SANs

Deathwish

Deathwish

Deathwish

Soldato
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
2,956
Location
Cold Scotland :(
Hi,

We are going be be getting a nice shiny SAN as soon as we choose a brand/model. Just wondering if anyone has any opinions on the following:

HP EVA4400
IBM Nseries 3600
Hitachi AMS 2100
Dell Equalogic PS5000XV

Top three are FC, Dell is iSCSI. Looking at putting Exchange onto it initially, then using it later for Virtualisation.

Any comments / opinions / ideas are welcomed :)
 
The 3600 is the NetApp 2500 right?

If so... my brief thoughts are as follows:

HP EVA4400 - meh

IBM Nseries 3600 - excellent but expensive licensing if you have a replicated site, requires some storage knowledge to use but all round v good.

Hitachi AMS 2100 - weak end of my knowledge, pass

Dell Equalogic PS5000XV - excellent if you have the correct type of workloads for iSCSI, very easy to use, solid at what it does...

Also, look at the EMC CX4 but buy it before the end of December if you can (end of year/end of quarter/old $ rates) or if you must, buy it end of March (end of quarter).

Think NetApp's end of quarter is January iirc.
 
Having worked on various HDS kit and seen a pre release of the 2xxx series I'd highly recommend them. They seem to be progressing very well. Looks like a cracking bit of kit from the spec sheet I saw.
 
morfmedia, that's good to know as it could be the one we purchase. Any more info on it would be appreciated.

Shaz, we don't have the budget for a CX4 (We checked). And yes the Nseries (NetApp) stuff is excellent but software is costly.

We are looking to get a single shelf for now, with either FC or SAS disks for our Exchange 2007 setup. We will be going virtualising next year so will be adding more capacity.
 
We have a Netapp 2500 for our DR, I agree they are expensive but they perform very well.

I've only been using netapp products for just over a year now but there is soo much to learn.

Andy
 
We use the IBM 3600 just put in another 4TB shelf, very good, reliable, but as people have said some licening can be expensive.

But the 3600 is limited to 1Gpbs throughput on the fibre, if you need faster, you need the next model up
 
Ah got my wires crossed, if you use multiple shelfs, then the data moved between them is limited to 1Gbps, but if you have a 4Gbps link in, and the information you need is not on the main shelf but on one of hte expansions it will be transfered initially at 1Gbps

Kimbie
 
Just been through a similar exercise myself, didn't look at Netapp or HDS as I was pushed for time and I had exploratory quotes on Netapp that looked pretty expensive when you factored in software. Looked at EVA, AX4, and EQL.

In both cases the standalone fibre based product (EVA and AX4) was approximately 25% cheaper than then EQL solution, *until* you factored in replication/DR, then costs spiralled. (In one configuration to *four* times the cost of the Equallogic!) I wanted the solution primarily to virtualise some of our current environment, but in future to move to SAN based replication rather than the host based replication that we currently use.

I wanted to go the fibre route as I was concerned about performance of iSCSI, but after doing lots of demos and research decided on the EQL PS5000XV. (Well, two of them actually!)

So far I'm really pleased with the setup, with four heavily loaded servers it's not breaking a sweat, and with a 6TB sata device (5000E I think?) costing around £12k DR should be pretty cheap to sort out.

The latest firmware also has the VMWare SRM agent built in which may be of use in the future.
 
Deathwish said:
morfmedia, that's good to know as it could be the one we purchase. Any more info on it would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Any particular questions you have? As Stolly says its extremely reliable kit. The older GUI's weren't the best but they're functional...

The newer kit is all active / active whereas some of the older stuff was in reality active / passive which caused issues when used with an ESX cluster....

I've recently recommended it to a friend and he's now going through the motions to purchase a 2xxx array.
 
I don't know really, this is our first SAN :D

Looking for anything such as "Oh, watch out for X" or "Make sure you get Y".

At the moment it will be a Fibre SAN, with Cisco 9124 switches, with only the Exchange server attached to begin with. And the management server. Looking at getting a single tray filled with SAS 15k rpm 450 GB disks. When we go VM we will get more obviously :)
 
I advise going for smaller drives (300GB 15k) but getting more of them. 450GB 15k drives have quite a premium attached today.

Nothing beats having more physical spindles for performance. Sure you have to pay for another tray but in the long run it helps.
 
Dell Equalogic PS5000XV gets my vote.

It's all about the spindles, ditch the faster disks.

Mind me asking what it is being used for, how many machines is it serving? Do you really need FC?
 
malds001 said:
Dell Equalogic PS5000XV gets my vote.

It's all about the spindles, ditch the faster disks.

Mind me asking what it is being used for, how many machines is it serving? Do you really need FC?
Click to expand...

^^ yes, consider the 10k drives.

You need to remember that 15k drive actually give only a small benefit over 10k drives

7.2k Drive - ~70 IOPS average
10k Drive - ~130 IOPS average
15k Drive - ~170 IOPS average

So a 15k drive can be a lot more expesive but only provide a little boost in performance. Consider taking that cost back, going to 10k drives but having more of them. More physical spindles means more guaranteed back end IOPS.
 
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