Enhancements for HDT (Hitachi Dynamic Tiering) on the VSP

On May 3rd 2011 HDS released new microcode for the VSP which has some really nice enhancements to extend the functionality of HDT (Hitachi Dynamic Tiering).

New gadgets are:

* Support for External Storage – A HDTiering tier may now be used on external volumes. This gives more configuration flexibility over multiple tiers. An external storage tier will be managed the same way as an internal SATA tier. Don't configure a HDT pool with both internal SATA and external storage.

* Continuous mode – This very cool feature determines the need to relocate data based on a weighted calculation of the I/O load over multiple monitoring cycles. This replaces the standard “Period mode” which only uses a single cycle of I/O load data. The continuous mode weighted calculations can result in the most recent high activity data being promoted while data with historically low activity will be demoted.

* 30 minute cycle – The performance monitoring and relocation cycle can now be configured to check at a 30 minute cycle. This is in addition to the increments of 1/2/4/8/24 hours.

* Support for SATA-E – There are two data check methods supported for internal SATA drives: “Write and Verify” and “SATA-E”. Hitachi Dynamic Tiering now supports a SATA tier that uses the SATA-E method which some customers choose to implement as it improves the write performance of the drive in comparison to the “Write and Verify” method.

* Manual mode monitoring and relocation can now be managed from the Hitachi Storage Navigator 2 GUI.

* Hitachi Storage Navigator 2 now supports an exportable Relocation Historic log file. Relocation activity for HDT pools is reported showing the amount of data relocated between each tier.

* HDT relocation performance during heavy host write update activity has been improved.

* Support for Symantec Veritas Thin Provisioning API.

* Zero Page Reclaim is now supported for Hitachi TrueCopy® Remote Replication/Hitachi Universal Replicator pair volumes.

* Command Control Interface (RAID Manager) now has Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning/Hitachi Dynamic Tiering Pool shrink support.

All-in-all very good update which extends the functionality of this array even more and creates an ever bigger distance to the competition.

How to get it? If you have a valid maintenance contract and a licensed HDT program product onthe array call your HDS engineer or account team. They will make an appointment to upgrade the array and provide you with the required software. CCI (Raidmanager) can be downloaded from the HDS support portal at http://portal.hds.com

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Remove Tier?

Submitted by LanceSimpson (not verified) on Tue, 05/17/2011 - 20:17.

Is it possible to easily remove a tier from an HDT tier pool, without having to manually migrate all volumes using Tiered Storage Manager? It was explained to me that this is not possible without manually migrating all volumes to other storage pools first, and then deleting Tier Pool and recreating with new pools.

Remove Tier

Submitted by erwin on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 06:20.

Hi Lance,

The restriction still stands. I have no information if this will be incorporated into future releases of the microcode. You might want to take this up with your account rep to have this sent to product management as a PER (Product Enhancement Request)

Hope this clarifies your question.

Regards,
Erwin

Remove Tier

Submitted by erwin on Fri, 05/27/2011 - 09:45.

Hi Lance,

Sorry for the late reply. I'll have to dig into that. There have been some significant enhancements in the HDT dynamics lately so I have to verify if the restriction you mentioned is lifted.

Regards,
Erwin