Samsung SSD vs HPE SAS drives in HP DL380p Gen8 Server?

[lumencreative]

I have just purchased a HP DL380p Gen8 server to replace our current Dell T320 server and having already purchased, realised I'd bought the model with 8 x 2.5" bays instead of 3.5" bays...doh!

Anyway, rather than returning the server or trying to sell it (as the specs are pretty good for the price paid), I am going to suck it up and use the server as intended, however, looking at new 2.5" enterprise drives, they are incredibly expensive and seem to max out at 1.92TB.

So, I'm setting my sights on a lower overall capacity (our current server only uses about 400GB but wanted the new server to do additional tasks like backup the Windows client PC's), and so have been looking at the following drives...

Option 1: 8 x 240GB Samsung SM863a SSD's (these are used drives and costing £30 each). In RAID6, this would give me 1.4TB or in RAID10 I would get 960GB. Total cost £240.

Option 2: 4 x 480GB Samsung SM863a SSD's (these are used drives and costing £90 each). In RAID6/10 this would give me 960GB but would allow for further expansion down the road. Total cost £360.

Option 2: 8 x HPE 600GB 10k SAS drives (these are brand new and costing £45 each). I wouldn't go for RAID6 on mechanical drives so RAID10 would give me 2.4TB. Total cost £360.

Usage wise, our server acts as our Domain Controller and File Server (currently as two vms on HyperV but considering simplifying it to a single Windows Essentials setup as the server is being used purely as a way of accessing/sharing files). We often work on files about 1GB in size direct from the server and sometimes these files are really slow to open but I suspect that it as much to do with our gigabit network as anything else.

Anyway, I am just looking for opinions on which drive configuration would be best. I have also looked at Samsung EVO's which I've read of people using in server hardware but I'd rather stick to enterprise drives if possible as the server is the lifeblood of our business.

 

[lumencreative]

What SAS controller card? p410? p4xx? That would help.

It’s a P420i controller card.

I had all but decided on SSDs but having just looked up a raid performance calculator, I’m now questioning myself again and reconsidering the HPE 600GB SAS drives.

According to a RAID performance calculator I found, 8 x 600GB 10k SAS drives in RAID10 should give me about 925MB/s and although the SSD drives will give 2150.82 MB/s, I’m only running gigabit network so max out at 125MB/s anyway....unless I upgrade to 10Gb as well but think that’s a bit overkill for our needs.

Argggggggggh

 

[lumencreative]

If you are not IOPS bound which it doesn't look like you are go with the sas 10k drives, they will also be HP supported which is always handy. The server supports teaming anyway so you could potentially team all the adapters to increase bandwidth back when multiple connections are open to the server. Alternatively your switch might have some SFP's also so might be worth making use of them. To be honest if it were me I tend to get cover on my disks as I have hundreds of them and am running 144x 10k 600gb sas in an EVA as well as some flash and a ton of NAS storage I think to cover them all on 4 hour turn around is only around 2k PA but they will only offer it on HP disks.

thanks Vince. While I love the high performance of SSD drives (I’ve got SSDs in every client pc we have), we are certainly not IOPS bound. I would really like files to open faster which I think they will regardless but that’s certainly not my main priority (I’ll probably upgrade the storage in the next 12 months anyway).

My thinking was also to look at a disk shelf of some sort in the future and populate that with SAS/Enterprise SATA drives but that’s out of my depth at the moment.

I’ll have a look at our switch and see what that offers

 

[lumencreative]

Wow, your setup sounds amazing!

When I started out planning this upgrade, the number one thing on my list was a heap of storage (I initially planned on just building a FreeNAS box with 24 or so drives in), but common sense kicked in and thought a) I should do this properly as it’s client artwork at stake and b) I REALLY don’t need as much storage as I intended to have, so trying to stay sensible but give myself enough room to not need to upgrade the storage for another year at least (December is typically our busy period where we triple usual sales so try and do any upgrades at the end of the year). The only thing I’m not sure of, because we don’t do it at the moment, is how much space Windows backups will require but if all else fails I can set up our current Dell T320 as a backup server with some NAS drives installed.

Anyway, I’ve just checked and my server has a 1GB P420i cache module and a P420i capacitor. A quick look on fleabay also brings up the 2GB cache modules for about £35 so that might be a worthwhile upgrade down the line.

 

[lumencreative]

The 2GB modules have a higher failure rate than the 1GB modules for some reason. TBH as long as you have got a capacitor and the 1GB module I wouldn't worry - I doubt there's much real world performance difference for your use case.

With regard to SSDs in a G8 - I've tried standard consumer SATA SSDs in some of our "test" G8's with no issues - they work fine in RAID1, and I think the Cruical ones I tried even listed their health in SmartArray Configuration, but for anything business critical I'd be going with genuine HP SSD's even if you buy second hand ones from ebay or similar.

Thanks, very handy to know about the 2GB modules...glad I mentioned it now haha.

Ok, so will give consumer SSD's a miss as I want the most reliability possible, so my options are as follows, although I'm leaning more towards the HPE 600GB 10K SAS drives:

Option 1: 8 x 240GB Samsung SM863a SSD's (these are used drives and costing £30 each). In RAID6, this would give me 1.4TB or in RAID10 I would get 960GB. Total cost £240.
Option 2: 8 x HPE 600GB 10k SAS drives (these are brand new and costing £45 each). I wouldn't go for RAID6 on mechanical drives so RAID10 would give me 2.4TB. Total cost £360.

I also noticed that the HPE drives come with the caddies whereas I'd need to buy the caddies in addition to the cost of the SSD's if I went that route.

Also, out of interest, if I populate the 8 x 2.5" bays with the SAS drives, is there any way I can install Windows Server to another drive (preferably an SSD) so that it's completely separate to the storage array?

 

[lumencreative]

I have the same box and same issues, the server and card only seem to be happy with compatible stuff which is crap.
I have had things working, sort of, with another raid card totally different from the HP one plus some mixtures of drives but i am prob just going to run a jbod box attached to the server instead of using its inbuilt space.

Not done owt with this for a few months... couldnt be bothered lol.

Hmmm that’s worrying to hear. Out of interest what raid card did you try?

I guess another option would be to use the internal storage of the DL380 for os and then a disk shelf for the rest of the storage but at the moment wouldn’t know where to start with something like that.

 

[lumencreative]

Hp D2600/D2700 disk shelf depending on whether you want 2.5" or 3.5" drives, combined with a P421 external sas smart array card (and a required cable)

Man those D2700’s are incredibly good value, however, and I think a disk shelf would be way off but when I start to look, would it be worth going for something non-hp for a disk shelf (like the netapp) ones so you’re not tied to HPE drives?

 

[lumencreative]

Have just come across some new HPE 900GB 10k SAS drives with caddies for £70 each so think I’m going to jump on those instead of the 600GB ones. At least that will give me about 3TB of useable space in RAID10. How does that sound?
I’ve also got my eye on a D2700 full of 600GB drives which I could use as a backup pool, but want to know how old the drives are first.

 

[lumencreative]

At £70 each they aren't new - I think I've found the ones you are on about and they are listed as "clean system pulls". I'd still go for them - you can essentially buy 4 for the price of one new one (and this is what we do at work). Ideally you'd have a hotspare, and then a hard drive failure is merely a mild inconvenience.

Ah yes it does say clean system pull however they also list them as being ‘new’ but either way I think at £70 they’re a good buy.

 

[lumencreative]

I recon 900gb drives for £70 seems a good deal tbh.

Just bought 4 of them and will buy another 4 in a couple of weeks (not setting the server up until the end of Jan so will still build the raid array with all 8 disks). Will then order another 4 to keep as spares

Thanks for all the advise.

 

[lumencreative]

Have received the 4 x HPE drives I ordered today and I just wanted some opinions on how old is too old for a used enterprise drive?

To recap, the drives were listed as ‘new’ but the description stated ‘clean system pulls’. The drives delivered have a manufacture date of 2014, so not sure whether that’s reasonable.

 

[lumencreative]

They are likely refurbs and I have a supplier that if I can't get drives from HP ill go to them and they sort me refurbs. Rarely have issues and ive seen disks as old as 2012. Honestly I wouldn't worry about the date on the disks as there are so many companies that refurb them imo they will be fine.

Also you are lucky they have dates at all - Just looking at a 146gb pull and can't even see a date on it. Also they are rated for silly amounts of time, I've seen drives with 100's of thousands of hours on the spindal be fine whereas brand new ones fail the next day.

Thanks that has reassured me, I just wanted to be sure before ordering more

 

[lumencreative]

Sorry to drag this thread up again but after the discussions that went on on this thread, I ended up grabbing 2 x HP D2600’s off fleabay for £90 each. I bought 24 x used HP caddies for £46 and ordered 13 x used HP Enterprise 2TB SAS drives for £360.

The drives I ordered were HP branded Seagate ES.3’s which obviously have HP firmware on the, however, despite the description and image on the ad showing HP Enterprise drives, the seller actually sent me Seagate branded ES.3’s. I have contacted the seller and yet to hear back but I just wondered if I’m being unreasonable in asking for either a refund or the HP branded drives I ordered, seeing as they are essentially the same drive but with different firmware.

 

[lumencreative]

At £27 a drive (if they all work) I wouldn't be too unhappy I don't think. I would probably keep them tbh. So long as they spin and hold data then it probably won't matter that much. @Armageus is probably in a better position to answer as my shelves although technically the same are very different.

Ideally I would want HP drives but 2tb dives at £27 each is very cheap so I would be a bit torn.

That was my initial thought too but the company I bought them off sell tonnes of refurbished server hardware and actually have other listings advertising the HP branded drives at the same price (they actually sell a lot of drives in batches of 10 or more for around the same price per drive), and they have 100% positive feedback.

I did read that the D2600 will take the Seagate drives fine but I really wanted to keep everything HP. Maybe I’m just being petty.

 

[lumencreative]

What controller are you using to connect the D2600?

If it's not a HP Smart Array then no issue with them not being HP Drives.

If it is a Smart Array, then I personally would try and get them replaced just out of principle (i.e. they aren't as described/advertised), but in the worst case they will likely still work fine.

We’ve got a P822 controller which I believe is a smart array controller.

I have decided that I’m going to at least attempt to get the drives replaced as I’m sure it’s a genuine error on their part but we shall see.

 

[lumencreative]

Having spoken to the seller, they made a genuine error with the advert it seems so have offered a) a full refund, b) to keep the ES.3 drives with a £30 refund or c) to exchange them for HGST HUS723020ALS640 drives with HP firmware plus £30 refund.

What would you guys do?