Re: Pure Storage

Tsvetan,

It is NOT supported BY IBM, their statement word for word is below.

I am certainly aware that Pure has support for their product and has documentation on how to configure their product to work with IBM i. There are other storage systems with similar positions.

However as others have pointed out, when things are working well, life is good. When things are not working, you are now dealing with TWO vendors not one which makes problem resolution vastly more difficult in many situations. Sometimes impossible.

Back in the day we would lease our modems from AT&T who was our data circuit provider. When they would blame the modem I so loved being able to tell them: "Still your problem."

I have also seen all the storage on an IBM i system completely vanish on the first IPL after an upgrade. The customer had purchased third party DASD, which when fed an IBM firmware update during the IPL ceased to function instantly. Good thing they had a backup, but they were still down until new disks could be acquired and the system recovered. AND the upgrade had to be repeated!

In *MY* admittedly short tenure with this small corner of the computer world, I have seen IBM support coordinate between IBM i and IBM Storage to determine what's going wrong, down to levels we might not even know exist. I encourage my customers to keep that option on the table.

IBM Statement:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Here is the IBM i external storage support matrix:

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-i-power-external-storage-support-matrix-summary

Storage provided by Purestorage is not currently supported for IBM i. That doesn't necessarily mean it won't work. But if there are any problems configuring it, or if it does not perform well, it would be up to Purestorage support to solve that (even if it requires changes within the IBM i side). There is no way to open a configuration/functionality/performance case with IBM support for this configuration.

Adam Braham
IBM i Performance
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On 7/16/2021 9:12 AM, Tsvetan Marinov wrote:

Larry, you are absolutely not correct that PureStorage is not supported by IBM i. It’s well supported, link below.

I’ve noticed that you always reply as the ultimate authority all “IBM i” in this mail list. I’ve been to some of your sessions and I highly respect your technical understanding and experience, but you not ultimate authority “IBM i”. For example with Pure Storage, you haven’t done a simple Google search to check if supported by the vendor.

https://support.purestorage.com/Solutions/IBM/AIX/FlashArray_for_IBM_i


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________________________________
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2021 2:24 pm
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion; Evan Harris
Subject: Re: Pure Storage

I have had customers use it for the Wintel environment and it worked
well. I have no negatives to report about the storage or the company.

For IBM i though the first thing is it is not supported. For most
customers that's a show stopper right out of the gate. But if your
customer is willing to live on unsupported storage it could be considered.

It is more work to set up than IBM Storage because it requires the use
of vSCSI rather than NPIV, so each volume needs be mapped in VIOS
between IBM i and Pure. Performance wise it is my understanding this
adds only a little overhead.

Pure does have their version of flash copy called snapshots. Will it
work for IBM i? I expect it should but, certainly it cannot be used
with PowerHA for example as there is no communications capability from
PowerHA to Pure. I also suspect the Flash Copy Toolkit from IBM would
not function with Pure.

As to remote copy I didn't find anything there but didn't spend much
time looking. It would have the same caveats as with flash copy.

So to summarize.

Not supported.
vSCSI rather than NPIV
Would need to write your own tooling to utilize snapshots.
Would need to write your own tooling to utilize remote copy (if it exists)

- DrF

On 7/15/2021 6:27 PM, Evan Harris wrote:

Hi

Anyone had any experience using Pure Storage for providing IBM i storage ?
Good, bad or just another storage brand ?

I was curious if it was possible and found this reference:
https://support.purestorage.com/Solutions/IBM/AIX/FlashArray_for_IBM_i

Do they provide the same functionality as IBM is storage, e.g. Flash Copy
and the like ? I am assuming they do, but interested in real world
comparisons and experience not the brochures so much.

I am not planning anything specific but it came up in conversation with a
client that was obviously bedazzled by Pure Storage for their wintel
environment so I was just curious. I've been to a few presentations and
they do seem to have a good story to tell.

If anyone is using it in anger - or has any reference material to point me
at - I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say about it.

--
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