Much as I enjoy reading Toigo’s blogs; his contrarian views sometimes make a lot of sense and it is always great to have someone kicking against the mainstream. His blog which reveals that Flare runs on top of XP is just hilarious. Especially the assertion that EMC have been trying to hide this; quite frankly this is not true! I have many beefs with EMC at times but this is not one….
Let me see, let’s look at Steve Todd’s blog, you know Steve Todd who works for EMC and is one of the architects behind the whole Clariion range; this was posted in 2008, Window into the Decision and the reasons behind the decision to move Flare to Windows is fully disclosed. I can’t see much hiding here.
Even the wikipedia article on the Clariion here has details. The VNX also runs Windows Server to support VNX block; file-services, I am told run on top of Linux. Yes, the VNX runs two operating systems, something which obviously makes NetApp very happy but at the end of the day, it probably makes little difference to the customer as long as it does what it says on the label.
I’m not sure why EMC were trying to kill a story which revealed information which has been in the public domain for years? Seems a bit odd to me….
Having seen a few generation of these and been on the customer end of night-long WebEx sessions fixing major problems, you are right, this have never been a secret.
Training courses have covered this and from my experience, Windows is the base-platform but the code for Flare runs atop of it.
As I understand it, the VNX file (Celerra) is a bit more of a mixed bag as the control stations (the management layer) run Linux but a different Unix-based kernel runs the X-Blade or Data Movers, called DART. I’ve been told by EMC Engineers (but never officially seen it confirmed) that DART’s kernel is licensed from SCO.
Neither concern me though; I’m more worried about the support quality – most of the problems I’ve seen have been caused by the engineers (especially with the Dell OEM’ed and supported units).
Steve
The DART Kernel was not licensed from SCO. The Celerra Control Station used to run SCO Unixware but that was changed to Linux a while back.
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FLARE 26 ran Windows XP embedded. FLARE 28+ is Windows Server 2003 x64. You can use EMCDialer (modified VNC client) and point it to your CX/CX3/VNX SP IP.
The knowledge of this is rather uncommon, but clariion1992 is still a valid login.
Pat – now that’s funny. Do the disk labels still say Data General? They used to at least in 2007 the last time I played with a Clariion.
DGC Fibre Channel Disk <- That's how the LUN is presented on a brand new VNX 5300 purchased this year. What is it now, 14 years after the DGC acquisition?
This is our first experience with an EMC, and so far it seems really, really antiquated technology. They just (as in within the last few months) started allowing more than 8 snaps per/volume – something every other SAN on the market has been doing for years.
The fact that we couldn't schedule snapshots in the SAN without some navicli scripting was mind boggling.
The thing runs Windows for it's OS – need I say more? I don't see how anyone could every justify a reason to run Windows as the OS for a critical SAN.