Friday, February 04, 2005

MPxIO and IBM's disk array

Finally(1) get working MPxIO with IBM disk array under Solaris 10 SPARC. Why don't we use IBM software included with the array? Well... let's just say it's bad, really bad and that's all you can really say about it. I must say I'm happy with MPxIO - it just works. To be honest it's not as good as EMC's PowerPath in terms of monitoring and some managing features. I really like PowerPath. On the other hand MPxIO is simple to configure and really easy to use, and while PowerPath is more powerful in many cases MPxIO is just enough and it does its primary purpose really good which is path failover and load-balancing. And MPxIO is for free - it's included with Solaris.

I must say that IBM's software included to manage and monitor the array is really bad, especially comparing to what I get used with EMC's software. I was expecting more from IBM - real disappointment.

(1) looks like IBM has changed Product ID of the array so MPxIO couldn't recognize it. Patch from Sun was needed - thanks guys for a quick response!

2 comments:

Cyril Plisko said...

I think the extra leading zero in product name was put accidently by Sun, - I have the IBM storage for more then 2 years in the lab and, frankly, didn't notice any PID change. And I try to keep the firmware updated. What model do you have ?
Oh, we are talking about rebadged LSI^H^H^HEngeneo controllers, right ?

milek said...

FastT 900, yeah LSI based (E5600 IIRC).

Maybe you're right and this was Sun mistake, frankly I didn't asked and I assumed that Sun tested it with an actual array so it had to work with some firmware... maybe I'm wrong? But anyway software with the array is really bad compared to what EMC gives.