DASD upgrade - an endless problem

["Admin AS400" <as400admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all

On our main production 720 machine, we made 3 disk upgrades in 3 years,
going from 70 GB to 180 GB, then to 280 GB, then to 480 GB. The system has
now 2 disk expansions and looks more and more as an old mainframe, a long
line of black boxes.

Last upgrade was made 9 months ago and we sized it for at least 2 years.
This was theory. Despite data purges and applying all known management
tricks for system & applications, we are now again deep in DASD crisis. We
need at least 400 GB more.

Our first scenario is to replace old drives with bigger ones. We work the
digits now.

The second way is to use an EMC external storage system (don't know anything
about them) or an IBM Enterprise Storage System (ESS or Shark).

Questions:

1 - has anybody worked with EMC external storage solutions OF THIS SIZE
(about 400 GB) on the AS/400 ? What's the performance, how it reacts to
microcode upgrades, are there any advantages or drawbacks ?

2 - has anybody worked with an ESS (Shark) on the AS/400 ? Are there any
major problems, except the HUGE price ? IBM Canada was unable to tell us if
any North American client has ever tried it ...


Thanks in advance

Andrei Centea
Sara Lee Branded Apparel of Canada - Montreal

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