SAN Advice - Urgent

RockLobster · 22 Apr 2009 at 11:51

I’m weighing up some options for a new SAN. I have two quotes of similar price from Dell and HP. The specifications are as follows: -

Dell

Dell EqualLogic PS5000E
16 X 1TB, 7.2K SATA, Dual Controllers. This is an iSCSI SAN.

HP

HP MSA2000 with 24 450GB 15K SAS HDD. This is a Fibre Channel SAN.

We are planning to virtualise part of our infrastructure. With the Dell option we are considering three new servers, the specifications as below: -
Dell PE 2950 Quad Core Xeon (3 GHz, 32 GB of RAM, quad gigabit network cards)

With the HP solution we have two options. The first is to use three DL380s (G5 or G6) with 32 gig of RAM, quad gigabit network cards. Redundant power supplies, etc. The second is to use HP Blade servers. This will be a HP Blade system C3000 containing four blades with Dual Xeon processors. There will be approximately 92 gig of RAM across these Blades.

As I said both of these SANS are of similar price. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with either of these products or with the enterprise support areas of these companies. Please assume that both specifications are adequate for our needs and performance monitoring has indicated this.

neil_g · 22 Apr 2009 at 12:54

out of interest why are you sticking to the same make servers as SAN?

iaind · 22 Apr 2009 at 13:08

If the SANs are the same price, surely the 10tb SAS/FC is going to perform much better and give more capacity than an 8tb SATA/iSCSI option?

I'm suprised they are even close to the same price, especially given the higher cost of the fabric for FC

RockLobster · 22 Apr 2009 at 13:32

neil_g said:
out of interest why are you sticking to the same make servers as SAN?

Because each is part of its own quotation which is linked to a finance agreement. Not sure about the ins and outs but we can't mix and match.

iaind said:
If the SANs are the same price, surely the 10tb SAS/FC is going to perform much better and give more capacity than an 8tb SATA/iSCSI option?

I'm suprised they are even close to the same price, especially given the higher cost of the fabric for FC

I realise this to be the case however both are adequate for our needs and I've heard people are not happy with their HP MSA solutions. I'm looking for opinions on the two products, I'm not overly worried about the servers.

hatrick · 22 Apr 2009 at 13:42

Why not have a look at Datacore SAN Melody? I have got 3 x 1.7tb FC SAN Solutions, mirrored, replicated, etc, etc for the same price as a Dell EMC 1.3Tb Solution.]

I would totally recommend Datacore, superb bit of software for SAN Virtualisation.

mikeh501 · 22 Apr 2009 at 13:59

I've heard good things about the new Sun SAN's. No personal experience, but they seem to be getting some good reviews.

RockLobster · 22 Apr 2009 at 15:27

These two vendors are the only options on the table. With the Dell solution a mistake in the spec posted it has 16 X 1TB, 7.2K SATA, Dual Controllers.

daz · 22 Apr 2009 at 20:41

Go for R610 or R710 over the 2950 - the new Xeons are awesome and also those servers come with 4 x gigabit NICs included as standard.

K.C. Leblanc · 22 Apr 2009 at 21:19

Is HP single controller? If it is you're looking at one gigantic point of failure.

Andy100 · 22 Apr 2009 at 23:31

I would never run a virtualised environment off SATA drives.

We have enough trouble with bandwidth using them as a backup solution.

iaind · 23 Apr 2009 at 07:51

Depends on the size of the solution!

I know several people running VMware solutions off sata, loads running them for backup. I personally use it for backup no problem and the VMs I've got with a lower IO requirement are going to be moved onto a SATA array to free up some space on the SAS array.

The rules and problems for large deployments dont always apply to smaller deployments

RSR · 23 Apr 2009 at 08:50

We run iSCSI from a Netapp 3020c for our vmware and thats pretty nippy.

IMO, if you plan to have DBs or High IO levels a higher spindel count and SAS drives would be better

iirc EMC now have a SSD SAN from memory.

Have you looked at Netapp?

A

hatrick · 23 Apr 2009 at 13:39

Please delete this post, accidentally hit sumbit

zetec452 · 23 Apr 2009 at 14:34

SATA and Virtualisation will not work well at all.

HP MSA2000 SANS are very average at best.
Take a look at HP DL380’s with HP Left Hand iSCSI SAN’s as a Pair. You could create a fully redundant setup with this.
What blades did you have in mind?

morfmedia · 23 Apr 2009 at 19:13

Don't rule out HDS kit. Installed a AMS2100 recently, very good kit.

RockLobster · 23 Apr 2009 at 19:55

Cheers all.

We have decided to go for the Dell solution. Reading the reviews, the discount they given us and 0% finance this swayed it. We are also having 3 x R710.

Euphoria · 24 Apr 2009 at 21:52

ATM i am running on c-class HP blades and a MSA2000 and it works fine (nearly 100% virtualised using vmware solution), i would never go Dell at all for enterprise class storage mainly due to their poor support quality compared to HP. HP were doing v nice deals before the 15% increase in prices in march.

If you were to go MSA2000 you would need to do a few tweaks for it to work correctly on the current VMware ESX as sometimes it is detected/ configured incorrectly

datsunman · 25 Apr 2009 at 07:24

Euphoria said:
ATM i am running on c-class HP blades and a MSA2000 and it works fine (nearly 100% virtualised using vmware solution), i would never go Dell at all for enterprise class storage mainly due to their poor support quality compared to HP. HP were doing v nice deals before the 15% increase in prices in march.

If you were to go MSA2000 you would need to do a few tweaks for it to work correctly on the current VMware ESX as sometimes it is detected/ configured incorrectly

What makes you say that? We have virtually a direct line into Equallogic in the US, and i'm sure most of the rebadged EMC kit customers also have decent support options too...

Rocklobster - I did the same kind of exercise six months ago and decided on the Equallogic solution (although I got two PS5000XV's) - the MSA2000 just didn't make sense for us, couldn't find anybody that would wholeheartedly recommend it, and replication options were also limited. Although the EQL kit is expensive when compared to basic kit like the MSA it does contain all of the software you need straight out of the box (eg VMWare SRM, Replication and so on). I've just ordered a PS5000E for our DR site so we can start making use of it all.

Vanilla · 25 Apr 2009 at 11:20

Euphoria said:
ATM i am running on c-class HP blades and a MSA2000 and it works fine (nearly 100% virtualised using vmware solution), i would never go Dell at all for enterprise class storage mainly due to their poor support quality compared to HP. HP were doing v nice deals before the 15% increase in prices in march.

If you were to go MSA2000 you would need to do a few tweaks for it to work correctly on the current VMware ESX as sometimes it is detected/ configured incorrectly

Neither the MSA or the equalogic is enterprise. It is low end. In fact the MSA was made bt the server division of HP, not the storage division.

bigredshark · 25 Apr 2009 at 21:35

Andy100 said:
I would never run a virtualised environment off SATA drives.

We have enough trouble with bandwidth using them as a backup solution.

There should be no issue with SATA and bandwidth, if there is your design is bad - enough spindles on a decent controller and it'll do pretty much anything. The issue is access times (and obviously once you have enough spindles it becomes more sensible to use SAS anyway)

Oh, and storage wise my advice for most implementation is go to Netapp or EMC direct, some of the smaller dedicated storage players have nice systems too but in the current economic climate best not to bet on them staying around for critical infrastructure.