AERODISK: waiting vs. reality

Hello. In this article we publish the opinion of our partner - the system integrator - the company Ulagos. It focuses on how customers see Aerodisk company, how any Russian decision is perceived in principle and how the implementation ends and how support works.





Further narration will be in the first person.

Hello, for a start I will introduce myself. My name is Sergey Tanayev, I am the CEO of Ulagos, a system integrator who sells and implements IT solutions. As you understand, I communicate with customers not just a lot, but a lot. Both formally and informally. Therefore, I can safely convey their opinion to the audience Habr.

What's in our head?

We all love to compare. For example, we often like to compare IT solutions with cars. Here, they say, there is such a cool car.

There is such a vendor, for three letters - green, this is how BMW is a cool car!

Here, for example, there is another vendor of three letters, blue. This is an Audi.

And here is another Bohemian - Mercedes Maybach.

In principle, customers say: "Here! Class! Technique! Expensive, fast, reliable!" People are cool about it. They ask each other:

"Here is your system? I have three letters here, little green."

"And I have a blue letter in three letters, generally satisfied!"

And here I come and I say: "Guys, look, the Russian storage system AERODISK!".

In 100% of cases, the reaction is one. Here it is.

Because when we are talking about cars, we think about the Russian technology, we get something like this in our head.

This is necessarily a killed bucket without a hood, without doors, there someone is surely sitting inside and exactly drunk. Why is there someone sitting at all? Very simple: because without it, this junk will definitely not go anywhere. Perhaps one more dude is needed - to push them from behind.

Here is a sad picture in my head with 100% of my customers.

They can be understood. First, the company Aerodisk in the market recently. Secondly, we have been taught by hook or by crook to us all for several decades to the fact that any Russian equipment is bad.

My task with the help of facts is to convince you that, in fact, the Russian equipment is like this:

or so:

Real comparison

Now go to the facts. When objectively comparing storage systems, we usually use simple criteria.

1. Reliability
2. Performance
3. Cost of expansion
4. Quality support
5. Price

Let's start with paragraph 1.

Reliability

I usually ask my customers who use A-brands:

"How would you rate the reliability of your storage?"

The answer is usually:

"Everything is cool, no complaints, I calmly sleep, eat, go to work, and so on. Evaluation is five plus!"

Then I ask the second question:

"Well, did you have any data loss, at least once? For example, when updating the storage firmware or for some other reason?"

In almost 100% of cases, hand on heart, customers with a sigh answer me:

"Yes, it happened!"

Now back a little bit ...

A very interesting picture is obtained. On the one hand, it sits tight in the head, that the A-brand is always reliable. On the other hand, on A-brands we lose data as mere mortals.

But back to Aerodisk.

I have been selling and implementing AERODISK storage systems since the fall of 2017. As you understand, I managed to implement a lot of data storage projects of various degrees of complexity. Many systems have been operating for over a year. Periodically, customers buy more discs or shelves as their needs grow. I have a good relationship with each of my customers.

And here's a fact. There is no loss of data with Aerodisk systems from my customers . Yes, there were hardware failures, there were errors of administrators and other abnormal situations. But the data always remained intact. The system is so designed that it is extremely difficult to lose data. It needs to be tried.

First, like A-brands, Aerodisk has a bunch of full-time data protection tools: snapshots, auto snapshots, triple-parity RAID, clones, and replication.

Secondly, there are additional funds that are not visible to the eye, but they save in critical situations. Lockdown-mode (or anti-fool). If, as a result of a hardware failure or incorrect operation, critical components are damaged, the system closes and does not allow to perform operations that can permanently destroy the storage system until the normal state is restored.

A BBU module is also provided that allows the storage system to operate autonomously for several minutes if electricity is lost. How does it look in practice?

I have one customer. This is a plant in Yekaterinburg. There is extremely disgusting electricity. It constantly disappears for a few minutes, and then appears. And so it can happen several times a day.

Recently they were brought there for testing AERODISK storage systems. Thrust it into a regular outlet past the UPS, brushed the dust off the table, where they then put the storage, and set up. BBU-module for the test period was turned off, so as not to spoil the technique tests.

I went after this on my own business. Then the customer calls me and says:

"Seryoga, everything is gone. We cut off the light, then they gave it, we connect to the storage system, and everything is red!"

I explained to the customer that this is normal storage behavior if there is no BBU module or UPS. This is a security system. The system has detected the de-energization of both controllers, which is clearly abnormal, and out of harm's way blocked any possibility of being finished.

Imagine what it would be like if you had the light cut off 5 times a day at your company, and on the storage system at that moment, for example, would a rebuild go (that is, rebuild a raid group)? Obviously, at some point the data would be lost, it is just a matter of time. Therefore, in such cases, the storage system enters protection mode, from which you can exit with a regular full reboot. As a result, this was done, and the test continued, already with a normal UPS and BBU, respectively.

My customers had many situations. Some UPSs burned down and the whole room smoked, others drove disks because of hardware failures, but the data was not lost.

Of course, now they will tell me: "There are too few installations to boast that there were no failures that killed the data irrevocably" and they will, of course, be right.

Obviously, the question of the number of installations here is extremely important. It is also clear that the issue of data loss on the Aerodisk data storage system is a matter of time. Therefore, when comparing the reliability of top brands and Aerodisk, it is fair to equate. Like A-brands, Aerodisk uses a multi-level data protection system against any force majeure.

All these systems are fairly reliable, although no one can guarantee 100% of data integrity, simply because it is physically impossible.

Performance

It's all quite transparent. Previously, when Aerodisk had only RDG (RAID Distributed Group - type of disk groups), performance tests did not always give a result. This is due to the features of the RDG implementation. There is a lot of intelligence, but you have to pay for it with reduced productivity.

With the advent of DDP (Dynamic Disk Pool - the second way of organizing groups in AERODISK), the situation has changed radically, AERODISK has begun to tear everyone in its class in flash and in hybrid configurations. The results are in the next article, but I will repeat them here briefly:

Entry Level System AERODISK ENGINE N2, FC16Gb, 800GB SSD 24

• Standard test in 4k FullRandom units - 400,000 IOPS, 2 ms delay.
• Test large blocks 128k - 6 gigabytes per second reading stream; 5.5 gigabytes per second stream recording.

In both cases, the load on the storage processors is approximately 50%, that is, this is not the limit.

What do these numbers tell us? Is it a lot or a little? Let's compare. I test a lot of different storage systems by the nature of my work. Of course, I can not write here on Habré the results of the front competitors of Aerodisk. They will sue me for it. But at the same time I can say the following. Vendors for three letters - and blue, and green, such results are also able to give.

But there is one problem.

These results in A-brands are possible only on mid-range and high-level models (Mid-Range and Enterprise Mid-Range), and on Entry-level models, the results are much worse, three to four times. Not to be unfounded, I cite an example from the materials of one of the A-brands, where it is absolutely officially written.

This is a description of one A-brand of three letters. You can find it on the Internet. On the left - the entry level model, on the right - the highest. It turns out, on the entry-level storage system, Aerodisk gives performance as the top competitor A-brand system.

I have not yet seen the results of the tests for the Engine N4 (Enterprise Mid-range) storage system, but I suspect that there will be a new record already for medium and high storage systems. We'll wait here.

Conclusion: Aerodisk in performance, at a minimum, is kept at the level of A-brands, and due to a more attractive price policy, it wins in the price / performance ratio or if you want IOPS / rub.

Cost of expansion

This is an extremely important point that customers love to forget. It often happens that we bought the storage system in its initial configuration at a super price, really for a penny. Delighted with a successful purchase, we put the storage system into operation and start recording data on it. Two or three months later the storage space ends and we go to the manufacturer for new disks or shelves at once. And here we are waiting for a surprise.

Suddenly, it turns out that the superhighway acted only on the initial configuration, and the storage system should be expanded at full cost. As a result, there is no choice, not to buy a new storage system? You have to spend a lot of money on expansion. But that is not all.

At some point, we will be pushing the maximum characteristics of this storage system, because the controller's processor does not pull out, and we will have to really buy a new storage system.

Of course, a reasonable question arises: why did you not do normal sizing and did not calculate the volume?

The question is, indeed, reasonable and all vendors (including Aerodisk) all the time say:

Sizing, sizing and again sising! For three years, at least!

But in reality, three purely psychological factors work.

• Desire (or need) to save. Counted back to back and then still cut off, should like enough.
• Vendor marketing, which promises super-economy of space for compression and deduplication.
• Unrecorded loads that arose immediately after implementation. More precisely, they were, but they were not planned to be placed on the new storage system. And in fact, they installed a new, fast and convenient storage system, and it immediately turned out that there are a million internal IT services that need to be crammed in there to increase loyalty to IT of internal users and the business as a whole.

As a result, in three months you need to expand the system ... already for other money.

The above describes the classic situation with A-brands. How is AERODISK doing this?

AERODISK Engine is essentially a constructor. If at some point you have rested against the processor of the controller, you can install the processor more efficiently and not change the entire storage system to a higher model. The same situation with RAM, I / O adapters. Of course, the vendor itself will be engaged in the selection and replacement of components, since it has a guarantee for its equipment.

And what about the disks? And then the most interesting. We all know that A-brands can not put third-party drives. For example, you can not buy a disk HGST and stick it in the A-brand storage system. It just won't work. Why?

Previously, vendors themselves launched legends, such as:

• Disks in the storage systems are made by the storage manufacturers themselves. It is not true. They are made by the same companies, WD, Samsung, Micron, Intel, etc. Just due to service and marketing, these discs are 4-8 times more expensive than their counterparts from the original manufacturers.
• The disks in the storage system are specifically flashed by the storage manufacturer with their firmware in order to increase reliability and / or performance. And this is also not true. The disks are stitched (more precisely, the sector size changes to the custom one) in order to protect the vendor. On the one hand, so that 100% do not have third-party disks in its storage, on the other hand, so that its "stitched" disk will not start anywhere else.

Aerodisk has a very interesting policy in this regard.

Just like A-brands, Aerodisk has its own disks, which, in fact, are the same as from the open market, but they are more expensive (albeit the most expensive is 1.5-2 times, not 4-8) , because they have a guarantee from Aerodisk (fast disk replacement).

There is one VERY IMPORTANT difference.

Attention! You can use your disks. Yes, yes it is their own.

That is, go to the Yandex market, buy conditional HGST disks, plug into the storage system, and they will work. Needless to say, there will be no warranty on Aerodisc for these discs (and the warranty for the storage system itself does not fail), you will have to work on replacing discs yourself.

Of course, you need to understand that storage developers are people too, and they also want to eat, so the use of third-party disks will require a separate license (by the way, not very expensive).

As a result, in terms of the cost of expansion, Aerodisk is more flexible than most top competitors.

Missed with sizing? OK! There is always an opportunity for not the biggest money to expand the system. The possibility of a free upgrade of the hardware, the ability to use expensive disks of the storage system developer and not to bathe or save and use your disks - all this is very pleasing. Unlike A-brands, Aerodisk gives a choice, and having such a choice is, in my opinion, always good.

Quality support

We are already accustomed to the support of top brands. Support from a top vendor is always the peace of mind of a CIO. There are service centers in all cities, there are fully trained specialists all over the country, there are a lot of technical materials on the Internet and you can always google everything.

It would seem that everything is perfect. But the devil, as you know, is in the details. Let's try to figure out how support for A-brand systems is usually organized.

You call (or write) to the call center / service desk, where a polite person from the first line of support asks you 5-10 standard questions about your problem and registers a ticket. Then (immediately or after some short time) this polite, but not very competent person sincerely tries to find a quick solution to your problem. If the issue of replacing a failed disk, then this, of course, is solved quickly, but if something is more complicated, then the problems begin.

Your request is transferred to the second line of support to the guru-engineers who know much more, and the chance that they will solve your problem is much higher. But the trouble is, the guru-engineers are a busy people, and there are MORE DAYS to wait for the guru to descend from heaven to mere mortals and start tackling their problem.

I'm not joking right now, and many customers will confirm this. For steep, expensive and well-promoted A-brands, the transfer of a ticket between the first and second lines is almost always a few days of waiting. And if the second line failed, and you need the help of developers from the third line, then what?

How does Aerodisk support? Everything is absolutely the same: several support lines, a ticket system and so on. In the regional presence in the Russian Federation and the CIS, Aerodisk is approximately at the same level (in all major cities there is), although, of course, the presence is not so large.

There are few trained specialists, like materials, on the Internet, but their number is growing quite rapidly. SLA is about the same for everyone, there are several levels, from the simplest to mission-critical.

It would seem that everything can be completed on this comparison of the quality of support. In general, a draw with a small margin in the direction of the top vendors.

However, Aerodisk support has one very interesting feature. I would even say - kill feature. Regardless of the level of support purchased, you have a dedicated qualified engineer.

And you are personally acquainted with your dedicated engineer, you know him. You have his mobile phone, you can calmly chat on a cable or telegram, he knows about your infrastructure and understands it. It is easy for him to solve your problems, because he knows you and your infrastructure.

If he cannot cope with the problem, he himself (attention, himself!) Will call the developers, and they will help him solve your problem.

You can say that if you do this with all customers, then the engineer will be torn apart at some point. Immediately answer - do not tear, because as the number of customers increases, the number of such engineers increases. The fact is that Aerodisk does not rely on a large number of low-skilled personnel, as is usual in A-brands. On the contrary, the bet is placed on a small number of very competent and educated people.

This approach has enough disadvantages, for example, personnel search becomes an eternal task, but this approach works and works well. And I think that is enough.

As a result, the presence of a dedicated engineer-guru, as a mandatory element of services, makes Aerodisk support much more attractive and valuable in the eyes of the customer compared to top vendors.

Price

And now the fun part.

When I come to customers with AERODISK. Customers usually tell me: “Listen, Seryoga, well, this is Russian, it should cost a little more than nothing !!”

Therefore, I usually say this:

• AERODISK is not QNAP
• AERODISK is not SYNOLOGY
• AERODISK is not SUPERMICRO

This is a normal Enterprise-DSS, with cool performance and excellent support, and which, of course, is worth the money. Like a good car.

Aerodisk is not more expensive than the conventional top vendor of three letters, but not much cheaper. Although stop, there is an option to use your disks.

If you use your drives, you’ll get much cheaper top vendors. Therefore, if you need someone to take the price, then with Aerodisk it can be done easily .

Summarize

I am in no way trying to idealize Aerodisk. It is clear that, like any solution, it has its drawbacks.

The lack of installations (hundreds so far) does not allow us to make a final conclusion about reliability, although at the moment the current storage systems are working fine, the reliability of Aerodisk systems is at the level of the best foreign solutions and is not inferior to them.

Also, technical support is not so extensively organized, although its resources are now sufficient, in any case, none of my customers complained, rather the opposite - they praise the original approach with a dedicated engineer, the super-fast response of all support lines and, indeed, loyal attitude to the customer.

Aerodisk systems definitely win against A-brands in terms of price / performance. For less money you can get more performance. And this is a fact from which one cannot escape.

Also, AERODISK storage system is technically more flexible (hardware upgrade, use of its disks), which makes it easy to solve scaling problems for reasonable money.

Unfortunately, decades of mudding Russian technology were not in vain. In our heads, the cliché “Russian equipment is bad” sits tightly in our heads, and we will get rid of it for a long time, throwing mud at it and not even noticing the obvious jambs of foreign equipment.

With this article I wanted to show the real advantages of a very worthy Russian product, which, in my opinion, really solve and cover any possible costs.

Initially, I planned to tell more about the introduction and experience of operating Aerodisk at my one commercial (this is important that it is not a state) customer, but then the article would be absolutely huge, so wait a week later to continue.

Thank you, please write comments, share your experiences.

PS By the way, the video of my recent presentation of Aerodisk and a VERY lively discussion with real customers can be viewed on the Aerodisk Youtube channel.

There you will find many confirmations of theses described in this article from the mouth of real customers. The discussion was extremely fun, I recommend to watch.