Buying a new SAN (Upgrading from HP MSA2312i)

[chazzy2501]

My Trusty 2312i has almost used up all it's warranty and I'm doing a hardware refresh.

 

I've got similar priced quotes with similar storage for the following:

 

All are iscsi have dual everything and a 5 year NBD warranty.

 

1, Fujitsu DX100 S3

2, Dell Powervault MD3200i

3, HP P2000 G3 iSCSi

4, NetApp E2724

 

I also got quotes for an EMC VNX 5100 and Dothill 3000 but they were £2000 more..

 

The netapp has 10Gigabit but this doesn't weigh in for me.

 

Anyone have opinions on choice?

Edited July 14, 2014 by chazzy2501
no question

[HPlum78]

I have just replaced my HP SAN MSA1550 (I will add that this was a good SAN although come with its own interesting issues!) fibre setup with a HP Store Virtual Setup and I can say for the price I got it at its a very good system and now have a 3 tier 7k, 10k and 15k setup. Although if I had the money I would have gone for a 3PAR but hay we have to heat this place during the winter!

[seawolf]

Might I suggest taking a look at the Sun ZS3-2 hybrid SAN/NAS arrays. Fantastically flexible, reliable, and very fast. I have the previous gen model and it is awesome.

 

Oracle muscles way into seat atop the benchmark with hefty ZFS filer

 

Nimble is also worth a look. If you're on a tight budget I would consider a TruNAS hybrid SAN.

 

I'm strongly in favour of hybrid storage solutions with at least RAID 6 capabilities, although I believe ZFS RAID is superior.

[Sylv3r]

We've just gone for a Dell Powervault MD3200i although it's still in the box so can't comment on what it's like.

[xenonive]

Might be worth looking that the new HP 4335 hybrid SAN , I've got a couple to put in this summer but on paper look good

[glennda]

Have a look at nimble, if you want more info on them (they are amazing!!) I can put you in touch with the right people.

 

Personally i wouldnt use a ZFS array with a barge pole!

[dfergusson]

3, HP P2000 G3 iSCSi

 

HP has in the last 6 months brought out a replacement for P2000 G3, with the following G4 MSA 1040 and the MSA 2040.

[pcstru]

Personally i wouldnt use a ZFS array with a barge pole!

Probably wise, it would certainly seem to fall outside of spec...

[seawolf]

Personally i wouldnt use a ZFS array with a barge pole!

 

Any legitimate technical reasons for that, or do you just think RAID 5 is the beez neez?

[glennda]

Any legitimate technical reasons for that, or do you just think RAID 5 is the beez neez?

 

Raid 5 is not beeze neeze at all I'm not saying that, just i wouldn't use ZFS - with a ZFS array the more data you put on it the worse performance you get due to fragmentation

[seawolf]

Raid 5 is not beeze neeze at all I'm not saying that, just i wouldn't use ZFS - with a ZFS array the more data you put on it the worse performance you get due to fragmentation

 

You get fragmentation with every file system, but ZFS has some very clever ways to handle it.

 

Datacenter Acceleration - Mike La Spina - The ZFS Attack on Disk Fragmentation

 

Of course, if you like filling your RAID arrays right up to the brim causing performance issues with just about any system and making a URE very likely on disk failure - sure go right ahead.

 

I don't disagree with your statement about Nimble being good, but I have questions about your experience with ZFS. Is it only theoretical or a bad experience from a home brew rig?

[seawolf]

Double posts...grrr Edited July 15, 2014 by seawolf

[glennda]

You get fragmentation with every file system, but ZFS has some very clever ways to handle it.

 

Datacenter Acceleration - Mike La Spina - The ZFS Attack on Disk Fragmentation

 

Of course, if you like filling your RAID arrays right up to the brim causing performance issues with just about any system and making a URE very likely on disk failure - sure go right ahead.

 

I don't disagree with your statement about Nimble being good, but I have questions about your experience with ZFS. Is it only theoretical or a bad experience from a home brew rig?

 

I'm not saying all ZFS arrays are bad - some are very good in background defragging and organising data nicely. The problem is the devices which don't do it nicely!

 

I'm not 100% Nimble - Like I do with any customer you need to understand what they want to do from the device and how they need to do it, the performance requirements before choosing the device. I work with HP Lefthand (Some MSA's), Nimble, DotHill/EMC/NetApp/Open-E (Software SAN) and both Dell ranges and have done the tech training on Nimble/Dell (Equallogic only)/Open-E (not on the new ZFS based system though)

 

I have never worked with the Oracle devices they may well be fantastic but personally I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole - just like I wouldn't dell servers, one of those IT things imho everybody has stuff the wouldn't use and stuff they would use and not everyone has to agree!

[seawolf]

I'm not saying all ZFS arrays are bad - some are very good in background defragging and organising data nicely. The problem is the devices which don't do it nicely!

 

I'm not 100% Nimble - Like I do with any customer you need to understand what they want to do from the device and how they need to do it, the performance requirements before choosing the device. I work with HP Lefthand (Some MSA's), Nimble, DotHill/EMC/NetApp/Open-E (Software SAN) and both Dell ranges and have done the tech training on Nimble/Dell (Equallogic only)/Open-E (not on the new ZFS based system though)

 

I have never worked with the Oracle devices they may well be fantastic but personally I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole - just like I wouldn't dell servers, one of those IT things imho everybody has stuff the wouldn't use and stuff they would use and not everyone has to agree!

 

Yes, they are fantastic and widely used where maximum performance and reliability are required. I generally reserve the comments of "wouldn't touch it with a barge pole" for things I actually have (repeatedly very bad) experience with - otherwise, I would likely be putting my foot where my mouth is.

[Disease]

I have just had a New Nimble CS220 delivered along with a new Dell Blade system.

 

It's our first real proper storage/Visualization system, always used cheap NAS before.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Disease

[NimbleStorage]

Happy to help if you have any questions.

[Tallwood_6]

Be using a Nimble CS220 for just shy of a year and can highly recommend there arrays if your budget can stretch that far.

[JonThompson]

+1 for the Dell MD3200i. We've had one for about 2 years now and we use it as a backup device. Very solid and the Dell software is fairly easy to use as well. The 3200i also has separate management cards so it can be managed out of band and your data is kept separate.