Complete IT Hardware overhaul

EvilGrin · 23 Jan 2012 at 14:11

Hey guys, I have a massive project looming this year as all my server warranties are running out at the end of the year (servers are 4 years old), and so need to replace them all.

I'm really just looking for some advice as to what hardware technology to look at to replace this kit - we get a 20% group discount with Dell and have a lot of political pressure to go down that route again. I'm looking into 10GbE type SAN technology (Dell EqualLogic PS6010XV), and would really just like to know any experiences you guys have had with similar kit, and whether there's anything I should avoid?

I'm planning on upgrading software at the same time, but having had no experience of these newer versions and any upgrade paths I'm a little hesitant considering the IT department consist of me on my own - however, certain versions are losing support, so it's more a case of needs must! Any advice on which are the important bits to upgrade and reasons in doing so would be much appreciated too.

Currently we have the following hardware:

Dell (EMC) CX300 fibre SAN with a PowerEdge E6850 host (4xDual Core 3 GHz Xeon 7120M's, 24 Gb RAM) which uses ESX 3.0.2 to host our File Server (DC/GC etc.), Exchange server, Anti-virus server, Reporting server and Terminal server.
Dell PowerEdge 2950 2x Quad Core Xeon E5320 1.86GHzw 16Gb RAM which is a 2nd ESX host with 4 hour replication for disaster recovery of the above.
Dell PowerEdge 2950 2x Quad Core Xeon E5320 1.86GHzw 8Gb RAM which hosts Citrix Presentation server.
Dell PowerEdge 2950 2x Quad Core Xeon E5320 1.86GHzw 16Gb RAM which hosts our SQL Server 2005 databases.

This is the main kit that needs to be replaced, and we're currently running ESX 3.0.2, Server 2k3 on all servers, Exchange 2007, SQL Server 2005 and Citrix Presentation server 4.11.

Again, any advice much appreciated guys

sidethink · 23 Jan 2012 at 14:34

I'm in no way a storage or SAN expert but we use a lot of Dell/Equalogic kit (alongisde lesser amounts of IBM, HP and Netapp) and have reasonably good reports overall.

We recently deployed a smallish Dell/Compellant based solution for an internal department and the SAN engineers are raving about how easy it is to manage. Great de-dupe options and automated storage tiering for a fairly sensible price point.

It might be worth asking your Dell rep for a demo. Dell are even more heavily in bed with VMware than usual at the moment and are pitching whole technology stacks implemnted by their own engineers.

droyden · 23 Jan 2012 at 15:20

If you are going Dell and can turn around approval fast, Jan is their end of year so you should get a good price

EvilGrin · 23 Jan 2012 at 15:44

Thanks for the replies guys, not sure if the Dell/Compellant solution will work, it looks a little large for our needs? Maybe that's just the maximum scaling they're showing though, so it won't hurt to ask rough pricing! We've got about £60k to play with for hardware and software licences. Unfortunately it'll be impossible to get signoff for end of the month, it'll be quite a process and I expect to pull the trigger around April-May at the earliest...

sidethink · 23 Jan 2012 at 16:37

EvilGrin said:
Thanks for the replies guys, not sure if the Dell/Compellant solution will work, it looks a little large for our needs?

Looking purely at the marketing collateral on the Dell site I would agree. But its in your price range for an iSCSI setup with two or three blades in a new blade enclosure (lots of room for growth). Our project spent right around the amount you mentioned. We do qualify for partner discount but if it looks interesting I wouldnt let their website put you off.

Vanilla · 24 Jan 2012 at 04:55

Dell won't sell you EMC equipment. Their relationship ended officially a few months back.

They may give you a quote for EMC equipment but it will be about £500k (hugely artificially inflated to make their price look a lot cheaper! have seen it a lot the last year!). While EMC is on their books they wont actually sell it!

You should engage both Dell and EMC anyway because this will drive the price of both of them down.

An array comparable to a CX300 would be an EMC VNX5300 which is about four generations newer. You've pretty much got to change the CX300 because it's about7/8 years old and chances are you're paying out the wazoo on maintenance. 5 years tops, anything above is often a bit crazy.

Quick summary of features:

* Provides both Block and file access (NFS/CIFS) so will act as a file server - removing the need for a separate file server.
* Usual features such as automatic storage tiering, compression, file deduplication, QoS, SSD drives as cache extension, blah blah.
* Insane amount of VMware integration - Wikibon articles http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Wikibon_User_Survey:_EMC_and_NetApp_Dominate_VMware_Storage and http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/EMC_and_NetApp_lead_in_VMware_Storage_Integration_Functionality
* Going to be a lot easier going EMC > EMC.

As other have said - consider iSCSI. If iSCSI only is acceptable look at the VNXe which can go up to 90 drives and will be pretty cheap but good. Also has NFS and CIFs for file serving.

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virt...things-in-tiny-transformer-like-packages.html

kefkef · 24 Jan 2012 at 10:37

Does it all still work? If so consider getting 3rd party warranties to keep it going and then plan in a proper refresh cycle which will give you a decent amount of time to plan the solution and negotiate discounts. Example prices are £98 for 1yr for a 2950 warranty 4hr response.