What do you want to know about FAST and FAST Cache

i would like to see best practices paper, we've always had the best practices paper for Clariion ..for each flare version but i have never seen anything for Celerra? I would like to see case studies, sample implementations ..etc

I second that motion for the Best Practices paper... although I understand it is in the works. And I want to see something that provides a better technical breakdown of how FAST works with Thick LUNs in pools and manages the allocation and distribution of LUNs on the underlying (hidden) RAID Groups. This will be critical in being able to convince folks that the performance gains are going to be reliable. I understand the overall concepts, but we are talking about people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially. We understand the existing configurations inside out and upside down. We need a better feel for the new configurations so we can convince people (ourselves first) that this is the right thing to do.

Don't get me wrong though. I think this is a great thing.... I just need the proof to support that :-)

I second Allen's request.. 

Things I've been asked a couple times by customers already is "how exactly does virtual provisioning on Clariion lay down the data? how much data do I need to write to actually have that data stripe across 15, 30, 60 drives? how many disks does a single 1GB chunk in virtual provisioning stripe across?"

Even if the documentation was for internal use only, being able to explain it even a little bit to a customer is better than "pay no attention to the blocks behind the pool.."

If you need the down & dirty on architecture, then please ask your local TC to bring in a USPEED (Unified SPEED) rep. The USPEED community is a volunteer (they dont get any extra time, $$ or even notoriety) group numbering about 700 worldwide. Their payback is access to EMC Confidential documents that explain topics like this one. They cannot, by charter, leave behind these docs but they can show them onsite and use the content to answer questions such as yours.

Setting up FAST for the first time.  I have 3 policies: Gold - EFD 50%, FC (Raid5) 50%, SATA 30%, Silver EFD 40%, FC 60%, SATA 20% and Bronze FC 50% and SATA 50%,  I have this in User Approved Mode, we do not use host invisible devices, I've instead created a Storage group with unmasked/unmapped hypers in each tier.  FAST has recommended promotions to EFD, however my Bronze policy is not doing anything.  I want to see some demotions recommended.  I have 6 Unix storage groups in the Bronze policy.  At this rate, everything will be on a EFD from Gold and Silver.  I had started the Bronze with 100% SATA and 20% FC but someone suggested I try 50/50.  Any ideas?

Corrie Richardson wrote: Setting up FAST for the first time.  I have 3 policies: Gold - EFD 50%, FC (Raid5) 50%, SATA 30%, Silver EFD 40%, FC 60%, SATA 20% and Bronze FC 50% and SATA 50%,  I have this in User Approved Mode, we do not use host invisible devices, I've instead created a Storage group with unmasked/unmapped hypers in each tier.  FAST has recommended promotions to EFD, however my Bronze policy is not doing anything.  I want to see some demotions recommended.  I have 6 Unix storage groups in the Bronze policy.  At this rate, everything will be on a EFD from Gold and Silver.  I had started the Bronze with 100% SATA and 20% FC but someone suggested I try 50/50.  Any ideas?

Corrie, that looks like a VMAX design (Hypers!) so you should post in the VMAX community - you are in Unified which covers the midrange product line. That implementation is different.

I would agree with everyone else, a best practice white paper would be great. Information and documentation for FAST is next to impossible to find. Also, I understand there is now a Unisphere FAST Suite that customers can purchase that includes FAST; FAST Cache; Unisphere Analyzer; Unisphere Quality of Service Manager, etc. Where can we find best practices for using the components in this suite or any white papers, or documentation, oe presentations about this suite?