Looking for a new San

[Marshall_IT]

I'm looking for recommendations please.

Good support is essential!

 

Requirement:

 

3 hyper-v hosts 12 VMs

2 SQL databases (1 sims)

Sharepoint and other websites (won't be hosting vle soon)

Around 1tb of user data and 1tb of shared drives.

No exchange.

 

I've used hp, dell and Qsan. Had bad experience with ho's first gen sans and bad service from hp before.

Dell has always been great but my current San is just end of life now, had 2 controller replacements and 4 disks in the last 12 months.

I only had Qsan for 12 months in my old job but had no issues with it.

 

I've heard good things about nimble storage but I haven't seen it or had any pricing yet.

[FN-GM]

Is your Dell SAN an Equallogic? If not don't count them out, Equallogic are totally different to the old ones.

[Marshall_IT]

Is your Dell SAN an Equallogic? If not don't count them out, Equallogic are totally different to the old ones.

 

I've not discount dell out by any means! They only I way they would be is by price.

 

It's not an equal logic it's a power vault.

[SYNACK]

IBM do sans also

[Norphy]

We have five Equalogic SANs of various ages on site. Performance is good, support has been fantastic when we've needed it and our next SAN will probably be an Equalogic.

[glennda]

Dell are actually in the process of merging compellant amd equalogic arrays. They are good the only major problem is when it comes to expansion, you don't buy a cheaper shelf you have to buy a new san and add to the group.

 

Personally I feel Equallogic is old tech now and they are seriously feeling the pinch from the likes of Nimble etc. Personally i've used dell/hp/dothill/ibm sans and the Nimble is by far the best of all of them, depending on performance required.

[m25man]

You should only buy a Nimble don't even consider anything else.

 

I don't have one, I have never owned one nor am I likely to.

 

I bought a lot of shares in NMBL then they took a dive, so need you all to buy into the Nimble is best idea so I can get my pension topped up, thanks.

[DMcCoy]

Here's hoping Nimble isn't Edugeeks next Sun 7000...

[Marshall_IT]

Sun 7000?

[DMcCoy]

Something of a bandwagon in the early SAN days of Edugeek, I had an EMC Clariion CX300 at the time, having jumped at SANs even earlier!

 

Sun introduced a unified stoage system, the 7000s, and at certain times had a BOGOF offer on. Lots of people got them.

Sun was bought by Oracle and it was all downhill from there.

 

 

I have no preferred vendor, all I suggest is that you be careful with requirements and don't always go with something because everyone else has. And with SANs remember snapshots aren't backup, replication isn't backup, and if it's not offline it's not backup. If you want storage, make sure your backup is up to it too!

[DMcCoy]

Oh, as for recommendations based on past experience, the EMC was ok, if a little slow, but I really liked FC. A HP P2000 was actually fine (but also a budget model), but I'd avoid the P4000s (at least the current models) had a few bad experiences there

 

Edit:

 

EMC support was fine, but expensive and you *needed* maintenance.

HP was terrible support.

Edited July 30, 2014 by DMcCoy

[m25man]

Here's hoping Nimble isn't Edugeeks next Sun 7000...

 

Sadly the word "sheep" sprang to mind... The desire by some people to build school networks with more resilience than Amazons AWS does make me chuckle sometimes.

I have plenty of sites running 3 node hyper-v clusters using sub £10k SANs that have never had a minutes downtime.

 

Never mind, burn the budget regardless as it keeps people in jobs and salesmen driving BMWs which is always good for the economy.

[PotNoodleTech]

Sadly the word "sheep" sprang to mind...

 

Sheep mocked by the shepherd that guides his flock towards nimble grass?

 

The Sun 7000 was well under 10k actually and it did loads of "amazing stuff" that other sans anywhere near the price point couldn't. I can see the resemblence to nimble really.

[jamesrhart]

We went with Nimble, haven't had any issues and would highly recommend it!

[Snuffkins]

We went with Nimble as well. Can't fault it at all so far. Performance is very good, support is fantastic, very proactive. Setup is nice and easy. We moved from a Sun 7000, which i can honestly say we never had a problem with during it's life.

[Rodan]

The statement about Compellent/Equalogic expansion is just plain wrong. Expasion for Compellents is on a per disk basis and if you fill up then you buy a new shelf not a new array. With the equalogic I have less experience but it's probably needing to buy enough disk to act as the underlying RAID. The Equalogic will be made to behave like the Compellents going forward though.

 

Another thought is for that many hosts and VMs you don't necessarilly need a huge array how about a Dell MD3220 (or similar) SAS attached? Cheap initial outlay and expansion and will probably perform fine unless you're looking for whizzing bolt ons like progression and dedupe.

 

Never used a Nimble so i can't have an opinion about those. EMC stoarge roadmap is still quite dated and theres an alarming amount of bugs in their VNX range. HP, I'll echo what others have said and the support is terrible.

 

Also as a pedant, the SAN is the complete infrastructure (HBAs, switches, arrays) what we're all talking about is just the storage array

[glennda]

The statement about Compellent/Equalogic expansion is just plain wrong. Expasion for Compellents is on a per disk basis and if you fill up then you buy a new shelf not a new array. With the equalogic I have less experience but it's probably needing to buy enough disk to act as the underlying RAID. The Equalogic will be made to behave like the Compellents going forward though.

 

My comment was on the Equalogic, I've never used a Compellent unit with a shelf so I don't know. It would be good for Equalogic to do the shelf method as it can work out costly with Data expansion. HP support in my experience hasn't been to bad over the years, you just have to have a way of talking to them so they realise you know what you are talking about and say you have checked the things they are going to ask you to check before they ask you and they pretty much do what you want.

 

TBH we can rave about SANS all day long but you could potentially look at doing local storage cluster in Hyper-V I know there are users who have done this previously.

[RobD]

IBM do sans also

 

IBM re-badge netapp SAN's. If you can affort to go with netapp direct as you'll get access to their website and its goodies.

[Arthur]

I've heard good things about nimble storage but I haven't seen it or had any pricing yet.

Nimble have just released a couple of new SANs if you are still looking for one? The CS300 and CS500 are 50% faster than the models they replace (the CS200 and CS400).

 

www.storagereview.com/nimble_storage_cs300_and_cs500_hybrid_arrays_released

Edited August 12, 2014 by Arthur

[cpjitservices]

Dot Hill | Simple.Smart.Storage

 

or

 

NetApp - Network Storage, Cloud Computing, Big Data, Virtualization, Storage Efficiency

 

Both, have been affordable, stable, economic and easy to live with.

Edited August 13, 2014 by cpjitservices

[robjduk]

Love my Dell SANs and their support (not that much ever goes wrong). When it came to quotes they destroyed HP on a like for like. I also have an HP P4000 from 3 years back and their support has been a pain in the bottom.

[Oaktech]

For such a small estate I suggest the dell option... I can't help thinking that the offerings from almost any other provider would be overkill.

[nicholab]

What about going for the Dell VRTX instead?

[FN-GM]

What about going for the Dell VRTX instead?

 

I wouldn't recommend one for his situation. They don't have 10GB uplinks.

Edited August 19, 2014 by FN-GM

[nicholab]

They do if you add a pci card