vxva vs. ODS (was Re: RSM 2000 list)

[Doug Hughes]

On May 31 at 3:19 Marc Philip Alexander wrote:

>Hmmmm, where's that soapbox...  rant on
>
>I agree it's not simple.  To further your anology, "I don't mind going
>dutch treat for lunch, but I do mind being offered lunch and then being
>stuck with the full tab after we've both eaten."  What hacks me off is
>that _nowhere_ in the documentation that comes with either the SSA or the
>"VxVM lite" does it say "this version of VxVM _only_ works with the SSA
>you bought and if you _ever_ plan on adding another non-SSA array, you'd
>better just use SDS or plan on upgrading to "full VxVM"."  i.e. if Sun's
>going to bundle a "lite" version, the should at least put a warning label
>on it somewhere.  There's nothing to indicate that it's a "lite" version
>on the sales brochures or www pages either.  Line 75 of Paragraph 14
>subsection Q of the license agreement doesn't count.  I wouldn't have
>minded being told to "buy Veritas" so much if it had just been done up
>front instead of months down the line and after several frustrating days
>of phone support dodgeball.  Instead, I was annoyed and then led to a
>further poor decision (to dump VxVM altogether and use SDS) by the support
>and sales people and now Sun's apparently dumping SDS and I get ^!%$!#ed
>again.
>

I'm sorry, but it doesn't look like you read the documentation thoroughly.
Page 1-23 (chapter 1, section 1.2.2.4 on RAID-5) it clearly states:

"You cannot include a non-SPARCstorage Array disk within a RAID-5
configuration"

It's under the guidelines for using RAID-5, so it's not as if it's in
an inconspicuous location. It talks about random and sequential performance
characteristics of RAID-5 volumes, and when to use them, and when not to
use them.


Page 1-15: "You cannot include a non-SPARCstorage Array disk within a
striped configuration."
(same scenario as above)


There is no similar warning about mirroring, so one would expect that you
can mirror to a non SSA disk (and in fact, this is true).


Rants are occassionally very useful, but please, make sure your have your
facts straight before posting a rant of this scope.

I will allow for the possibility that your version of the VxVM documentation
is different than ours and that maybe these important sections didn't
make it into yours..

Here's my documentation rev:

SPARCstorage Array User's Guide
825-2821-03
Revision A, September 1996


Note for Sun people: It would probably be a good idea to make a note
about not supporting non SSA disks for RAID-5 and RAID-0 to the web page
without a purchase of the full VxVM release.  He does have a legitimate
complaint about not being warned before hand (until the product was
in hand - which then he could have found out in Chapter1)


--
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Hughes					Engineering Network Services
System/Net Admin  				Auburn University
			doug@eng.auburn.edu