Upgrade Windows Server

[Cliotoby]

Sup. Just looking for comments and suggestions to get the ball rolling here.

So Ive got some servers at work which run 2003. The OS need to be upgraded as we are basically going to replicate them and run them on VM's and when they are running properly we will get rid of the olf ones. The way a certain application is configured on there is pretty poor so I want to start a fresh with new OS and an upgrade of the program and all configs etc.

We run 2008 on some others but it seems to consume a considerable amount of space and is generally a fat pig. Perhaps we (The people who installed it long before I got here) didn't look into it well enough.

Whats the current upgrade for windows server? is it 2012?

PS. Linux is out of the question. We run Linux but these servers run apps which are windows specific.

 

[Matt26]

Windows Server 2012 is the latest version, but you'll want to check your apps are compatible with it.

 

[Adam.]

2012 is the latest but is quite different from previous versions. :dead:

 

[Longy]

2012 is ok once you get used to it.

 

[Cliotoby]

Really? How so? I think ive seen videos of server 2012 and it does look a bit pants. Id like to know how it performs and how much space etc. Wonder if anyone uses it or if anyone thinks its worth getting or should I look back at older versions?

I will likely need 2012 standard as itll be running on two virtual machines. So I think the price is about $800.

I will consider as much as I can in terms of compatibility. Its not something ill rush into because I am spending company money

 

[Matt26]

2012 is very much geared towards cloud computing. Have a play with it first in a virtual environment to see if it'll do what you need.

2008 is the safe bet at the moment.

 

[Craig Ed]

I use server 2008 in my line of work a lot using a vsphere client and I like it. I prefer to rdc into others from an admin tho. As said it is cloud based 2012. New faster and has better Active directory and trust domain replication. What are clients are going to be running on?

 

[Cliotoby]

Yeah, itll be run in a virtual environment for both testing and for live. Physical boxes for the servers need replacing this year at some point.

Does anyone else think 2008 is a bit big for installation?

 

[Lal B3N]

We have 2012 on a couple of ours at work.

Its only the general layout that takes some getting used to really, bit like going from Windows 7 to 8.

I think it looks great now I'm used to it.

 

[Craig Ed]

You need to evaluate how many clients you have and the size of the drive(s) on your server unless your running a standalone PC in a raid 5 config (striping, mirrored+ hot standby)

If it was a big business it's worth getting a licence for vm's

DC
EX1 for mail which is same as DC but enhanced
APP1 your apps
FP1 for printing and writing files too

Backup driver/server for dailies incremental and full.

That's how I'd do it

 

[Cliotoby]

Hmm. I was mistaken.

Now want to upgrade the full lot.

22 physical servers running ESX. On those servers there are 120 virtual instances of Server 2003 and 10 running 2008.

We also have a proper oldskool 2000 server which is physical.

Im going to have to sit down and think about this lol.

Im going to set up a virtual server and install a trial. Hopefully get an idea how it works first. It all needs upgrading end of and I think 2012 is what itll be.

I think we had some issues with 20008 where we migrated servers and found the full lot decide to un-licence themselvs which isnt ideal. So I will test this trial...

 

[Craig Ed]

F me.

You gonna split it down into forests? And keep it one domain? The esxi's and nas's for different areas. Like a site or branch?

If you have the money in the company for 2012 running windows 7 on client builds via a ghost then do it

Invest in what's up gold or something. I like that.

Have a base build an split resources into areas. Create a basic build of server 2008 on ghost and test in a close environment with basic policy

 

[ivegota16v]

do you want to upgrade the OS on the 22 physical servers running esx? or just the server 2003 os's in the VMS on these hosts? reason I ask there are many many great features in server 2012 around virtualization which you only get when purchasing enterprise/enterprise plus versions of VMware? I presume your running v centre etc. for this lot and not doing it on a server by server case.?

 

[Cliotoby]

No, they are bare metal. VM ware can stay as it is for now. I want to upgrade the OS on the 130 or so virtual windows application servers we have running.

Craig, Thinking about storage, we have sans but looking at the impact of storage it could be pretty significant. Dont want to have to shell out for a new san. 2003 uses what, 8GB? Its 32GB for 2012.

I think that will be a problem TBQH! In which case I might look at Linux based server OS'

 

[ivegota16v]

i would highly recommend you speak to a MS reseller, or maybe a LAR such as soft cat to go through some licensing requirements, do you know if the new 130 upgrade licences would be bought on VL, or do your old versions of server 2003 have SA attached to them etc etc?

a full ROI needs to be done as there are some serious cost implications to be considered here, eg with hyper v 2012 you could run xx amount of server 2012 VMS included in the licence cost. if you have SA on 2003 you can go to 2008 for no cost, you also want to consider if you are going to buy on select, EA, Open etc... http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-programs/licensing-programs.aspx

I think the cost of moving all those server 2003 VMS to a Linux solution is not going to be quick or easy, there is so much testing, porting etc to do

anyhow, good luck with whatever path you chose!

 

[dk]

i would highly recommend you speak to a MS reseller, or maybe a LAR such as soft cat to go through some licensing requirements, do you know if the new 130 upgrade licences would be bought on VL, or do your old versions of server 2003 have SA attached to them etc etc?

a full ROI needs to be done as there are some serious cost implications to be considered here, eg with hyper v 2012 you could run xx amount of server 2012 VMS included in the licence cost. if you have SA on 2003 you can go to 2008 for no cost, you also want to consider if you are going to buy on select, EA, Open etc... http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-programs/licensing-programs.aspx

I think the cost of moving all those server 2003 VMS to a Linux solution is not going to be quick or easy, there is so much testing, porting etc to do

anyhow, good luck with whatever path you chose!

Finally, a decent post, I was reading through this thread pulling my hair out, so much misinformation it's untrue!

you really need to speak to someone about how to do this properly, you're also looking at it all wrong. You shouldn't be worried that the os install is bigger (it always will be,Mathers more features, everybody is moving to 2008 or 2012 now).

you don't want to move to Linux, that's a silly idea, for a start most of the apps you run probably don't even run on Linux. Plus who are you going to to ring for support when the s**t hits the fan?

you have 22 esx servers but you aren't running a cluster or vcenter, are you insane? You have multiple servers running on a single piece of tin and don't have HA set up, all your eggs in one basket spring to mind?

you need to decide how best to do this, from the sound of it you don't want to spend loads of money, which Microsoft will cost you, but it doesn't sound like you want to be spending even more on VMware. Even though VMware is the best product (IMO) it sounds like you should be buying around new new hosts to host these machines, then run either VMware or hyperv 2012 on them, license the servers using datacenter to cover all the vms etc and get some redundancy in there. You'll also want to utilise that San, or if not upgrade it or buy a new one.

To be running 120 vms on 22 servers with no resiliency is mad tbh, if you have that many servers you need a proper solution before the whole thing falls apart, takes the company down for a few days and at worst destroys it.

This is me being brutally honest. But then the other part of me says are you really in charge of these 120 servers, from the stuff you post on here? That's a rather large estate, especially to be running how you are.

oh and upgrading all those servers is going to take a long time!

​how serious are you?

Edit- oh and the reason your 2008 servers lost their licenses when you migrated to the virtual platform is probably because you were using oem licenses which can't be moved to a different piece of hardware so you are effectively running all those licenses illegally if you didn't re-purchase volume license keys for them all..........

 

[zeta]

DK beat me to it! So I'll just give him a plus 100 for saving me typing all that.

Also curious to know what exactly are you using this quantity of servers for?

 

[ChrisR]

Listen to dk

This is me being brutally honest. But then the other part of me says are you really in charge of these 120 servers, from the stuff you post on here? That's a rather large estate, especially to be running how you are

Well slightly worryingly if its for a managed services co as mentioned in another thread, if I were a client I may be a little worried that the person responsible for running the infrastructure is asking a car forum for help

 

[ThomasBrentnall]

What DK said.

We are just in the process of moving to VMware. 1 HA Cluster with two esx hosts. About 10 vms in the cluster all on 2012 apart from one linux box. Everything is working fine so far.

We only have two processors in each server, so we have 2 datacenter licenses for both the hosts. The best thing is they only cost us £600 each as I work at a school.

And then the vserver is running on a 2008 box.

 

[ChrisR]

Btw I wasn't saying the above to be an arse, asking for some advice and opinion on most things is no worry, but if this for a critical production system that the business runs off then there really needs to be some proper professional input, either from experienced guys withing your organisation or through a 3rd party specialist.

Think dk works for one, soggy dog something

 

[dk]

What DK said. We are just in the process of moving to VMware. 1 HA Cluster with two esx hosts. About 10 vms in the cluster all on 2012 apart from one linux box. Everything is working fine so far. We only have two processors in each server, so we have 2 datacenter licenses for both the hosts. The best thing is they only cost us £600 each as I work at a school. And then the vserver is running on a 2008 box.

ah the old education licensing, sooooo cheap!

vcenter isn't supported on 2012 yet (as you've probably found out, hence why you're using 2008), although i installed it in my lab the other day and got it to work with vsphere 5.1, requires a reg hack though as they've removed something that was in 2008 that the venter services rely on.

 

[ThomasBrentnall]

ah the old education licensing, sooooo cheap!

vcenter isn't supported on 2012 yet (as you've probably found out, hence why you're using 2008), although i installed it in my lab the other day and got it to work with vsphere 5.1, requires a reg hack though as they've removed something that was in 2008 that the venter services rely on.

Education pricing is awesome! So is the new Microsoft licensing, so much easier to understand. We has a test vcenter setup on server 2012 and in the end it did work. We stepped back to 2008 r2 as we had just decommissioned another server so we had a spare license.

A bit off topic, but do you have any vmware qualifications and are they worth it? I'm only 18 and have just started using vmware and actually found it really easy to set up from scratch and configure datastores, clusters, vmotion etc and I'm just deciding if it's worth me going deeper into it buying books etc then taking some exams as virtualisation is starting to become more popular

 

[dk]

yes, the main one people start with is the VCP (vmware certified professional), although theres two of them now, one for datacenter and one for desktops, i have the datacenter one. Then following on from that theres the VCAP which is a advanced one, I'm looking to do that one next, the exam is all hands on fixing issues and configuring stuff. The original VCP i did was very hard, one of the most difficult exams i had even done, but the subsequent ones seem to be getting easier (even bearing in mind i know more now).

​they are worthwhile certs to get, as everyone these days is looking for virtualisation expertise.

 

[Cliotoby]

Finally, a decent post, I was reading through this thread pulling my hair out, so much misinformation it's untrue!

you really need to speak to someone about how to do this properly, you're also looking at it all wrong. You shouldn't be worried that the os install is bigger (it always will be,Mathers more features, everybody is moving to 2008 or 2012 now).

you don't want to move to Linux, that's a silly idea, for a start most of the apps you run probably don't even run on Linux. Plus who are you going to to ring for support when the s**t hits the fan?

you have 22 esx servers but you aren't running a cluster or vcenter, are you insane? You have multiple servers running on a single piece of tin and don't have HA set up, all your eggs in one basket spring to mind?

you need to decide how best to do this, from the sound of it you don't want to spend loads of money, which Microsoft will cost you, but it doesn't sound like you want to be spending even more on VMware. Even though VMware is the best product (IMO) it sounds like you should be buying around new new hosts to host these machines, then run either VMware or hyperv 2012 on them, license the servers using datacenter to cover all the vms etc and get some redundancy in there. You'll also want to utilise that San, or if not upgrade it or buy a new one.

To be running 120 vms on 22 servers with no resiliency is mad tbh, if you have that many servers you need a proper solution before the whole thing falls apart, takes the company down for a few days and at worst destroys it.

This is me being brutally honest. But then the other part of me says are you really in charge of these 120 servers, from the stuff you post on here? That's a rather large estate, especially to be running how you are.

oh and upgrading all those servers is going to take a long time!

​how serious are you?

Edit- oh and the reason your 2008 servers lost their licenses when you migrated to the virtual platform is probably because you were using oem licenses which can't be moved to a different piece of hardware so you are effectively running all those licenses illegally if you didn't re-purchase volume license keys for them all..........

Some good pointers and info. Thanks, I was hoping you'd respond even if it did mean you handing me my arse although I do feel a bit hurt inside.

Not entirely sure where you made some of those assumptions from, I re read my posts but don't see anything. What makes you think we have all our eggs in one basket? We have multiple sites and also have rented space in two data centres in the UK. I dont even know what else is in europe. I dont know how its configured at the moment and if I gave you the impression that I thought I knew what I was on about then I am genuenly sorry.

So far Ive discovered from this thread that I shouldnt really worry about the OS install size? Why not? Some basic math would tell me that uses more space so forgive me for not being an experienced professional on the subject and educate me instead.

Anyway I appreciate the responses and keep them coming.

 

[ThomasBrentnall]

yes, the main one people start with is the VCP (vmware certified professional), although theres two of them now, one for datacenter and one for desktops, i have the datacenter one. Then following on from that theres the VCAP which is a advanced one, I'm looking to do that one next, the exam is all hands on fixing issues and configuring stuff. The original VCP i did was very hard, one of the most difficult exams i had even done, but the subsequent ones seem to be getting easier (even bearing in mind i know more now).

​they are worthwhile certs to get, as everyone these days is looking for virtualisation expertise.

Thanks DK. I'll have a look into the VCP Datacenter cert and see exactly what's involved. We currently don't virtualize desktops so I wouldn't know where to begin with the other one.

 

[dk]

just wrote a long post and then lost it, so angry.

anyway, the os install size shouldn't worry you as you need to move with the times, OS's get bigger as more functionality is added, but you benefit more from the functionality, its also worth thinking about support, 2003 is rather old now and new software will be developed to run on 2008 and 2012 etc. If you have a san like a NetApp then using dedupe you get loads of saving from all the os's being the same anyway, so it wouldn't matter about the increased size.

as for handing you your ass, well i tell it how it is, but at least you know where you stand with me.

you say you have standalone esx hosts, which means no vcenter, which means no clusters or HA. HA means that if a physical host dies the vms running on that host restart on another server automatically, within a minute or two. All your eggs in one basket is referring to you running say 10+ servers as vms on a single host, if that host dies without HA they won't restart automatically somewhere else in the cluster. back in the day when you had a single app on a server, if the server died it then only affected the single app, but if a host running 10+ vms dies it brings down all 10 servers etc. If you have clusters, and san and HA then this risk is minimised to a minute of downtime while they restart.

so maybe a bit more info about the environment is needed, these 22 servers, are they standalone or in a vmware cluster managed by vcenter and running vsphere 4 or 5 enterprise etc. without knowing that info you can't possibly decide what you need to concentrate on to move this forward. what san do you have, does it support dedupe?

hope thats helps.

*edit, having read your posts again, you say they are bare metal, which i think you meant means they are running a hypervisor rather than an OS then virtualisation on top etc. So it sounds like you might have a vmware cluster. i read it wrong and assumed you were talking about standalone esx boxes etc. so apologies there.

the majority of customers i visit now are mainly running 2008, 2003 is being phased out fast, not seeing much 2012, its a bit new at the moment and most software doesn't support it properly yet. So you need to look to move everything to 2008 IMO. Which then goes back to the best way to license that, which is volume licenses, maybe datacenter which is per processor etc.

 

[Cliotoby]

I will speak to the gaffer and see what he says, get more details etc. Genuenly interested to read what you say so whatever it is good or bad its all gravy.

I found out we have a spare san sitting there doing bugger all today so I think storage shouldnt be a real issue, Im not sure if he had other plans for it. We just shelled out £400k on an upgrade in germany so its not as though we cant spend. But it needs, without sounding like a total mong, be worthwhile.

There are some things we run that wont work on 2012.

he mentioned dedupe but I dont think he fully understands what it would entail in terms of cost or hardware. Nor do I for that matter. As I said in the first post, just getting the ball rolling.

 

[dk]

also, 22 esx servers sounds a lot for 120vm's, thats not a very good consolidation ratio, are these servers all in the same location or across multiple locations?

with servers taking 256gb ram upwards these days you can get a lot of vms on a host, the processor very rarely comes into, with 6, 8, 12 core processors you'll find processor utilisation is very low.

So to fund the OS upgrade (as its going to cost if you haven't already got SA on the licenses, which i doubt you have, in fact i bet you don't have a lot of the licenses, especially if they were p2v'd to the hosts and were using OEM licenses etc) you could reduce the number of Servers, increase their ram and they you won't be paying out for so many vmware support licenses, and won't have to purchase as many windows datacenter licenses etc.

​worth a thought anyway.

 

[dk]

I will speak to the gaffer and see what he says, get more details etc. Genuenly interested to read what you say so whatever it is good or bad its all gravy.

I found out we have a spare san sitting there doing bugger all today so I think storage shouldnt be a real issue, Im not sure if he had other plans for it. We just shelled out £400k on an upgrade in germany so its not as though we cant spend. But it needs, without sounding like a total mong, be worthwhile.

There are some things we run that wont work on 2012.

he mentioned dedupe but I dont think he fully understands what it would entail in terms of cost or hardware. Nor do I for that matter. As I said in the first post, just getting the ball rolling.

the only real sans that support dedupe are EMC and NetApp, EMC has dedupe but only at a file level i think, not very granular anyway, whereas netapp do it at a 4k block level, which is pretty small and so you get a lot more benefit. dedupe runs as a post process, so its not happening at the time as that would ruin performance, you run it at night or the weekend etc.

With vmware though, and deploying servers from the same template, we see dedupe savings of 60+%, which is a great saving.

I think we maybe had some miscommunication over the setup, your posts were a little vague and i jumped to a few assumptions. I'm never happy unless i get all the facts normally.

 

[Cliotoby]

I think its data centre or something at the moment. I might be wrong. I dont know what 2003 is. Anyway, no point me guessing Ill get some figures!

 

[cava83]

People on here and generally on forums, are too quick to attack without knowing all the facts.

It's great people want to help out and can give "advice", Cliotoby's getting a lot of stick for no reason.

First and foremost, we don't know very much about their Cliotoby's setup, we don't know what he has, sure we have some rough server numbers but that doesn't help that much......

Too many assumptions are being made (remember the old saying, when you assume you makes a ass of you and me.....)

With respect to Cliotoby, I don't even think he knows what he has, he has to go away and get real facts for us.

As it has been roughly stated, the licensing needs to be right and this is crucial.

Even though Microsoft are sometimes a pain, when they audit you (if you get the right person) they can actually be really helpful, but it's important that you have all the information up to date.

You can use third party companies such as Softcat which are very good, but you can do it yourself if you know what you are doing.

So in summary, before people start making any more assumptions and start shooting you down, we need real figures please

Thanks,

G.

 

[@Spoonie]

2012 has dedupe also.

 

[dk]

It might well do, but it's not great when talking about this tyre of environment, especially when comparing against a netapp San. For a start its only anything over 32kb, netapp works off a 4k block size for dedupe.

Also, lots of rules, can't be the boot volume, or where windows is installed, well that's useful then isn't it, and it can't be on a csv, so not even microsofts own virtualisation platform disks.

Also, if you are thin provisioning on your San, it won't really give you any benefit, as its a post process dedupe, at the os level, so the files will be de duplicated after 5 days (the default setting) and so when that's done, the disk blocks will have already been used on the San anyway, so you won't claim back any space on the San even though you'll see a benefit in windows. So it's a false economy really as its the storage space you're interested in etc.

​its also been around in windows storage server for years now.

 

[Carbon-Rain]

I am working on a project like this at the moment, moving from Physical to VM's and from 2003. We recommended the customer go with server 2008R2 but bought 2012 licenses that allowed them to downgrade, running on ESXi 5.1.

 

[ivegota16v]

It might well do, but it's not great when talking about this tyre of environment, especially when comparing against a netapp San. For a start its only anything over 32kb, netapp works off a 4k block size for dedupe.

Also, lots of rules, can't be the boot volume, or where windows is installed, well that's useful then isn't it, and it can't be on a csv, so not even microsofts own virtualisation platform disks.


Also, if you are thin provisioning on your San, it won't really give you any benefit, as its a post process dedupe, at the os level, so the files will be de duplicated after 5 days (the default setting) and so when that's done, the disk blocks will have already been used on the San anyway, so you won't claim back any space on the San even though you'll see a benefit in windows. So it's a false economy really as its the storage space you're interested in etc.

​its also been around in windows storage server for years now.

there is a nice article on server 2012 dedupe features here for those interested... http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/...ata-deduplication-in-windows-server-2012.aspx

 

[dk]

Nice link, but just shows the flaws really, doesn't support virtualisation or SQL, ok, so it's just for file servers then, but only physical ones, ok, who's not moving to (or already has) a virtual setup these days?

the only use I can see for it is a physical backup server (that's all we seem to ever sell a physical server for that's not going to be used for virtualisation these days), but even then, all backup software has dedupe built into it now anyway, and it's going to be better than this.

like I said, the best dedupe you're going to get is on os drives on virtualisation (be it servers or desktops), and for that you need a San that supports dedupe, which is netapp or emc really. Netapp has introduced compression too now which can do inline or post process and that's the recommended way for things like exchange and SQL.

interstingly, Microsoft used to have sis in exchange 2007, then in 2010 they removed it, so people moving from 2007 to 2010 would see an increase in storage, even more reason to use a san that supports dedupe. But then Microsoft seems to shy away from sans for some reason, they recommend running exchange 2010 on local storage and sata drives, ok then, whatever.....

 

[Cliotoby]

We have IBM v7000's. Im going on a "training" day to IBM on Wednesday and Ill likely be asking them about dedupe. We just dont want to waste 4TB of space if we have to install 2012 that may times. Does IBM V7k even do dedupe??

What do you mean dedupe doesnt support virtualisation? If I wanted to run both as virtual machines could I?

 

[@Spoonie]

interstingly, Microsoft used to have sis in exchange 2007, then in 2010 they removed it, so people moving from 2007 to 2010 would see an increase in storage, even more reason to use a san that supports dedupe. But then Microsoft seems to shy away from sans for some reason, they recommend running exchange 2010 on local storage and sata drives, ok then, whatever.....

I think you are confusing a few technologies here. SIS in Exchange was internal to the database engine for reducing mailbox content size, I believe it was dropped due to changes in the database engine. SIS in Windows is based on files which is still used today. Deduplication is a new feature in 2012 based on block level chunks. For example, I have 20 VMs used as parent disks stored on my repro machine. E:\BaseDisks. As a space saver I have turned on dedupe. Works great as it frees up a lot of space on my disk that I need for the new VM's.

A lot of the features included with 2012 are not looking to directly replace SAN functionality. They are simply offering similar technology to those that don't have the resources to invest in SAN solutions. Thin provisioning for example, we know SANs have this there is still advantages to having it made available in software. Some of it also complements SMB v3.

 

[dk]

We have IBM v7000's. Im going on a "training" day to IBM on Wednesday and Ill likely be asking them about dedupe. We just dont want to waste 4TB of space if we have to install 2012 that may times. Does IBM V7k even do dedupe??

What do you mean dedupe doesnt support virtualisation? If I wanted to run both as virtual machines could I?

Microsoft don't support dedupe on windows 2012 on hyperv clustered shared volumes (their equivalent of VMware datastores shared between a cluster).

 

[dk]

I think you are confusing a few technologies here. SIS in Exchange was internal to the database engine for reducing mailbox content size, I believe it was dropped due to changes in the database engine. SIS in Windows is based on files which is still used today. Deduplication is a new feature in 2012 based on block level chunks. For example, I have 20 VMs used as parent disks stored on my repro machine. E:\BaseDisks. As a space saver I have turned on dedupe. Works great as it frees up a lot of space on my disk that I need for the new VM's.

A lot of the features included with 2012 are not looking to directly replace SAN functionality. They are simply offering similar technology to those that don't have the resources to invest in SAN solutions. Thin provisioning for example, we know SANs have this there is still advantages to having it made available in software. Some of it also complements SMB v3.

I'm not confusing anything mate, trust me, I know about this stuff, it's my life at work

I was purely talking about exchange as an example of ms removing sis from the product and as an example as to why a San supporting dedupe would be useful in that situation.

i also understand the benefits of dedupe in 2012, but I'm looking at it from a corporate pov, in an enterprise environment, and as pointed it in the link, it has some caveats, such as not being supported on csv with hyperv, that's their own product. Why doesn't it support it, performance issues? As its a cluster maybe there's an issue with who holds the fingerprint database or what ever it uses?

it just doesn't have enterprise features, it's very smb really. In your example, if y had a San with dedupe you'd gain savings on everything hosted on it, not individual servers. I'm not sure what a repro machine is or what you exactly mean by having parent disks stored on it.

like I said though, dedupe has been in windows storage server for years, this is just a new iteration of it, but then not many people use physical file servers these days, it's either hosted virtually (or being moved to that platform) or you use a San (like netapp or emc) to serve the files directly from that, a netapp San will even join the domain as a member server.

i don't think it will be long before Hp have dedupe in their sans tbh, they have it in their virtual libraries for backup but have always maintained that you don't need it in primary storage, but these days it's high on people's priority lists when looking at San features, so I think it will be a priority to get it working on their sans before too long.