Background

So for anyone that cares, I have been a storage engineer for the better part of 8 years. All of which has been pretty much just on EMC equipment. I cut my teeth on the Clariion FC4700 with McData departmental switches and have grown into the Symmetrix DMX4 and Cisco MDS directors. My current environment isn’t all that large compared to others, but it definitely keeps me on my toes. I have migrated countless GB/TB/PB.

I have decommissioned numerous arrays like the FC4700s (6 of ‘em), CX600 (3), CX500 (1), CX700 (2), DMX1000 (1), CX3-40 (2), IBM FastT (1). I’m about to retire a CX3-80 followed up with another CX3-80 next year. Not that I don’t like the Clariions, I have taken the Symmetrix pill and think that’s the best EMC storage array.  Since I don’t have much experience with other vendors, my personal preference really boils down to the interactions with the other vendors that makes me not want to look at them.

I won’t even go into all the swtiches I’ve retired! McData (pre-Brocade), Brocade and Cisco. I prefer Cisco.

Management software includes a website I wrote out of necessity to SolarWinds Profiler and EMC Control Center.

Storage software that I use:

• PowerPath
• PowerPath Migrations Enabler with:
• Hostcopy
• Symmclone
• Open Replicator
• Open Migrator
• Open Replicator
• TimeFinder Clone
• SANCopy
• SNAPView (SNAPs and Clones)
• Navisphere Manager
• Navisphere Analyzer
• Symmetrix Management Console
• Symmetrix Performance Analyzer
• Symmetrix Optimizer
• Control Center with pretty much all of the modules

My current environment includes:

• 2 x CX3-80’s
• 2 x Celerra NS-480’s
• 2 x DMX4’s (one 1500 and one 4500)
• 2 x Cisco MDS-9513 Directors
• 20 x Cisco MDS-9134 Swtiches

I’m sure I’ve forgotten something here, but oh well.