SAN Storage

Guest2

Guest2

Guest2

Soldato
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We are going fully virtual in the future and enquired about HP SAN Storage from our suppliers.

They sent us an leaflet 'HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN Solutions'

Inside this leaflet are 3 models....

HP StorageWorks P4300 G2 16TB MDL SAS Starter SAN Solution (£17,599.99 ex VAT)

Hard drive array
16TB
16 bays (SAS)
16 x HD 1TB
DVD-ROM
iSCSI (external)
Rack-mountable

The second...

HP StorageWorks P4300 G2 7.2TB SAS Starter SAN Solution (£18,799.99 ex VAT)

Hard drive array
7.2TB
16 bays (SAS)
16 x HD 450GB
DVD-ROM
iSCSI (external)
Rack-mountable

The third is a P4500 G2 10.8TB coming in at a not so cheap £31,999.99 ex VAT

Question -

Why is the first one cheaper than the second and has better specs? The only thing this is different is that it says 'MDL', apart from that its a grand cheaper and more than double the storage size :confused:
 
The 1TB drives will be 7200rpm SAS drives which are classed as "Midline".

The 450GB drives will be 15k (IIRC) SAS drives, which are much more expensive (and faster).
 
When buying SAN's - check to see if you're tied into purchasing future HD's from the same company.
Our SAN unfortunately requires us to buy HD's from the same company due to the custom firmware on the drives.
Means we pay nearly 5x the going price for a 1TB drive (I kid you not).
 
stoofa said:
When buying SAN's - check to see if you're tied into purchasing future HD's from the same company.
Our SAN unfortunately requires us to buy HD's from the same company due to the custom firmware on the drives.
Means we pay nearly 5x the going price for a 1TB drive (I kid you not).
Click to expand...

It can sting can't it? HP want £507+VAT (from a trade distributor) for a 2TB 7.2k SATA drive.

I appreciate they have to qualify the drive and possibly add their own firmware, but... ouch!
 
stoofa said:
When buying SAN's - check to see if you're tied into purchasing future HD's from the same company.
Our SAN unfortunately requires us to buy HD's from the same company due to the custom firmware on the drives.
Means we pay nearly 5x the going price for a 1TB drive (I kid you not).
Click to expand...

This is standard practice for many vendors.

Wait until you hit the really high end where not only do you have to pay a premium for the drive but you pay for software by the capacity. A simple 3TB upgrade for a single array can cost upwards of £30k alone.
 
Get yourself some quotes from EMC as well and see if you can use them to bring those quotes down. Or indeed get a Clariion cheaper.
 
Trojan said:
Get yourself some quotes from EMC as well and see if you can use them to bring those quotes down. Or indeed get a Clariion cheaper.
Click to expand...

At that price point you'd be looking at an AX4.... ugh!

Could look at a nice little NS120 (if it still exists by the time you buy...)
 
Guest2 said:
We are going fully virtual in the future and enquired about HP SAN Storage from our suppliers.
Click to expand...

'fully virtual' - I think you need to look in more detail about the systems you have and whether a virtual infrastructure is best for those sytems. I'm thinking particularly about database systems. Fully virtual is a great idea - in practice, it doesn't really work.

Have a look at some of the Dell Equallogic SAN units - we have one - works great.
 
Take a look at the Dell NX4, which is EMC rebranded.

You can stick to the 15k drives or use cheaper drives in it.

So for example you could have one shelf of fast storage for the vm's etc and maybe half a shelf for files etc that dont need to be accessed as quick.
 
brainchylde said:
'fully virtual' - I think you need to look in more detail about the systems you have and whether a virtual infrastructure is best for those sytems. I'm thinking particularly about database systems. Fully virtual is a great idea - in practice, it doesn't really work.

Have a look at some of the Dell Equallogic SAN units - we have one - works great.
Click to expand...

Working here brilliantly :)

The only stuff we dont have virtualised is our phone system (Cisco) and Citrix servers - they were virtualised but performance wasnt that great, so switched back to physical boxes.

Performance on database stuff (SQL and progress), file server, Exchange etc is superb
 
brainchylde said:
'fully virtual' - I think you need to look in more detail about the systems you have and whether a virtual infrastructure is best for those sytems. I'm thinking particularly about database systems. Fully virtual is a great idea - in practice, it doesn't really work.

Have a look at some of the Dell Equallogic SAN units - we have one - works great.
Click to expand...

Fully virtual, maybe in about 5+ years. At the moment we have just moved a secondary DC and our main SQL server to virtual - XenServer. Next will probably be our BES server, terminal services then exchange and other DC. The file server probably last when we have a tonne of money.
Its great that backing up a whole server only takes a few minutes and can be restored in a few minutes too.
As everyone has probably already figured i'm new to all this so everything is new (plus the fact im not the main systems admin, my boss is. I'm support but have been testing VM stuff)

Thanks all, i'll look into the Equallogic SAN
 
brainchylde said:
'fully virtual' - I think you need to look in more detail about the systems you have and whether a virtual infrastructure is best for those sytems. I'm thinking particularly about database systems. Fully virtual is a great idea - in practice, it doesn't really work.

Have a look at some of the Dell Equallogic SAN units - we have one - works great.
Click to expand...

+1 for equallogic san's. They have great replication between them, but may require some extra fee's for setup help and optimization.

If you just want raw storage and can do with cheap 7200rpm sata, nexsan do a satabeast for 21k which is 42tb's of storage..
 
Hello Everybody
A storage area network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices to servers in such a way that the devices appear as locally attached to the operating system. A SAN typically is its own network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the regular network by regular devices.
 
cbrown said:
Hello Everybody
A storage area network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices to servers in such a way that the devices appear as locally attached to the operating system. A SAN typically is its own network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the regular network by regular devices.
Click to expand...

Thank you mister obvious, I think you missed the point of this thread *claps*

Also look at Sun (Now Oracle :() Storage. We got a bunch of these at work and I really like them, much better than NetApp...
 
unp|dissy said:
+1 for equallogic san's. They have great replication between them, but may require some extra fee's for setup help and optimization.

If you just want raw storage and can do with cheap 7200rpm sata, nexsan do a satabeast for 21k which is 42tb's of storage..
Click to expand...

Hmmm. Our file server is currently 1.36TB so I dont think 42tb's will be needed!

Maybe 5 or 10 to be safe
 
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