Overview

The Huawei OceanStor Dorado V3 all flash storage systems are the OceanStor 5000, 6000, and 18000 systems with only flash devices installed.  The name change designation is strictly to meet some arbitrary classification requirements as all flash arrays.

Huawei SSDs are used in the Dorado systems.  The following is general information as all flash storage.  More detailed information is in OceanStore product analysis for the individual products.

Huawei has a wide range of storage products and the Dorado systems are the all-flash offerings to compete with other vendor systems.  The Dorado models are traditional dual controller storage systems with active-active operation for performance and high availability.  Storage devices in enclosures are connected either with 12 Gb/s SAS or PCIe using NVMe protocol.  Huawei uses their own SSDs and make a point of their knowledge and control of those devices in the systems.

Connectivity for block access is through Fibre Channel, InfiniBand and iSCSI.  The system uses a traditional RAID group architecture that has been adapted with storage pooling for thin provisioning.  The maximum capacity is limited by number of device enclosures supported.

Advanced features of the OceanStor Dorado systems include:

• Remote replication
• Snapshots
• Stretched Clusters
• Virtualization of 3^rd party attached storage
• QoS
• Deduplication
• Compression

Usage

The Huawei OceanStor Dorado V3 all flash storage systems are designed for use in environments with high performance demands and supporting multiple workloads running on the same storage system.  The capacity and features set supported target the Dorado systems for acceleration usage such as databases, VDI, and server virtualization.  The availability and resiliency designed into the system meet the expected storage capability for that market.

• Characteristics
  • Block access support
  • Performance – the all solid-state systems provide high performance and have Storage Performance Council benchmark data available.
  • Availability – Dual controllers provide non-disruptive HA.
  • Replication for BC/DR – Both asynchronous and synchronous remote replication is available as is the ability to make snapshot LUN copies.
  • Data reduction – compression and deduplication
  • Storage virtualization – virtualizes 3^rd party storage systems
• Applications
  • OceanStor systems are targeted at applications that use block I/O.
  • The OceanStor systems include thin provisioning, snapshots and replication at no additional cost.
• System environments
  • The Huawei OceanStor systems provide block storage accessed using Fibre Channel (FCP), InfiniBand, or iSCSI with standard drivers on host systems.
• Deployment and Administration
  • The installation of OceanStor is designed for IT users familiar with storage systems. For customers without the required knowledge, reseller or Huawei service specialists can be used.
  • Management is provided through a management console for multiple nodes, a Replication Director to manage disaster recovery software, and multi-pathing software called UltraPath.
  • Remote Management and Call Home support is also available and is enabled through a Cloud Service.

Evaluator Group EvaluScale™: Huawei OceanStor Dorado – SAN Storage

Evaluator Group product review methodology “EvaluScale” assesses each product within a specific technology area.  The definitions of the criteria and explanations of how products are reviewed can be found in the  Evaluator Series Evaluation Guide. Download the product brief now to view the Evaluscale for this product.

Evaluator Group Opinion: Differentiating elements for Huawei OceanStor Dorado

The Huawei OceanStor Dorado systems are targeted to be used for critical performance demanding applications such as databases, virtual desktops, and server virtualization storage.  The non-disruptive HA and resilience capabilities are significant features that enable the OceanStor system to meet the same expectations as primary storage systems.

The V3 generation of the Dorado systems have been a major advance, bringing many of the capabilities of the OceanStor systems to the Dorado line.  Adding support for PCIe attached SSDs with NVMe protocol gets them ahead of much of their competition.  The newest generation is V5 so we expect either the Dorado to be updated to V5 or be retired in favor of the other OceanStor systems adding PCIe using NVMe protocol for devices.

The Huawei systems suffers from lack of distribution in North America, which would expand opportunities and help with maturity from competitive demands.  Currently, there is no encryption, which has become a checkbox item.  Evaluator Group would like to see more customer use cases and experience with the system for a better understanding of maturity of the system and its features.