SANs

[timbo343]

Ill keep this simple, I was wondering if anyone has heard or used a DotHill SAN before? If so what are they like?

[Sylv3r]

Never used them but a reseller I was talking too said they were good. Big in the US more than the UK.

 

It wasn't just a sales pitch as I was already committed to buying a Dell SAN after initially considering EMC.

[xenonive]

I know two schools that use them and they have no complaints about them , unless you have feature you require most SANs just work and do there job well

[timbo343]

Thanks guys. Anyone else used them? @Xenonvie are you able to share those schools and arw they on here? Do you know what kinda drives they have in them? 7.2k, 10k or 15k?

[seawolf]

Any particular reason you are looking at a DotHill SAN? Is someone pitching one to you at the moment? Not that there is something wrong with them, but just wondering since you don't seem to have the specs for them or know much about them.

 

If you provide your requirements and budget for a new SAN (if that is indeed why you are enquiring about it), then many of us here can give you some of advice based on our experience.

[xenonive]

I've sent you pm with contact details as the schools are not on here. I believe they have 15K drives in currently and looking to add SSD drives in the future.

[jamesrhart]

Just to say - make sure you check out Nimble (Flash Storage Solutions | Nimble Storage) - we have a CS240 here and it's fantastic!

[Gibson335]

I think HP SANs were pretty much re-badged DotHill a few years back. We never had a problem with ours, but I understand from our supplier that their support can be less than helpful at times.

[timbo343]

I cant say too much but budgets come into it.

[sonofsanta]

Heard of them a few years back when we were looking into SANs, so they've been around a while, and I was told at the time (albeit by the reseller) that they are often rebadged by bigger brands, as @Gibson335 says.

 

No experience of them though - we went with a fibre SAN instead of that iSCSI SAN, as 10GbE was still extortionate at the time. I'd go 10GbE iSCSI now, though...

[timbo343]

Just to bring this back to life, what are peoples thoughts on the Dell VRTX boxes? Would you stay with the traditional setup, keeping Hosts and SANs seperate?

[seawolf]

The Dell VRTX is an interesting system. Quite innovative and possibly quite cost-effective as well as sporting very good performance. It does introduce a single point of failure, but it also reduces the complexity of configuring hosts, SAN, and SAN network. That could reduce costs quite a bit for schools or businesses without the in-house expertise to do that.

 

I'm talking theory here rather than practice; though, as I haven't tried out a VRTX (yet) and I don't personally know anyone who has. So, if you do consider going that route you will want to get some references to speak to those who are using one and hear it from the horses mouth.

[timbo343]

OK another question...

 

12x 1tb discs at 7.2k or 12x 600Gb discs at 10K.

[dgsmith]

Just to bring this back to life, what are peoples thoughts on the Dell VRTX boxes? Would you stay with the traditional setup, keeping Hosts and SANs seperate?

 

We just confirmed our order for Visualization last week, to go ahead in the summer using a Dell VRTX. We were VERY impressed when we saw a demo of it, although I was very disappointed we weren't able to progress the order with the supplier who actually went out of their way to give us a demo, however it was pretty much sold to us once we saw it in operation. We went with 2x M520 blades and 12x 900GB HDDs (so basically half the chassis capacity).

 

Obviously can't comment on the VRTX usability itself as it's still on order although the single point of failure internally has been addressed by Dell (unless of course you consider the chassis itself to be a single point of failure.. i.e. a fire!, as opposed to having the physical hosts and SAN in actually different locations). Not really an issue though with a decent backup solution in place, although perhaps maybe a little inconvenient if there was an actual fire and the whole lot was destroyed! We did say though that we'd have a lot more worries to concern ourselves with if there was a fire (and the backups would be on the other side of the school anyway).

 

I would really suggest anyone to at least consider the VRTX, but ideally try and see it in operation. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, nor will it be suitable for all setups, but for us it certainly was (and the 40% cost difference vs a traditional 2x physical host, separate SAN helped)!

[timbo343]

We just confirmed our order for Visualization last week, to go ahead in the summer using a Dell VRTX. We were VERY impressed when we saw a demo of it, although I was very disappointed we weren't able to progress the order with the supplier who actually went out of their way to give us a demo, however it was pretty much sold to us once we saw it in operation. We went with 2x M520 blades and 12x 900GB HDDs (so basically half the chassis capacity).

 

Obviously can't comment on the VRTX usability itself as it's still on order although the single point of failure internally has been addressed by Dell (unless of course you consider the chassis itself to be a single point of failure.. i.e. a fire!, as opposed to having the physical hosts and SAN in actually different locations). Not really an issue though with a decent backup solution in place, although perhaps maybe a little inconvenient if there was an actual fire and the whole lot was destroyed! We did say though that we'd have a lot more worries to concern ourselves with if there was a fire (and the backups would be on the other side of the school anyway).

 

I would really suggest anyone to at least consider the VRTX, but ideally try and see it in operation. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, nor will it be suitable for all setups, but for us it certainly was (and the 40% cost difference vs a traditional 2x physical host, separate SAN helped)!

 

Whats the specs of the M520 blades? What at the rpm of the discs?

[dgsmith]

Whats the specs of the M520 blades? What at the rpm of the discs?

 

12x 900GB 2.5" SAS 10k drives and each blade has 2x Xeon E5-2450 v2, 2.50GHz with 64GB ram (and small flash storage).

 

We queried about 15k RPM drives but apparently the 10k ones are actually as good as 15k ones (I can't recall the given reason, but the explanation made sense) plus they were cheaper and meant we could go with the 2.5" option and only use half capacity than the 3.5k version and use all of it.

[glennda]

Got clients that use them as cheap sans for dr, never really stress tested. The HP P2000 is a rebadged dothill and is a low end san and pretty good.

 

Nimble sans are brilliant and they features they keep bringing out are brilliant!!

[nicholab]

Nimble have a great design if you looking at low end HP go for Dot Hill direct. Dot hill have some high density stuff that looks good.

[robjduk]

Dothill is sold by Stone and hear ok things about them. When I was quoted I was concerned about the speed of the disks they were trying to push on me. Anyway Dell came along and blew their quote out the water (seriously almost half the cost) so never went further.

[seawolf]

OK another question...

 

12x 1tb discs at 7.2k or 12x 600Gb discs at 10K.

 

Do you need storage capacity or speed? The 12 x 1TB option (7.2k) is SATA, so capacity could be easily upgraded relatively inexpensively. The 10k option will be SAS and you can't upgrade capacity so easy (900GB vs 600GB disks).

 

A hybrid-capable solution such as Nimble, Sun, or FreeNAS could give the best of both worlds by pairing high-capacity SATA drives with Flash read and write caches for speed. Our SAN is a hybrid and we get 50,000+ IOPS out of it.

[timbo343]

Our iops are a massive 300 when the system is in use. It shoots up to 1500 peak when backup exec runs.

Edited July 11, 2014 by timbo343

[Ephelyon]

@timbo343, might want to redact school name.

[nicholab]

Any pricing on nimble?

[timbo343]

I couldnt get any pricing on nimble it was a closed tender so had to go with the DotHill.

[seawolf]

Our iops are a massive 300 when the system is in use. It shoots up to 1500 peak when backup exec runs.

 

Is this on the Dot Hill SAN? What disks does it use, how many, and what RAID level. That kind of performance seems pretty woeful for a SAN.