-- It works pretty easily. We just plug it in and it works. No patches needed or drivers needed. We are running 4.0F and 5.1 There are differences in the number of devices you will be able to see. under 4.0x and using a differential scsi card like the standard qlogic you will get 7 targets and 8 luns (ie 56 disks per scsi channel). With 5.x and the qlogic you get 7 targest and 16 luns (supposedly) With a hsz70 connected to the shark (which I haven't tried) you get 15 targets and 16 luns according to Compaq. (and v5.x) However alpha + shark is not my choice, if I had gotten to make the decision I would have gotten a storageworks from compaq or a hitachi. If you use the shark it does not have failover unless you have clustered alphas in which case you can fake it, nor does it have load balancing. Plus you have to take the shark down for certain patches etc. And for those you don't, you will still have to take down the systems due to lack of fail over for the alphas. Further the configuration of the arrays/disks uses a pretty clunky interface so it is a pain to set up, and as for monitoring the tools, they pretty much suck in my opinion. Once you configure a virtual volume you you cannot deconfigure it and put it back in the raid pool. You have to reinitalize the entire array set. But, once we got it set up we have not had any problems other then the initial teething problems as we got one at the very beginning and had both rs6000 mother boards flake out on us. It is even a pain to attach and use with IBMs own rs6000. In my opinion, shark is still an immature product that is about 3 years behind the rest of the storage world. Walter North --- It works fine. They configure the shark for NT and the ALPHA UNIX sees it as a JBOD device. I have a DS20E running 4.0F. I also have a AS4000 running 4.0d connected to the pre shark VSS storage. Barry -- I know that IBM has done some work on getting the Shark usable on Tru64 UNIX. I booted up a V4.0F or V4.0G standalone system that had access to a Shark and for some pretty simple stuff it behaved fine. Hardly a qualification, but a better start than "the machine burst into flame and everybody died". Alan (from Digital) -- I have no experience with the shark (too expensive for us... >$200k). But do with the hsg80 based solutions which IBM markets as MSS (Modular Storage System). I hooked up the HSG80 to an AIX machine with no problem. The IBM version was considerably more expensive. The main issue/problem is whether the system will boot from an array volume. AIX won't. James Kurtenbach -- We are in the process of connecting 2 unix based alphas (AS4100 via scsi and GS80 via fiber) plus about 7 other non-alpha servers (NT/intel, linux/intel and AIX/IBM) to a Shark. Should be completed in about 2 weeks. I'll let you know how it goes. Mike Fulce -- i've never seen anyone successfully do it with fibre channel.. but i have seen people do it with those DLC 'router' boxes that convert scsi into fibre channel.. little external boxes. Andrew ShinnReceived on Mon Apr 30 2001 - 16:37:00 NZST
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