Cost of storage calculator?

In article .com,
wrote:
Thanks Ralph... With the storewiz product they claim that management
overhead is nil (I doubt this, but lets just say its true), then would
such a technology (even if not from storewiz) be appropiate to invest
it?

So it is installed by elves, without any downtime by using Hermione's
time-turner, configuration updates are done by angels while you sleep
(my computer never sleeps, by the way, too many chocolate-covered
espresso-beans in its youth), it never fails, and if it fails anyhow,
the Storewiz field engineering people arrive an hour before the
failure to hot-swap a spare in (they have the second sight)?

Give me a break - intentional pun.

I can attest to the fact that thus far, I've had no issue with
StoreWiz's reliability... it actually isnt taking me too much time to
manage it in my dev lab... almost none at all...

OK, now manage it in a production setting, say in the data center of a
bank or insurance company (think Chief Privacy Officer, think SEC
regulation, think Sorbanes-Oxley). First step: Have your computer
security people do a full audit that the compression gadget is secure
enough. That includes checking key distribution, TCP/IP ports,
password management, integration into the LDAP authentication
infrastructure, and auditing all software upgrades.

I'll stop right there, because one of your computer security experts
(who run $120K per year salary alone) just spent a week on this new
gadget. We haven't even started using the device yet, because the
computer security people won't allow you to uncrate it until they have
given it their blessing, and written the 30-page policy manual for how
you shall manage it from a security point of view.

I'm exaggerating here, but not very much.

--
The address in the header is invalid for obvious reasons. Please
reconstruct the address from the information below (look for _).
Ralph Becker-Szendy

I understand the points you are raising... they are very valid in our
environment... But those are true of any product we introduce Ralph...
All new products we introduce into the production go through quite
similar rigorous scruitiny and yes, they do cost a lot (LOT) of time...
But it applies horizontally for all products... so we dont even compute
that anymore into comparing different products... But once setup, it
seems to be able to work silently... I do have a lot of issues with
its ability to work on non textual (non office) type of data, but I
want to see where this industry will go... and if I should invest in
the technology now (assuming they fix all their nuances)...

/l

On 28 Apr 2006 11:41:01 -0700, wrote:

I understand Faeandar ... I am just trying to see if I am investing in
the correct type of technology... I dont want to buy something that is
seen as non standard

/l

Unless they are using some wild-ass algorithm that no one's ever seen
outside of their company compression has been standard in many
environments since it was available.

And even if something is non-standard, if it serves a need then it's
worth it.

~F

Awesome... Thanks Faeander!

Faeandar wrote:
On 28 Apr 2006 11:41:01 -0700, wrote:

I understand Faeandar ... I am just trying to see if I am investing in
the correct type of technology... I dont want to buy something that is
seen as non standard

/l

Unless they are using some wild-ass algorithm that no one's ever seen
outside of their company compression has been standard in many
environments since it was available.

And even if something is non-standard, if it serves a need then it's
worth it.

~F

This thread is timely. I was at interop this week and met with
StoreWiz. They provided me with their ROI calculator. We have about
200TB of data and grow at the rate of 20% a year. Plugging in my
numbers into their calculator, here is what I got

Start: 200TB of data
Growth Rate: 20%
Cost per terabyte to me: 12K just for hardware (fully loaded with
NetApp)

Assuming a 30% reduction in storage using StoreWiz compression
hardware, I get a net savings of 1.2M in 2 years. The cost of the
Storewiz appliance is 45K.

Given that I only computed in hardware costs per terabyte (we typically
spend more per terabyte than that if you factor in management,
electricty and floor costs), I think this is a very good deal

HTH

wrote in message
oups.com...
This thread is timely. I was at interop this week and met with
StoreWiz. They provided me with their ROI calculator. We have about
200TB of data and grow at the rate of 20% a year. Plugging in my
numbers into their calculator, here is what I got

Start: 200TB of data
Growth Rate: 20%
Cost per terabyte to me: 12K just for hardware (fully loaded with
NetApp)

Assuming a 30% reduction in storage using StoreWiz compression
hardware, I get a net savings of 1.2M in 2 years. The cost of the
Storewiz appliance is 45K.

Given that I only computed in hardware costs per terabyte (we typically
spend more per terabyte than that if you factor in management,
electricty and floor costs), I think this is a very good deal

HTH

so 1 StoreWiz appliance can frontend multiple filers? or do you have 200TB
on one NetApp filer?
-G

On Thu, 4 May 2006 16:25:00 -0700, "NoSpam" wrote:


wrote in message
roups.com...
This thread is timely. I was at interop this week and met with
StoreWiz. They provided me with their ROI calculator. We have about
200TB of data and grow at the rate of 20% a year. Plugging in my
numbers into their calculator, here is what I got

Start: 200TB of data
Growth Rate: 20%
Cost per terabyte to me: 12K just for hardware (fully loaded with
NetApp)

Assuming a 30% reduction in storage using StoreWiz compression
hardware, I get a net savings of 1.2M in 2 years. The cost of the
Storewiz appliance is 45K.

Given that I only computed in hardware costs per terabyte (we typically
spend more per terabyte than that if you factor in management,
electricty and floor costs), I think this is a very good deal

HTH

so 1 StoreWiz appliance can frontend multiple filers? or do you have 200TB
on one NetApp filer?
-G



That's an excellent point, one I alluded to earlier. When I spoke
with them they could only front end a single filer at a time. And if
you want redundancy you have two appliances per filer head. At 200TB
of primary storage (non R class filers) you are looking at 3 filers
minimum, more likely 4+.
So if you have 4 filers, and want redundancy, you had to purchase 8
storewiz appliances.
And this also assumes their calculator is correct for your specific
data sets.

~F

I currently have 200TB accross 6 filers.... and they seemed positive
that me that all our guys would need was just two storewiz
appliances... one of them being for redundancy.

The ROI calculator (which is a spreadsheet) seemed pretty basic. Email
me if you want a copy of the spreadsheet.

It basically shows how fast 200TB at 20% growth with 12K per TB would
add up every year with and with out storewiz compressing at 30%. They
also have a software tool that will accurately predict how well they
can compress (which I will give a try next week).

On 4 May 2006 17:50:23 -0700, wrote:

I currently have 200TB accross 6 filers.... and they seemed positive
that me that all our guys would need was just two storewiz
appliances... one of them being for redundancy.

if this is the case then they've improved the product. When we spoke
with them about 5 months ago it was not the case. The storewiz
appliance was a one to one ratio.

they did say they were planning to support more than one filer behind
a single compression appliance so maybe they got that working. i
recall the appliance at the time had 6 gigE ports but could only front
one filer. i thought that was humorous.

~F

wrote in message
oups.com...
I currently have 200TB accross 6 filers.... and they seemed positive
that me that all our guys would need was just two storewiz
appliances... one of them being for redundancy.

The ROI calculator (which is a spreadsheet) seemed pretty basic. Email
me if you want a copy of the spreadsheet.

It basically shows how fast 200TB at 20% growth with 12K per TB would
add up every year with and with out storewiz compressing at 30%. They
also have a software tool that will accurately predict how well they
can compress (which I will give a try next week).

Do you happen to know if it supports other protocols besides NFS and CIFS? I
am particulary interested in Snapvault and Snapmirror. The website says
iSCSI and FC coming soon.
I have sent them few emails and haven't received any response yet.

-G