HP SAN

[truebluesteve]

Hi all

 

Our EMC Clariion SAN is about to come to the end of its warranty and EMC have quoted us £8000 to renew it. For a year!

 

Clearly they think this is more of a bargain than I do, so I have had a quote for a HP SAN for not an awful lots more money and with 5 years warranty. Does anyone here use them and have any comments - good or bad?

 

Thanks

 

Steve

[hallamke]

Sounds like EMC are doing their standard try it on by quoting close to a SAN replacement cost. We've got a Clarion AX4 which just dropped out. Got a quote from RM for £1250 for 1 year.

[truebluesteve]

Sounds like EMC are doing their standard try it on by quoting close to a SAN replacement cost. We've got a Clarion AX4 which just dropped out. Got a quote from RM for £1250 for 1 year.

 

Sounds cheap by comparison! Ours is a CX4 and when I spoke to my service manager at EMC recently over a complaint about the time it took to replace a faulty drive he said the renewal wouldn't be cheap. He wasn't wrong!

[seawolf]

Hi all

 

Our EMC Clariion SAN is about to come to the end of its warranty and EMC have quoted us £8000 to renew it. For a year!

 

Clearly they think this is more of a bargain than I do, so I have had a quote for a HP SAN for not an awful lots more money and with 5 years warranty. Does anyone here use them and have any comments - good or bad?

 

Thanks

 

Steve

 

If you're referring to the Lefthand SAN units from HP, they are pretty solid. I have seen some firmware issues in recent months (one where it was causing a rejection of passwords using mixed case - not good). Performance wise, they are good, but not great performers as they are usually configured RAID5 or RAID6. Also, expanding storage means basically buying another unit. I find the GUI a bit unintuitive, but many SANs can be like that. Support from HP seems pretty good on these units. Best thing to do is get a demo unit from HP to try out for yourself, that's what I did. They usually have them available within 2-3 weeks for trial.

 

Otherwise, I would recommend looking at the Oracle (Sun) 7120 or 7320. These have much greater expansion options and the 7120 has a built in 73GB write cache that gives a good performance boost. I know the Sun/Oracle units have gotten some criticisms on these forums, but most of this has been misplaced or was related to the early versions of fishworks back in 2009/10. I've used both the 7110 and 7320 and they have provided fantastic performance and reliability.

[truebluesteve]

If you're referring to the Lefthand SAN units from HP, they are pretty solid. I have seen some firmware issues in recent months (one where it was causing a rejection of passwords using mixed case - not good). Performance wise, they are good, but not great performers as they are usually configured RAID5 or RAID6. Also, expanding storage means basically buying another unit. I find the GUI a bit unintuitive, but many SANs can be like that. Support from HP seems pretty good on these units. Best thing to do is get a demo unit from HP to try out for yourself, that's what I did. They usually have them available within 2-3 weeks for trial.

 

Otherwise, I would recommend looking at the Oracle (Sun) 7120 or 7320. These have much greater expansion options and the 7120 has a built in 73GB write cache that gives a good performance boost. I know the Sun/Oracle units have gotten some criticisms on these forums, but most of this has been misplaced or was related to the early versions of fishworks back in 2009/10. I've used both the 7110 and 7320 and they have provided fantastic performance and reliability.

 

I don't have the quote details with me so I can't say which HP model it was, but thanks for the info.

[bart21]

I would go for netapp

[Roberto]

We've had good experience of Dell's Equallogic boxes. I will say though that all the 'reputable' manufacturers will charge a fortune to extend the warranty on their SANs past a certain point, like as not that just seems to be a fact of life.

 

You can get "3rd party" support up to the same standard for a lot less though, if you look around.

[mimic]

@truebluesteve there are many options with a SAN but if you're looking to replace it, you may want to look at exactly how your network is running and consider other options. Overland and Netapp are great for SAN but there are alternatives. If you are interested in options and quotes, pm me to discuss.

[twin--turbo]

We have a pair of twin shelf HP P4500 LeftHands.

 

Been fairly solid appart from a but that made a shelf reboot ever 200 and something days.

 

Rob

[NimbleStorage]

Having worked for EMC I can't defend the hike up the support tactic! Lots of other options!