Hp SAN under spec?

anything I don't mind · 22 Nov 2012 at 18:09

We have a site with 100 users with 500gb exchange, 800gb DMS. My colleagues are in the process of speccing out an infrastructure upgrade and two of them have a disagreement about whether a hp san is adequate for the environment. One of them thinks we should go with EMC or NEtapp the other thinks that hp san should be fine. I am not sure myself as I do not have the experience to say. But based on my limited experience with SAN. Old netapp at one site with 100 users and a hp san at another with 20 users. I think hp san should be ok as long as it is FC and has fast disks.

This scenario consists of two P2000 G3 iSCSI SANs (BK831A), one at the production site and another one at datacentre.

We are looking at using FC (8 Gb Fibre Channel (2) Ports per controller, P2000 G3 Fibre Channel MSA Controller) for the production and then P2000 G3 SAS MSA Controller with 6 Gb/sec SAS (4) Ports per controller host for the DR. With a combination of 300 and 600gb 15k disks in production and 600gb 10k disks for DR.

- Do you think that a hp p2000 g3 is under spec for a 100 user firm?
- is FC overkill considering we will need 2x FC switches and then 4x FC 8gbps nic for the 4x hosts. But as hp san would be a massive cost saving FC at least for the production san will come in within budget.

I have not worked with FC myself my colleague has some experience with it and says it is completely different than Iscsi.

NiCkNaMe · 22 Nov 2012 at 19:04

No one can answer that question mate. You need to do some proper capacity planning to understand what you've got in the environment that needs running on the SAN, and then and only then can you start to consider what SAN you'll need. Lots to consider. You might not even need a SAN. (The new tech in WS2012 could be perfect for such a small site...)

HarryPainful · 22 Nov 2012 at 19:32

Phone them up and get them in for some demos.

I used to work for Netapp and quite often used to leave demo kit with customers to play with.

anything I don't mind · 22 Nov 2012 at 19:56

My colleague has visited their demo sites and we are aware of the capabilities of netapp and emc and what they have to offer and we have some of those SAN at sites. I just wanted to hear from people who have similar size sites and generally speaking if they thought based on their experience that the hp san would be adequate.

I understand that no one can give a definite answer and of course i wouldn't just go off what someone said on a forum but i just wanted to hear some thoughts on what other people have experience with under similar environments.

100 users, 500gb exchange, 800gb dms. Average usage realy.

We have another site exactly the same that runs off one old netapp with 2gbit iscsi and dual gigabit in the hosts for exchange and vmstore, as well as a hp380 g5 with a hp msa60 array with dual gigabit for dm store. That runs fine but it is starting to age a bit and is not lightening fast.

I don't cant realy see how netapp could be any faster it uses the same technology etc, i was just wondering if anyone had any insight.

mejinks · 23 Nov 2012 at 00:47

Dell has a tool called DPAC for this purpose. Start it with a switch to run for longer than 24 hours and tick the box which allows you to view the uncompressed xml. This should give an idea.

here

anything I don't mind · 23 Nov 2012 at 10:26

That might not help much because we will be replacing the entire infrastructure including the desktops and at the moment the infrastructure is in a terrible state with a 5 high stack of old desktops in the server room running some critical functions as an example and so on. My colleague has run windows performance analysis and charted the results etc and we have an understanding of the current load. But in terms of the new infrastructure it may be a different matter entirely.

But if you are not willing to give any opinions based on experience then no worries. Thanks for the tool though will check it out.

Little_Crow · 23 Nov 2012 at 12:13

The one thing you haven't stated is how many disks will ther be?
As a generality, more spindles gives you more speed - it's good you're going for 15k disks to squeeze as many iops as you can out of every disk.

If you're running a very small number of disks, then you may be better off halving the disk size but buying double the amount.

I have no experience with HP's P2000, but plenty with EVA's, but the advice given by everyone stands no matter the SAN.

[Darkend]Viper · 23 Nov 2012 at 14:33

I've got a HP P2000 G3 FC and an extra shelf at work which we use. it has 24x 2.5" 600 or 900gb 10k disks, and 12 2tb 3.5" 7.2k NLSAS drives.

We use it to store our virtual machine infrastructure, as well and 800gb of work and documents. It's also running 2 sql servers, one for sims and the other for sophos. There's also exchange on there for 100 users, which is used 9-5 daily and frequently. It's a massive step up from our old virtual infrastructure which was 15k local storage in each server.

Had no performance issues, was easy to setup, and we have 480 clients connected to it, of which there can be 200 logging on at the same time.

If anyone knows of some progs to test it and get some figures i'm up for testing it. This is connected to the hosts by 8gb FC.

mejinks · 24 Nov 2012 at 02:43

groen said:
That might not help much because we will be replacing the entire infrastructure including the desktops and at the moment the infrastructure is in a terrible state with a 5 high stack of old desktops in the server room running some critical functions as an example and so on. My colleague has run windows performance analysis and charted the results etc and we have an understanding of the current load. But in terms of the new infrastructure it may be a different matter entirely.

But if you are not willing to give any opinions based on experience then no worries. Thanks for the tool though will check it out.

I would, but I need to know how many IOPS you require before I give an answer. As it happens, I am elbow deep in a total infrastructure project myself involving only 2 sites, but 100 users. I too am looking at a P2000 (if you order one before the 30th you get 50% cashback from HP by the way)

As way of comparison, the total IOPS went as high as 680, so not too bad. What does your go to?

anything I don't mind · 26 Nov 2012 at 20:28

Thanks for the help and input.

We are thinking of going with p2000 with FC for production and possibly downgrade the DR from the proposed p2000 with iscsi to a disk array like the msa 60 as it is only one host. I think the updated msa 60 is the d2600.

The question is whether we should go with hardware or software replication. If we have two hp p2000 we can buy snap addon for 1500 that allows for bit level replication. The alternative is veeam or vranger which could also potentially cost a lot, not sure how much.

Negative to going with software is that we have to use different methods to replicate the different types of data. The positive is that it is cheaper.