The availability of thin provisioning on just the new Hitachi USP models makes it harder to plan for thin provisioning except for larger or high growth installations. For these data centers, a new USP V controller can be introduced as part of natural growth, and thin provisioning introduced to help accelerate its adoption.
Assuming that Hitachi enables thin provisioning on external storage later in the year, new and large customers will have some exciting opportunities to reuse older arrays and/or use low cost arrays and have the new USP V provide the thin provisioning for them. Storage administrators should remember that drives follow a āUā shaped curve in terms of mean time between failure (MTBF), meaning drive problems often occur early in a lifecycle, lessen in middle year and increase again as drives age. As they age like baby boomers, administrators should configure and allocate these devices to minimize unavailability.
Smaller and low growth USP customers should pressure Hitachi to think like a software company and announce thin provisioning on current versions of the USP. Wikibon encourages the community to contribute possible migration strategies from one generation of USP to the next.
Action Item: Where and if possible, plan for the aggressive use of the USP to apply thin provisioning to existing arrays as externally attached storage. The business case in most instances will be compelling.
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