Cheaper SAN storage

zetec452

zetec452

zetec452

Soldato
Joined
15 Sep 2003
Posts
9,454
Hi,

As you are probably aware from my other posts I'm trying to pop together a solution for my new company.

I've been looking at SAN solutions from Dell and HP (Left hand networks specifically). These are coming in at around $25k for a single unit, leaving me with a single point of failure as I can't afford two units.

I know the word openfiler is a little dirty when considering SAN storage for production environments. Would I be better off having two openfiler boxes over one dedicated SAN storage unit? Has anyone used openfiler in production environments?

We have spare servers here with plenty of grunt to run openfiler, however, I am concerned that after all it is open source software etc. The network has around 60 users, 7 servers of which 6 will be virtualized eventually.

TIA for any opinions good and bad (I'm sure there will be more bad!!!).
 
I was looking at the LHN P4500 (I think that's the mode name) with 1.8 TB in SAS drives, the units have double everything. I guess this would provide sufficient redundancy and would certainly be my preference. I'm going to dual path via two managed switches etc and multiple NIC's on the VMWare boxes.
 
I think I saw 4 x apc units, small ones so I may have to get some more. One redundant SAN it is I think.

I'm set to spec switches but will go with 2x 24 port gig managed HP ProCurv jobbies and a couple of quad port nics for the existing servers.

Probably going to have to go with: VMWare vSphere 4 Essentials Plus as enterprise is bloody expensive. It doesn't have vmotion but I figure HA will do the job just about, whilst saving $9k.

I will have a rough DR site in which I'm going to have a nas, so I may keep a server over that side with openfiler in case the SAN dies. Worst case scenario I collect the openfiler box and pop it onto the network.
 
Umm, I'd rather not tbh lol. I am aware of the technology but wouldn't feel comfortable running it in production. If I had no money to use then maybe. I'm not a fan of making things harder when they don't have to be. :p
 
Not too sure about VSA. I have used it before and it isn't a bad product. The main problem with it is that I already have most of the kit. Currently I wouldn't have enough spare hdd slots for storage and may as well spend the money on a SAN rather than two new servers.

I'll take a look at NetApp, although I fear they may be a little pricy.
 
I would rather go with SAS as currently there are three DB servers and I probably will be adding a few more. Plus 5-7 virtual servers, with more additions in the next year.

I don't need a huge amount of storage and certainly don't want to run out of speed later on down the line.

I have managed to find some much better pricing in the US. As the company I work for imports a lot of goods I should be able to import stuff from the US efficiently.
 
I just think it would be easier to justify new space down the line than a new SAN because of performance issues. I could always buy a cheaper SAN or storage in a few years for less important stuff if required.
 
Well after a week of getting prices looking at technical papers I'm none the wiser. lol.

I've been working with Dell who reckon we are using around 350 IOPS and 9MB/s throughput currently across our four servers and that we could safely go SATA with 8 or 16 250 GB drives and have enough room for exchange and MS SQL in the future. This still doesn't sit too well with me TBH. There price wasn't bad at 18k CAD.

Meanwhile HP hare looking to drop there pants on a left hand SAS starter kit which will be around 5k more than Dell's SATA SAN but IMO offer much better performance, plus I'll have two units separate units. This is around 25K CAD.

Anybody see any real issues with SATA or am I thinking along the right lines? SATA could screw me in the future, or am I being a little over the top in using SAS?

TIA
 
Sorry to dig up this thread again.

I'm pretty much at a decision making stage between a Dell Equallogic PS4000 iSCSI san wtih 16x 450 SAS 10k or an EMC AX4 with 8x 450 and 4x300 SAS 15k.

What would you consider the better SAN? I like the look of the Equallogic but prefer the overall package containing the EMC (it will come with HP servers, HP switching etc). EMC seem to be a little more responsive and have more literature than dell and I like the fact I can mix and match drives if required. Shame I have to pay a bundle for the snapshots etc with the EMC.

I'm using VMWare if this makes a difference.

Thanks,

Jon
 
They are virtually the same price, maybe 1-2k difference at most. They do have a different amount of disks. The equallogic has 12x 450 10K SAS and the EMC 8x450 SAS 15k and 4x300 SAS 15k.

There are some minor differences between the packages whether that's a slightly better CPU on my servers, slightly better switching etc.
 
This disk count is an interesting matter. The Equallogic uses 2 hot spares leaving me with 14 disks (still a greater capacity than the EMC). EMC will allow one global spare. The EMC will also allow be to use SATA drives in the same unit.

EMC were really trying to sell the snapshot feature to me advising that they use snapshots more efficiently than dell and thus using less space. TBH I'm not sure whether this is sales bumff or fact (probably the former).

Dell are coming to see me today so I'll have the opportunity to take a good luck at the SAN etc. My heart is leaning towards the EMC / HP kit as I prefer HP.

Support wise I do not know who would be better.
 
You are correct, Dell do sell EMC kit, however in this instance Dell were selling the Equallogic units and another vendor were selling EMC.

I've decided to go completely with Dell and have purchased an Equallogic box with 16x 450 SAS drives with all the server and switch bits. Looking forward to it. :D
 
Hey,

Thanks for your post, it is most reassuring. We were using around 350 IOPS minus a NAS box and a Windows 2000 av server in which we didn’t evaluate. I'm pretty happy that we've got plenty of room to grow into our box. It is overkill for us to have SAS but I had the budget and figured we'd be better off with it long term. I will be adding three VM’s off the bat to the cluster.

Do you mind me asking what RAID you are using on your SAN? We will have three VM hosts connecting to the SAN with 2 x hosts serving production environments. I was planning to use RAID 5 with the two hot spares.

I was planning to use VMWare's backup system, would this be a mistake?
 
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