Rackmounted, Blade, or hybrid?

[boomam]

Hi.
Im currentely deciding what direction to go in regards to server configuration/setup.
I do want a minimum, disregarding all our old servers which will do other tasks:
2 Domain controllers for redundancy
1 file server
1 backup file server.

Now, after some quick checking, over both of our networks, the total user data storage is under 200Gb, suprisingly.
With that in mind, plus the fact we have 2x 1Tb NASes, im a little bit stuck for what to do in regards to the new networks servers.

The three ideas/rough prices we've got are:

Rackmounted:
DC = 2x DL360s. Quad, 4Gb & 3x76Gb SAS RAID5.
FS = 1x DL360. Quad. 4Gb, 3x76Gb, MSA60 & 12x146Gb = 1752Gb, RAID5.
BackupFS = 1x DL360. Quad. 4Gb, 3x76Gb, MSA60 & 8x500Gb SAS = 4000Gb, RAID5.

Rough price of £11,600.

Hybrid:
C7000+accessories (GigE, PSU,Fan)
DC: 2x BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x76Gb
FS: BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x146Gb + Storage blade w/ 6x146Gb = 876Gb RAID5.
BackupFS = 1x DL360. Quad. 4Gb, 3x76Gb, MSA60 & 8x500Gb SAS = 4000Gb, RAID5.

Rough price of £13,800


Blade:
C7000+accessories (GigE, PSU,Fan)
DC: 2x BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x76Gb
FS: BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x146Gb + Storage blade w/ 6x146Gb = 876Gb RAID5.
Backup FS: 2x BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x146Gb + Storage blade w/ 6x146Gb = 1752Gb RAID5.

Rough price of £16,700.



Its a bit of a decision.
The Blades would be far more power efficient, easyier to manage (in theory), run cooler, take up less space, etc; BUT they cost more.
The rackmount offers far more bang for buck in regards to storage space, but is the storage space needed, considering current usage is under 200Gb on both networks?
The hybrid is a nice median between the two as it offers the advantages of both, with the v.large storage on the backup file server allowing for alot of backups compared with the backup file server on the Blade setup.


Thoughts, advice and opinions are more than welcome. .

[torledo]

Hi.
Im currentely deciding what direction to go in regards to server configuration/setup.
I do want a minimum, disregarding all our old servers which will do other tasks:
2 Domain controllers for redundancy
1 file server
1 backup file server.

Now, after some quick checking, over both of our networks, the total user data storage is under 200Gb, suprisingly.
With that in mind, plus the fact we have 2x 1Tb NASes, im a little bit stuck for what to do in regards to the new networks servers.

The three ideas/rough prices we've got are:

Rackmounted:
DC = 2x DL360s. Quad, 4Gb & 3x76Gb SAS RAID5.
FS = 1x DL360. Quad. 4Gb, 3x76Gb, MSA60 & 12x146Gb = 1752Gb, RAID5.
BackupFS = 1x DL360. Quad. 4Gb, 3x76Gb, MSA60 & 8x500Gb SAS = 4000Gb, RAID5.

Rough price of £11,600.

Hybrid:
C7000+accessories (GigE, PSU,Fan)
DC: 2x BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x76Gb
FS: BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x146Gb + Storage blade w/ 6x146Gb = 876Gb RAID5.
BackupFS = 1x DL360. Quad. 4Gb, 3x76Gb, MSA60 & 8x500Gb SAS = 4000Gb, RAID5.

Rough price of £13,800


Blade:
C7000+accessories (GigE, PSU,Fan)
DC: 2x BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x76Gb
FS: BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x146Gb + Storage blade w/ 6x146Gb = 876Gb RAID5.
Backup FS: 2x BL460c. Quad, 4Gb, 2x146Gb + Storage blade w/ 6x146Gb = 1752Gb RAID5.

Rough price of £16,700.



Its a bit of a decision.
The Blades would be far more power efficient, easyier to manage (in theory), run cooler, take up less space, etc; BUT they cost more.
The rackmount offers far more bang for buck in regards to storage space, but is the storage space needed, considering current usage is under 200Gb on both networks?
The hybrid is a nice median between the two as it offers the advantages of both, with the v.large storage on the backup file server allowing for alot of backups compared with the backup file server on the Blade setup.


Thoughts, advice and opinions are more than welcome. .

I'm not sure how a blade would run cooler when you start adding more blades, power output in such high density is a major cooling issue.

If you went with the 2U rackmount servers you can use the savings made to purchase a proper FC or iSCSI external storage array instead of the MSA60.
iSCSI would be a scalable and cheap proposition as you can add additional servers to the SAN without the cost of expensive server HBA's.

[localzuk]

I would go for a blade system and an iSCSI SAN for backup. And possibly another for FS too. This would give you complete flexibility for storage and expandability, whilst reducing the space taken up by the servers themselves.

Putting storage in a blade would be a bad way of doing it IMO, as it is a solution more suited to the actual processing rather than data itself.

[DMcCoy]

Power use is similar, blade centers make *huge* amounts of noise. You will probably need an electrician and some new IEC 60309 32a sockets. I think it's probably only worth going to blades if you are going to use 6 or more of the slots otherwise its a waste of space.

I have some blades here, they work well but there are limitations. For example you will sometimes have to add options (such as fibre channel) to the chassis taking up a module, even if you don't want it for all servers.

Management is similar except you now have an additional device to manage! The blades *and* the blade center

[boomam]

Hmm.

So the better option would be the rackmounted stuff?

Tbh, the blades are very tempting, but they do seem a little too expensive for what they offer.
I could cut out a large bulk of the rack mount costs by dropping the storage available on it, leaving me with a much larger budget for the smaller things.

[Athlona]

So Rackmounted servers win, what manufacturer are you looking into buying?

As I am also looking into replacing some old server too...

Thanks

[boomam]

HP.
We have HP servers already. And HP switches. Been impressed with them thus far.