Model Forum / General / Railroads / May 2009

Totally nutty ad. If I ever get a HP EVA and set it up on the railway
tracks, I will have to make sure my pickup truck is well serviced. :-)

So what? Just commenting on inaccurate assumptions - big box of
technogizmos, oh that must be a mainframe!

Neil

Neil (and "Melanie" and "Stan") are right.

It's not a mainframe, it's a storage array.  "EVA" means "Enterprise Virtual
Array"

The alternating items above and below the laptop are controllers and disk
banks.  These "controllers" are not compute engines (a'la "mainframe") but
rather the computers necessary to control the disks and present them to
servers (or, if connected correctly, mainframes) as usable storage.  That
is, their processing power is totally committed to storage tasks.  He's got
a large number of controllers relative the the amount of storage.  Perhaps
because it's TurboTax or, more likely, because it was necessary to get the
speed they wanted for the demonstration.  Look here
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12745_na/12745_na.html lower
right drawing, for a more typical configuration for a large capacity storage
array.

Also, if interested, check out the Wikipedia entries on "mainframe" and
"storage array."

Or ask an HP or EMC employee (or a former one, like me) if it's a
"mainframe" or a "storage array."  If you look up the Wiki entry you'll see
EMC's CLARiiON.  The CLARiiON is in direct competition with the HP EVA.  I
worked the CLARiiON, and we frequently discussed HP systems.  I guarantee
you they're both storage arrays, not a mainframes.

   - Bill