SAN Options

RSR

RSR

RSR

Soldato
Joined
17 Aug 2006
Posts
10,053
Hi Guys,

I am just after a few opinions here.

We current run a NetApp 3020 clustered SAN with around 20/30 TBs of space. As these are coming up to their 3rd year in our environment in April the maintenance costs are going to go through the roof for the support renewal for this year. So I am currently looking at my options for new a new SAN and what do with the old one. Currently our backend storage traffic runs over an iSCSI and I may look at changing this to FC is the costs are low enough. I also have a NetApp 2050 running in a DR site, so this may be replaced as well. However, this is currently under review.

I am currently looking at the HP EVA 4400/6400 models and the Blue Arc Mercury 50 / 100 models and the likewise NetApp models.

Has any moved from a NetApp to HP/Blue Arc etc…? How did they find it? Has anyone moved from HP etc… to NetApp and what where there reasons why?
Does anyone know if you can get a 3rd party support for NetApp filers? (Just another option)

Thanks

Andy
 
I have just put a pair of netapp 2020's plus a ds14 for each filer in, and looked at year 4 & 5 support costs, and the quote i got was not earth shattering in the slightest. In fact there was not much difference from years 1-3 to be fair.
 
DustyMiller said:
I have just put a pair of netapp 2020's plus a ds14 for each filer in, and looked at year 4 & 5 support costs, and the quote i got was not earth shattering in the slightest. In fact there was not much difference from years 1-3 to be fair.
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The difference is the 2020's are in NetApp's current line. The NetApp3020c and the FC disks (72Gb 10k 144Gb 10k 300Gb 10k) are using are all EOL i believe.

I should have mentioned this in my above description.
 
I would not move off Netapp and onto a HP offering.

Your best option is to stay on Netapp (good kit) or consider moving onto EMC (also good kit). EMC and Netapp are the two big players in this space with EMC slightly winning in market share.

My personal preference is EMC for numerous reasons both at the business and technology level, but i'm biased.

You should engage both and let them fight it out. To be honest the difference between them is slight and they leapfrog from eachother with regards to features. The point in getting them both involved is to drive the price down.
 
Vanilla said:
You should engage both and let them fight it out. To be honest the difference between them is slight and they leapfrog from eachother with regards to features. The point in getting them both involved is to drive the price down.
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That's going to be my overal plan.

Just looking at the pro's and con's at the moment.
 
OK, well with regards to Bluearc bear in mind they’re a small company – VC funded, never shown a profit. Danger of acquisition there? What’s the budget for development? Support?

Gartner Magic quadrant has them right down the bottom. Good vision, but poor execution.

How quick are they to bring to market all the new features? I’m looking at the VMware SRM matrix and I see all the main players but not Bluearc. Are they not interested or just slow?

It’ll probably do the job but I don’t think they’re that cheap……

If you go with EMC or Netapp you’re going with the two players who will always be the first to bring out new features. Both EMC and Netapp have integrated arrays which can do iSCSI, NFS, CIFS and FC.

From a business perspective EMC wins not only due to sheer size but owning VMware, RSA, Data Domain amongst others is a pretty good rap sheet. Lots of feature integration going on. I just had a search on theregister for the latest IDC numbers and I was wrong on market share above, EMC is at 46% market share and Netapp at 24% (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/idc_q309_disk_tracker/)

From a technical standpoint there’s Capacity concerns, EMC has Solid State drives, true 99.999% availability, online movement of LUNs between different disk and raid types (from SATA to FC for example) and no on.

The battle is a bit tit for tat, it depends what's important to you.
 
They are all very valid points and ill take that on board.

The logical step would be to move to the NetApp 3100 series filers, but i am just looking at what the other market players have to offer.
 
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Don't underestimate the familiarity you already have with netapp, it's good kit and the only reason to move to anything else would be to save money - it's not cheap!
 
bigredshark said:
Don't underestimate the familiarity you already have with netapp, it's good kit and the only reason to move to anything else would be to save money - it's not cheap!
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I am not buy any means. Ideally id like to see whats on offer. :)

However, our current kit has gone EOL and NetApp and the support costs are through the roof and its the main reason to see whats on the market.
 
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andyd said:
I am not buy any means. Ideally id like to see whats on offer. :)
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It basically boils down to a few options in my opinion -

- Netapp / EMC are excellent all round but are fairly expensive

- HP / various others are good enough at the basics and reasonably priced

- 3PAR / Pillar / Others are very good in some niche applications and can occasionally be a better option than Netapp/EMC at a favourable price too

If you want something our of left field, look at HP's (acquired) lefthand networks 'brick' storage product. It's really innovative and might be the future of low end SANs (particularly for use with virtualisation).
 
Vanilla said:
OK, well with regards to Bluearc bear in mind they’re a small company – VC funded, never shown a profit. Danger of acquisition there? What’s the budget for development? Support?

Gartner Magic quadrant has them right down the bottom. Good vision, but poor execution.

How quick are they to bring to market all the new features? I’m looking at the VMware SRM matrix and I see all the main players but not Bluearc. Are they not interested or just slow?

It’ll probably do the job but I don’t think they’re that cheap……
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Actually, in the newest gartner quadrant, im led to believe by sales teams ... i know in BlueArc, that BA are top right.

The Mercury stuff is superb (see SpecSFS 2008 benchmark for results) - wiped the floor with a clustered NetApp top-end filer and Mercury is their mid-range offering (also beat them with less disks). Got some very good tiered storage features too, along with replication etc.

HP stuff isnt best (thats being polite) and the HP stuff is just Ibrix (not great either).

NetApp or BlueArc for mine - and then personal preference some LSI Storage on the back end (3992 or 69XX arrays).
 
SMN said:
Actually, in the newest gartner quadrant, im led to believe by sales teams ... i know in BlueArc, that BA are top right.
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hmm so latest I have access to is March 2009 and they're in the bottom right quadrant about an inch away from the center (diagonal).

Would have to be a big jump to move to top right! Not impossible though
 
Well the Mercury 50/100's came out in ... August 09 i think? Not sure. Plus all the new software features, new Titan models etc. Could well account for it. If i can find you a link etc i'll send it.
 
Also, one question.

what is the need to move away from your current system, other than support costs ??

Are you seeing any issues, performance or stability, or support, or even capacity ??

Would the cost of the purchase of, and training for a new system be greater than the support renewal ??
 
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