SAN Advice

[sidewinder]

Been getting a few quotes for a SAN, I've got an idea of which I'm more interested in than others, but I just wondered what people would recommend out of these. Or is there something better I should be looking at for our price point (upto £15k)

HP MSA2312i, 16x450GB SAS disks

HP MSA2012, 7x2Tb SATA disks (this is approx half the cost of the 2312i)

NetApp FAS2020A, 12x1Tb SATA

NexSAN Boy, 14x500GB SATA

I havent put prices down because they all come under our budget, its not too much of an issue.

I know that no-one can advise without knowing our requirements, but mostly it's just required for centralised file storage, so we can stop having fragmented storage across different servers.
Also VM storage is a possibility.
I've realised for our price point we arnt going to get masses of features such as dedupe (apart from netapp), but as long as there is some snapshotting capability that is probably enough.

Also, some suppliers have specced a seperate switch, others have said we could VLAN it on our existing HP 5406ZL. Is having the SAN on its own switch generally recommended for performance?

[andyrite]

EqualLogic arrays are very good. I have two now and very pleased. Bigger disks are not always the best option. Get the fastest discs you can afford.

If have loads of money get a dedicated switch for the ISCSI. Your 5406 should cope with the traffic if not.

[Domino]

If you want the MSA go for the 2312's

We've had to upgrade all our controllers to the 2312 model, as the crappy celeron processors in the 2012's would grind to a halt if two disks went at one time, forcing it to do two sets of rebuilding.

Bad news when they're your storage for all your VM's

The 2312s seem very good though, we've had no problems since, and the newest ones we've put in have been through hell unscathed

I take it you're talking iSCSI rather than fibre? Depends on the switch, but you shouldn't have much in the way of issues just having it vlan'd out separate

[teejay]

I think in the list above, you've got different technologies there, thats why you are getting such a variation in price. The 2312i is a SAN for connecting to servers for iSCSI use, the 2012 is a drive bay chassis, the NetApp is a NAS/SAN device and the NexSan is an iSCSI SAN device.
If you want to use it so that the shares are hosted directly on the storage, the you need a NAS, if you want to connect the storage to the servers the you need a SAN device, if you want to do both you need a Unified Storage device.
I presume from your post you actually need to do both, in which case look at the NetApp, Equalogic from Dell, and my particular recommendation the Sun S7000 series.

[sidewinder]

Ah thats good to know, wasnt sure of the differences between the 2 apart from the 2312 being better...pretty much discounts the 2012 option then!

Yeah iSCSI, dont think we can stretch to fibre channel unfortunately

andy: i agree we should go for the fastest disks we can afford...but to get the capacity we want they'll have to be SATA really. The one quote with SAS is the most expensive (unsurprisingly) and offers about 7tb...meaning we'd probably have filled them up in a year

[sidewinder]

I think in the list above, you've got different technologies there, thats why you are getting such a variation in price. The 2312i is a SAN for connecting to servers for iSCSI use, the 2012 is a drive bay chassis, the NetApp is a NAS/SAN device and the NexSan is an iSCSI SAN device.
If you want to use it so that the shares are hosted directly on the storage, the you need a NAS, if you want to connect the storage to the servers the you need a SAN device, if you want to do both you need a Unified Storage device.
I presume from your post you actually need to do both, in which case look at the NetApp, Equalogic from Dell, and my particular recommendation the Sun S7000 series.

The 2012 confusion is caused by whats being specified on the quotes. I can only go on what has been quoted, I have presented the same requirements to every company. Hence why I wanted a second opinion

I do definately need a SAN, no need for NAS. Hadn't actually realised the netapp did both. Would you recommend a particular company to quote for an S7000?

[andyrite]

Depends what load you are putting on your disks. The last thing you want is for the disks been unable to keep up with demand. I had that issue before and everything just grinds to a halt.

[sidewinder]

Well our main file server runs on SATA disks and is fine...but there will be the additional load of VM's...which of course will benefit from quicker disks

[Domino]

VMs run fine on SATA disks (depending on load of course) - the main bottleneck would be the controller.

We've a mix of SATA and SAS enclosures here, allowing stuff that requires quick access to have it, but allowing us to save money on the stuff that doesn't.

With the MSA's you can also mix SATA and SAS drives in the same enclosure - as long as they're in seperate logical disks. Its not something we've done but its definitly workable - so maybe you could go half and half is moneys an issue but you want to be sure you'll have the high performance option?

[Hebdenlad]

what are your timelines on this? we've got some new stuff coming out soon that should be ideal for you if you're looking at 7TB+ in a short space of time. Plus it will be an ideal platform for all of your data and VMs.

cheers,

Phil

[sidewinder]

Hi Phil, we're aiming to get it deployed over the summer but the earlier the better really!

[Hebdenlad]

give me a call - 07793 314 666

[Duke]

Would you recommend a particular company to quote for an S7000?

Talk to Andy Trevor at Cutter Project (linescanner on here) or Andy Paton from WTL (apaton on here). Both excellent guys with a very good knowledge of the S7000 stuff. We've got a Sun 7410 and I would very strongly recommend you look at the S7000 stuff, Phil will get you sorted out.

[nicholab]

Data core do a product called sanmelody which you sit on a standard server.

[SDM01]

We have a EqualLogic array here and have been pleased with it. if all goes well should get a second one this year.