From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: jim owens Subject: Re: Thin provisioning & arrays Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:52:02 -0500 Message-ID: <491A1AA2.3070908@hp.com> References: <28572.1226369378@ocs10w> <49198FC3.7080301@redhat.com> <49199CFF.8080002@hp.com> <20081111230852.GM2373@disturbed> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from g1t0026.austin.hp.com ([15.216.28.33]:44954 "EHLO g1t0026.austin.hp.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751963AbYKKXwI (ORCPT ); Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:52:08 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20081111230852.GM2373@disturbed> Sender: linux-scsi-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org To: jim owens , Ric Wheeler , Keith Owens , Black_David@emc.com, dwmw2@infradead.org, martin.petersen@oracle.com, chris.mason@oracle.c Dave Chinner wrote: > On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 09:55:59AM -0500, jim owens wrote: >> Ric Wheeler wrote: >>> Thing is being pitched to answer a very specific customer use case - >>> shared storage (mid to high end almost exclusively) with several >>> different users and applications.... > ... >> It is up to the customer to manage their storage so it never >> reaches the unable-to-write state. > > Sure, but putting the entire management burden of obtaining and > running defrag tools in every one of their large set of OS's is the > wrong approach. > > We can and should be designing new functionality for the data center > in such a manner that does not require large scale manual > intervention to maintain the systems. Your customers won't thank you > for solving the thin provisioning management problem by requiring > them to do extra hand-holding.... I agree that it could be done better. I just don't expect that to happen any time soon because both multiple array vendors and multiple OS vendors must agree and spend money when they don't see this as a large amount of missed opportunity money. You only have to be as good as your competition and the customers are used to doing the extra hand-holding. All we can do is support what the devices will do today with minimal effort and wait for customer demand to force everyone to make improvements. jim