New "thin" server for SAN

clade

clade

clade

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We are looking at buying a new server to run a few win2008 64bit servers to go with our SAN. We are looking at HP proliant g7's but they come with a 8x disk's and obviously RAID controller.

Im unable to find a server without loads of hard drive or none at all (g7 come with memory card that you can load your os on!)

Anyone know if im even on the right terms with "thin" servers
 
Have you looked at the DL160 rather than the DL360? It's like a 'cut down' version with fewer drive bays, NICs (dual instead of quad GB)?

Thin is perhaps not the best description I'd use: diskless or compute node might be better as those tend to be light on internal disks and RAID protection as they're designed for cluster environments where if an entire server falls over the cluster is sufficiently fault-tolerant to keep working.
 
You may consider blade servers ...... the blade housing will be about 4U/6U/8U high and contain about 8-12 blades which are usually virtual servers.

Alternatively look at the HP DL785 G6 & HP DL980 G7 options.
 
I use DL360 G6/G7 with SANs no problem. They can take up to 8 drives with the optical drive removed but with SAN I just order them with two 146GB drives for OS/Hypervisor... Don't see the issue here? Just because they support 8 drives doesn't mean you have to order 8, if any sales person is telling you otherwise, tell them to foxtrot oscar.
 
I was looking at the DL360's but thought there were even more "cut" down versions avaliable to try and save some money as we dont have the most money in the world so a dl785+ is way out of our range :)

Think we are going to go with a HP DL380G7 X5650, 1x6 core, 12gig ram for £2k.

Skidilliplop not tempted to use the "memory card" slot in your g7's for the os?
 
You dont have to get the 8 drive model.

They do a whole range of models and options, and im pretty damn sure that the baseline one will NOT have 8 bays as standard. With HP that stuff is always extra.

Happy to be proven wrong though if anyone actually has bought G7's recently.

Not me, we just got a bunch of Dell R710s, and I must admit, I think the HP hardware is superior.
 
heart breaking news is that they might be pulling our budget for a SAN. So we have to get this the dl380 g7 as we have received budget for the server....they dont understand that this is wasting money....in the long run :)

Thanks for your input guys.
 
clade said:
Skidilliplop not tempted to use the "memory card" slot in your g7's for the os?
Click to expand...

Not really, I like to keep my spares parts standard. Plus although VMWare clusters support failover it's always nice to have the OS on RAID1 just to save work really. Swapping a drive is easier than re-installing.

Plus there's a P410 controller in the DL360, which I'm paying for so I might as well use it :)
 
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