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 🙂
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.
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?