FTS Query

In my understanding, FTS tier can be any external storage and that may fit any of EFD, FC of SATA categories.

hi,

Thanks, I was aware that was the case. This is more of a licensing question I guess then. I will try clarify

FTS external storage could be EFD, FC, SATA but regardless of this when using it with FAST VP it had the lowest performance tier with a tech value (from symfast -sid list -fp -v ) of N/A. The storage capacity included with FTS was costed the same as including that amount of SATA storage.

You can now change of define the technology type for the FTS tier when creating it with the -technology flag to EFD| FC | SATA. If you change the technology type to FC for example is the FTS storage costed as FC disks and not SATA (i.e. more expensive)?

Thanks,

Victor

Thanks for following up on this Paul! I will indeed follow up in the Best Practice for planning and performance doc on the why, it seems to be a great new feature.

I'll look into the licensing and get back to you on that one..  I believe external capacity is not included in the internal costs... but just because I believe doen't make it true.

It would be good to see how FTS is costed/licensed now. I just have a recollection that it is charged at the same price as if you were adding that amount of SATA (regardless of the why type of technology the disks from external array is due to the fact it was always going to be the lowest performing tier) but that may have changed now that you can define the technology for the tier.

I'd confuse the a nation

I believe the external capacity license costs are indeed similar to SATA license costs.

As Paul pointed out the external tiers can indeed be identified by their drive technology now (EFD, FC, SATA) and this does affect the tiering within policies. The code also performs some rudinmentary response time queries to the external tiers, so we have disk classification in addition to tier response times that assist with FAST VP tiering decisions for external tiers.

Great, thanks to ye both for the help!

Glad to help. If you are preparing to deploy FTS I highly recommend the FAST VP tech note titled "Design and Implementation Best Practices for EMC Symmetrix Federated Tiered Storage" on support.emc.com. For a description of how the external tiers integrate with FAST VP there is a good write up of this in the "Implementing FAST VP for EMC Symmetrix VMAX Series Arrays Technical Notes" tech note.

Seen them thanks. This was more of a licensing query but FYI to others reading FAST-VP docs have been updated in May.