SAN replacement - recommendation

[bede]

We have recently had a bad experience with a QNAP SAN box and do not trust it any more (following bad firmware update that could not be fixed by the QNAP engineers).

 

It has taken some time to get things back using a 'lifeboat' SAN box (older Intel running Openfiler), and fortunately we had 2 other (Openfilers) that have carried us through.

 

So now we are looking for a replacement and it seems to come to these three (not in any order) from our various contacts:

1. HP P2000
   
2. DotHill AssuredSAN 3530
   
3. QSAN S300Q
   

(each would have 6x600Gb fast SAS disks, and 6x3TB 'ordinary' SAS disks, configured in RAID6)

 

The QNAP was running iSCSI but our preference is towards a direct SAS solution as we only have 3 VMware hosts and do not anticipate that changing for the foreseeable. It would appear that SAS would provide better performance etc

 

We would welcome the benefit of others' experience in using any of the above (or something very similar) and in particular support should there have been need to use it.

Many thanks in advance

[Colindean2000]

Like you we had an awful time with QNAP, we had 2 QNAP sans connected via iSCSI to our host servers with 10gb Ethernet, performance was fantastic, what wasn't fantastic was the random lookups of the iSCSI connection which could only be rectified by rebooting the QNAPs, they'd occasionally reboot themselves as well!

 

Anyhow we were fortunate to be able to return them and were recommended QSAN, so we went for a P600Q-D424 and a P600Q-S212, the D424 has 24 x 900gb 10k SAS HDDs in it and the S212 has 8 x 3TB Sata HDDs in it, we use the D424 to run our virtualised network between two hosts in a cluster and we have a secondary cluster of two older servers connected to the S212 for Hyper V replication in case of failure of the main system

 

Have to say, very impressed with the performance of the QSANs, possibly not as blazing fast as the QNAPs seemed to be but very very close, we've got them with 10gig Raid controllers, we've have them about 7 months and just had one of the raid modules fail reporting the sas expander reaching a temperate of 172 degree Celsius, replaced under warranty, was easy to replace and we could do it live as its hot swappable (luckily this was on the D424 which has dual controllers)

 

I hope that helps? Feel free to ask anything about them I haven't mentioned

[jamesrhart]

Hi,

 

We went with a Nimble SAN (been in for about a year on 3 x Hyper V Nodes running about 50-60 VMs) and its been fantastic and flawless, can't recommend it enough, feel free to PM if you want more information.

 

James

[ThinkLogic]

Hi,

 

Have you considered the new Lenovo-EMC VNX5150 SAN or the IBM V3700 both are cracking SANs, would you be up for a conference call with one of the Lenovo solutions architects who will listen and build a proposal around your exact requirement.

 

As Lenovo Gold Partners we can also offer you a proof of concept and evaluation hardware to test. We would love to help out if you are happy to engage with us.

 

Some info below on the new kit:-

 

EMC SAN

http://www.lenovo.com/shop/emea/content/pdf/Storage/VNX5150/Lenovo_EMC_VNX5150_Data_Sheet.pdf

IBM SAN

Introducing IBM Storwize V3700 - YouTube

IBM Storwize V3700 - Effortless Management - YouTube

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/tsd03157usen/TSD03157USEN.PDF

 

Please let me know if I can be of any further help.

 

Kind regards

Iain

[bede]

Thanks for your prompt and detailed reply, and also to others for their suggestions.

Our QNAP experience sounds very familiar - random reboots - very frustrating.

 

Further digging suggests that the HP P2000 is in fact a DotHill underneath.

 

We were unsure about QSAN initially but increasingly interested in that, and your positive comments reinforce that. QSAN have been recommended as the replacement (500-P20) with options for dual controller and additional SAS disks.

[m25man]

Hi,

 

We went with a Nimble SAN (been in for about a year on 3 x Hyper V Nodes running about 50-60 VMs) and its been fantastic and flawless, can't recommend it enough, feel free to PM if you want more information.

 

James

 

Definitely go with Nimble as I bought a load of shares in them and they nosedived.... Could do with a few more schools switching to Nimble so as to add a bit to my pension fund!

 

Nimble are built on a Supermicro hardware chassis.