Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has relaxed its pricing on
external storage software licenses for the newesthigh-end arraythe
USP-V, along with its rebranded version from Hewlett-Packard
(HP), the
XP24000, according to users and officials from HP. Users will
no longer have to pay the same licensing fees for software on
external storage, and capacity-based pricing has also been lowered
for smaller configurations."The competitive advantage we had as a result of [selling]
external storage [with the XP] was moderated somewhat by high price
and all the extra stuff users had to add on," according to Dwayne
Gray, an HP product manager for XP who oversees software licensing
for the array. "We got good feedback from the field that that
wasn't such a good thing, and Hitachi listened."
Ed Kosten, supervisor of Unix systems engineering for Priority
Health, is currently in the process of installing one of the new
XP24000s and said the new licensing will allow him to attach HP EVA
arrays for external storage at one third the cost of the XP12000.
"Before, even if we bought a cheap [HP] MSA and wanted it to be
presented to the XP, it would be as much as if we had just bought
more disk for the XP itself with the licensing that was involved."
Now, Kosten said, the new licensing will allow him to attach an
EVA array, allocate 3 terabytes (TB) of its cheaper storage for
testing a production Oracle database and replicate the data to it
using HP's Business Copy. "Previously it would've required us to
restore the data to a test server from tape. Now that we can afford
to attach the EVA, we've gone to testing in minutes instead of
hours or days."
According to HP's Gray, the change in pricing comes first and
foremost from an across-the-board lowering of license fees for
external capacity. Gray declined to give specific numbers, but said
the pricing for usable capacity-based licensing on external storage
is now 10% to 20% of the cost of raw capacity licensing on internal
storage, depending on a user's capacity. Previously, both were
licensed equally according to raw capacity. This is applicable to
both the HDS and HP models of the array, Gray said.
The overall pricing structures for both internal and external
storage have also been changed from capacity licensing "tiers" to
pricing "bands," which cuts down on the number of licenses users
need to purchase. Previously, the tiered structure required users
to "build" capacity licenses according to tiers of zero-1 TB, 2-6
TB, 7-15 TB, 16-31 TB and 32-63 TB. "So, if you had 63 TB you
couldn't just buy 63 TB, you had to buy one of the zero-[1 TB
license], five of the 2-6 TB, nine of the 7-15 TB and so on. You'd
end up with a purchase order with five line items for the same
software," Gray said.
Now, users can purchase capacity licenses within pricing "bands"
rather than having to build up the licenses, so the 63 TB example
would require two licenses within the 32-63 TB band rather than
five.
Also changed with the new version of both arrays is the number
of software licenses required for external storage. For example, an
application called AutoLUN, which automatically load balances data
within RAID groups on the array to optimise performance, used to be
required for both internal and external storage. "That was a
perfect example of the licensing issues," Kosten said. "Because
those external arrays have their own way of masking LUNs and RAID
groups, AutoLUN didn't work with them anyway."
HDS software changes
Specific software titles are bundled differently between HP and
HDS with the new systems, but both have tried to streamline what
previously had been separate line items into bundles requiring a
single license key. "Hitachi Data Systems' goal was to price the
new software bundles below the cost of the individual products if
purchased separately," said a company spokesperson in an email to
SearchStorage.com.
New bundles on the USP-V include a package called Hitachi Basic
Operating System (BOS) software, which includes Hitachi Device
Manager, all Hitachi Resource Manager software components, Hitachi
Server Priority Manager and Hitachi Virtual Partition Manager with
support for up to four storage partitions. Licensing is based on
internal raw capacity only. Volume management and partition
management for more than four partitions comes with a separate
bundle called Basic Operating System V, which is licensed by the
attached external storage usable capacity.
There are also three new replication bundles: Hitachi's Disaster
Recovery, which combines TrueCopy Synchronous replication and
Universal Replicator for two data centers; Disaster Recovery
Extended, which includes support for up to three data centers; and
Hitachi In-System Heterogeneous Replication, which consists of
ShadowImage Heterogeneous Replication and Copy-On-Write
software.
HP software changes
The XP24000 comes with HP StorageWorks XP Array Manager
software, which shares much of its code with HDS's HiCommand
software. According to Gray, HP has made some changes to licensing
within that software, as well. One software title, called Tiered
Storage Manager, which migrates data between tiers while
applications are live, has lower pricing in capacity bands below
126 TB. HP has also bundled AutoLUN, a LUN configuration security
manager and cache partitioning software into Array Manager, rather
than requiring separate licenses for each. The new Array Manager
now includes command-line interface (CLI) and SMI-S features that
previously had to be purchased with HP's CommandView array
management software.
There is one caveat to the pricing changes for HP users,
however, according to Gray. The old LUN configuration software was
more expensive across the board than the new array manager and
pricing has also been lowered across the board for HP's CommandView
SRM tool. But otherwise, pricing for specific software titles vary,
particularly when it comes to large configurations. "Around 80 TB
and below, the new pricing is less than the old pricing, but at 80
TB and above, the new pricing is more," Gray said. "It's a tradeoff
we made to make it easier for low-end guys to get in, and high-end
customers always negotiate list prices down."