Hi there... we have a customer who are looking into buying some new storage right now... AFF-something...
They also tell me that they plan on expanding their geo-location to another DC withing 1-2 years, at which point they would need a 2nd system and possible MCCIP.
But as far as I know there is no way to "convert" a normal HA into a MCCIP? Or maybe I'm wrong there? So we may be talking switchgear to acomplish this?
#From HA to MCCIP?
north bluff
limpid inlet
From the technical side: There's no way without a new cluster setup, so you would need to wipe the system.
As for support: Afaik there is no supported way to only buy one new HA-system plus switches and together with the existing one support it as a Metrocluster. You would need to buy a new MCC-IP (so both HA-pairs).
I see two ways:
- Use Keystone for only 12 months, then the customer stays flexible and can decide after a year if they want to renew the HA-pair or want to switch to Metrocluster. They would still get new hardware for both sides but with Keystone all the deploying etc is included so not a big issue. Only migrating the workloads the customer would need to do in their own (if they did not include PS).
- In 1-2 years I would suspect that SM-as NAS is stable enough to be viable option. So if they don't have a hard requirement for it to be MCC-IP they could use SM-as (be it SAN or NAS). Simply buy another AFF (you could even use another model or maybe use A-Series on primary and C-Series on DR-site).
north bluff
Ohh.. we have a few customers on SM-as... and we are really not a fan as it is right now 😉 Keystone isn't an option here. So I would recommend the customer to buy an MCCIP now...
limpid inlet
If they have the budget, go for it 😉
Usually if a customer wants max flexbility 12-24 months Keystone is much cheaper
north bluff
I beg to differ about Keystone what I have found out, is that it will almost never be better than buying outright... even if your system was only to be used for two years, you would be able to sell it to recoup some of your investment... and yes I am a technician which have been "forced" into sales, so I have seen some examples, none of which made any sense to me or my customers... don't know if it's just my customers or how we do things here.. 🙂
limpid inlet
We have studied Keystone during the last months and are starting with the first projects with the partner lead model of Keystone (XaaS with NetApp Keystone). I think for 1-3 years it has always been cheaper for the customer to chose Keystone vs. Capex. And buying for three years and selling the investment after two years... not sure... I think you will lose much of the value. Plus you can't really officially sell the service contract to a third party or a reseller.
Anyways, for the customer I don't really a big difference: They get the same machine they would get if I sell Capex, they still have full admin rights, they don't need to configure any special qos-policies and make sure they remember to use them for new volumes. And they can check their subscription in NetApp Console plus they get a dedicated Keystone Success Manager they can talk to if there are any questions. And ONTAP-updates are even included (customers can still update themselves if the want to).
Imo the latest version of Keystone has improved many things which made earlier Keystone so complicated.
Keystone is especially useful if you have a big capacity growth each year because you don't need to size the solution considering all the growth over the years. So if they need 100TB now and with 20% growth/year you would need to get like 250TB capex for five years. With Keystone you simply start with a 100TB subscriptions and then add the necessary storage each year.
Where are you (or your customers) located?
north bluff
We are in Denmark... Many have told me that IT wise Denmark is where the prices are pushed the most... which is certainly true compared to Germany where we also have a few customers... But to be honest, Keystone is just leasing, and someone has to pay NetApp the full price... doesn't really matter if it's the customer or DLL (who I belive is the leasing company behind this)... we have done a few leasing deals where the local bank was cheaper than DLL 😉 So go figure... but we are most likely a bit special here in Denmark...