HPE Storage Users Group

I SEARCH at quickspec dor 3par and didn't find the following:
1- MAX file system size?
2-MAX number of lun?
3-Max number for pool?
4-max number for san hosts?

IN emc vnx5200 there are traditional lun or classic lun
what is an hp 3par

please advice me
Thansks & Best regards

That information is published on HP's website.

http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c04164476

FWIW the 7200 is more on par with the VNX 5400 series....ie it's better than the 5200.

3PAR is wide-stripped across all the disks...you can create raid sets (CPG's in 3par lingo) to specific disks if you need to but I don't know of many outside of a multi-tenant scenario where this occurs.

Dear Patrick,
If you review QuickSpec you will not find any info about:
Max number of san host??
Max number of pool?
Max number of LUN?
total of file system size??
Thanks

You will find there is very little in the way of analogs between a 3par and emc vnx. That being said, to my knowledge:

Max number of hosts: I read somewhere that it was recommended to have a max of 64 hosts per port. This would translate to a recommended max of 192 hosts per 7200 with the add on hba.

Max number of pools: we do not have pools in 3par. The closest thing we have is cpg but it's not the same thing at all. There is no maximum to my knowledge.

Maximum luns: we call them virtual volumes, and the maximum is in the thousands

Maximum file system capacity: 3par does not currently have a file controller. The storeserv file controller is just a windows server. So server 2012 r2 limits apply here. If you are referring to maximum array capacity, the 7200 supports up to I believe 240 drives. To determine this you'll need to pick drive sizes and do math.

That all being said, in a 7200, imho, the only person who would care one iota about these numbers is an emc employee looking for a competitive advantage. A real world 7200 will never get anywhere close to these maximums except for maybe spindle count.

Also, with regard to emc traditional lun/classic lun vs 3par, its a little something like this.

Emc either creates raid groups, or storage pools (which are raid groups under the hood) linked to spindles, and maps luns on top of them. 3par takes spindles, and breaks them down into 1 gb chunklets. It then takes the 1 gb chunklets and creates logical disks according to the target raid set in the cpg. The vv is then created out of the ld's.

For a more detailed discussion of that, google or youtube will serve you quite well as it is well documented by hp and bloggers alike

Dear Schmoog,
very thanks to your reply,
I have a tender for customer who wanted vnx5200,
but he may chose 3par 7200
The problem is 3par didn't has details about IOPS or other thing as what the maximum SSD can use for adaptive flach cash?.
EVA and MSA has very nice Document, I think HP need to fill more details about 3par. like eva.
Every time I had storage tender for 3par. I face hard-work with details.
Thanks

They actually are pretty well documented, you just need to know where to look / who to ask. Hp Spock is definitely your friend here, though the 3par support matrix is still on version 3.1.3 and hasn't been updated to 3.2.1 mu1 yet.

As far as afc goes, the maximum on a 7x00 series is 768 GiB per node pair (so on a 7200, 768 gib). That being said. There are a number of competitive advantages for 3par here. A big one is that with 3par, there is no need to dedicate SSD disks to cache. You can use the same pool both for adaptive flash cache AND as a tier for primary data. The downside in general with afc is that a 3par array in general doesn't need it anywhere near as badly as an emc array. There are some folks here that struggle with tiering, but in general the ao tiering and the asic accelerated raid calculations make it so that the flash cache helps, but only subtly.

If you dig into the architecture, you'll find that 3par pretty much blows vnx out of the water in almost every category. It's also generally less expensive

Dear Schmoog,

I Don't know how I thank you...
You are perfect person who help me....
The spock HP 3PAR Support Matrix answer for all questions )

Now I study and read: Technical white paper HP 3PAR Adaptive Flash Cache
To understand how it don't need SSD flash.

I just finished Fast cache at EMC vnx5200: The MAX SSD for fast cache are 6 SSDs,
And max capacity for one SSD is 200GB,
so 6 *200GB =1200 GB BUT MUST do it as RAID 1
so the max fast cache is 600GB

Thanks

The reason we done need flash cache as much is that the raid calcs are asic accelerated, the array performs better, and adaptive optimization is more granular. We do still see benefits though.

With 3par there is no need to devote disks to flash cache. You can throw 10tb worth of ssds, and it will use up to the maximum of flash cache, and the rest you can still use as a data tier. In emc ssd is either cache or tier, not both

Long story short, emc needs flash cache to band aid the poor performance of vnx.

3par doesnt have the performance problem, and hence less need for flash cache