Recovery Monkey, Dimitris Krekoukias blogged today about the things IBM's XIV doesn't do very well. In a nutshell, he pokes at the way XIV implements wide striping and criticizes it for its limitations.
In his post he wrote the following:
Regarding innovation: Other vendors have had similar chunklet wide striping for years now (HP EVA, 3Par, Compellent if I’m not mistaken, maybe more). 3Par for sure does hot sparing similar to an XIV (they reserve space on each drive). 3Par can also grow way bigger than XIV (over 1,000 drives).
So, if I want a box with thin provisioning, wide striping, sparing
like XIV but the ability to choose among different drive types, why not
just get a 3Par?
We appreciate the nod, Dimitrias. If somebody is considering XIV, they ought to seriously look at our product instead. Sure, we are smaller than IBM, but our products have been tested in the market and offer the advantages Dimitrias mentions and a lot more.
With IT budgets under pressure, storage admins need to make smart decisions about how to get more out of their equipment and themselves. 3PAR storage products with thin, automated provisioning help them do this.
Why by IBM XIV?
I personally believe the 3PAR architecture is superior to many of its competitors but when I first mentioned 3PAR to my director he thought I was recommending a golf bag. XIV now gets to be called IBM storage which means a lot to the non technical people.
Posted by: greg | December 07, 2009 at 01:13 AM