, my concern is that if the existing tools don't even install cleanly, how am I expected to trust a tool which is moving my disks around dynamically in the background?

It's easy for me to target HDS in this instance but all vendors are equally culpable. I think there's a need for vendors to "walk before they can run". Personally, I'd have more trust in a software tool that was 100% reliable than one which offered me lots of new whizzy features. Vendors, get the basics sorted. Get confidence in your tools and build on that. That way I might get to do provisioning from the beach before I'm too old and grey to enjoy it.

A confession

Nigel commented on my slow provisioning post. I have to agree that Device Manager has its faults. I'm doing some work on Device and Tuning Manager in the coming weeks as I'm installing both on VMware guests. So, I should have some performance feedback.

The comment highlights how software still has a long way to go.

A few (well quite a few) years ago I needed to purchase a storage management product for implementing storage quotas on the mainframe. For those who remember DFSMS, it was just at the time SMS as a product was being implemented on MVS/ESA.

So, I asked my boss if I could purchase the software. He said I needed to a competitive analysis with other products and explain why my choice was the best. Unfortunately there were no other equivalent products out there, so I pondered my options and decided to invent one.

Based on a character at the time, I called the product "Loads-a-space" after a character called "Loadsamoney" - see the picture. Loadsamoney was a crass plasterer who always boasted how much money he made, it was the 80's boom time. Loadsamoney was a creation of Harry Enfield, so I called my ficticious software house Enfield Software.

I added Loads-a-space from Enfield Software to my proposal as the inferior product, got my approval and my purchase. It helped that my boss was Canadian and didn't know much about British Comedy.

OK, now I've got that off my chest, Nigel, I'd be interested to know how big your Device Manager deployment is and what you run it on, just to do some kind of comparison