We have two new HP EVA systems. An EVA4400 with FATA drives that we'll be putting into our DR datacenter in Bond Hall, and upgrading our EVA3000 into an EVA6100 + 2 new enclosures. The 4400 is a brand new device, so is sitting idle right now (officially). It will be replacing the MSA1500 we purchased two years ago, and will fulfill the duties the MSA should have been doing but is too stupid to do.
We've set up the 4400 already, and as part of that we had to upgrade our CommandView version from the 4.something it was with the EVA3000 to CommandView 8. As a side effect of this, we lost licensing for the 3000 but that's OK since we're replacing that this weekend. I'm assuming the license codes for the 6100 are in the boxes the 6100 parts are in. We'll find that out Friday night, eh?
One of the OMG NICE things that comes with the new CommandView is a 60 day license for both ContinuousAccess EVA and BusinessCopy EVA. ContinuousAccess is the EVA to EVA replication software, and is the only way to go for EVA to EVA migrations. We started replicating LUNs on the 6100 to the 4400 on Monday, and they just got done replicating this morning. This way, if the upgrade process craters and we lose everything, we have a full block-level replica on the 4400. So long as we get it all done by 10/26/2008, which we should do.
On a lark we priced out what purchasing both products would cost. About $90,000, and that's with our .edu discount. That's a bit over half the price of the HARDWARE, which we had to fight tooth and nail to get approved in the first place. So. Not getting it for production.
But the 60 day license is the only way to do EVA to EVA migrations. In 5 years when the 6100 falls off of maintenance and we have to forklift replace a new EVA in, it will be ContinuousAccess EVA (eval) that we'll use to replicate the LUNs over to the new hardware. Then on migration date we'll shut everything down ("quiesce I/O"), make sure all the LUN presentations on the new array look good, break the replication groups, and rezone the old array out. Done! Should be a 30 minute outage.
Without the eval license it'd be a backup-restore migration, and that'd take a week.
We've set up the 4400 already, and as part of that we had to upgrade our CommandView version from the 4.something it was with the EVA3000 to CommandView 8. As a side effect of this, we lost licensing for the 3000 but that's OK since we're replacing that this weekend. I'm assuming the license codes for the 6100 are in the boxes the 6100 parts are in. We'll find that out Friday night, eh?
One of the OMG NICE things that comes with the new CommandView is a 60 day license for both ContinuousAccess EVA and BusinessCopy EVA. ContinuousAccess is the EVA to EVA replication software, and is the only way to go for EVA to EVA migrations. We started replicating LUNs on the 6100 to the 4400 on Monday, and they just got done replicating this morning. This way, if the upgrade process craters and we lose everything, we have a full block-level replica on the 4400. So long as we get it all done by 10/26/2008, which we should do.
On a lark we priced out what purchasing both products would cost. About $90,000, and that's with our .edu discount. That's a bit over half the price of the HARDWARE, which we had to fight tooth and nail to get approved in the first place. So. Not getting it for production.
But the 60 day license is the only way to do EVA to EVA migrations. In 5 years when the 6100 falls off of maintenance and we have to forklift replace a new EVA in, it will be ContinuousAccess EVA (eval) that we'll use to replicate the LUNs over to the new hardware. Then on migration date we'll shut everything down ("quiesce I/O"), make sure all the LUN presentations on the new array look good, break the replication groups, and rezone the old array out. Done! Should be a 30 minute outage.
Without the eval license it'd be a backup-restore migration, and that'd take a week.