CyberNerd Posted February 6, 2008 Posted February 6, 2008 Does anyone happen to know if the IBM DS3400 supports both SATA and SAS disks simultaneously in the same unit? The website says: Combination of 12 SAS or SATA 3.5" drives per enclosure I'm looking to set up a portion of a DS3400 with SAS for virtualisation, and a portion for SATA file serving, I cannot afford 100% SAS. Is this possible? http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/ds3000/ds3400/
torledo Posted February 6, 2008 Posted February 6, 2008 (edited) Does anyone happen to know if the IBM DS3400 supports both SATA and SAS disks simultaneously in the same unit? The website says: I'm looking to set up a portion of a DS3400 with SAS for virtualisation, and a portion for SATA file serving, I cannot afford 100% SAS. Is this possible? http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/ds3000/ds3400/ sorry, disk arrays don't normally support fc and sata in the same shelf - but i'm really not sure about this one. There don't appear to be seperate part numbers for the exp3000 expansion shelves meaning it may support true SAS/SATA intermix in the same shelf........how bizarre!!! Edited February 6, 2008 by torledo egg on my face 1
Oops_my_bad Posted February 6, 2008 Posted February 6, 2008 I've justy put this through my IBM configurator thing, only compatible internal storage that came up was SAS drives so I'm not sure why IBM's site is claiming it can do SATA too Cheapest place i've found for IBM SAS's is insight with catalyst pricing
CyberNerd Posted February 6, 2008 Author Posted February 6, 2008 Thanks chaps, A couple of hours later and I've drilled down through the manual, which is comprehensive. I finally found this: The DS3400 supports configurations of SAS or SATA disks, or a mix of both types of disk drives in the same enclosure. ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/systems/support/system_x_pdf/43w7847.pdf 1
FN-GM Posted February 6, 2008 Posted February 6, 2008 Would have thought so too, many Sans do such as dell.
torledo Posted February 7, 2008 Posted February 7, 2008 Thanks chaps, A couple of hours later and I've drilled down through the manual, which is comprehensive. I finally found this: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/systems/support/system_x_pdf/43w7847.pdf from a cost savings point of view it's handy that it supports mixing and matching in the same enclosure... But tread carefully, there may be a performance penalty from mixing drives with very different perforamnce characteristics in the same shelf. Have a word with you're IBM resellers' pre-sales storage people to see if there any caveats for doing it this way. 1
Geoff Posted February 7, 2008 Posted February 7, 2008 I found a review of the device, which might prove insightful. http://www.itpro.co.uk/storage/reviews/122020/exclusive-ibm-system-storage-ds3400-express.html Quite a positive review actually. 1
DMcCoy Posted February 7, 2008 Posted February 7, 2008 I suggest you price it to include both controllers, you also need to look at a pair of FC switches for redundancy - although you can do direct attached for a single host but that is often an unsupported configuration and limits options. What virtualization solution were you looking at? If it's not one of the more enterprise options then you will need think carefully about if/how multiple hosts will access the same LUN (I would assume windows would cope with shared images if you use it in a cluster). 1
CyberNerd Posted February 7, 2008 Author Posted February 7, 2008 I'll definitely be speaking to IBM for their recommendations. This unit will support direct FC connections with upto 4 hosts. We already have an IBM bladecenter so the thinking was that the FC switch will be cheaper if its integrated into the bladecenter. I doubt if dual FC switches will be possible on our budget, but the direct connection may work in emergency. Virtualisation is undecided, we have experience with free vmware on linux, we will also look at Citrix Xen, ESX and maybe free redhat Xen. The usual tossup between paying for good hardware vs paying for software.
DMcCoy Posted February 7, 2008 Posted February 7, 2008 I'll definitely be speaking to IBM for their recommendations. This unit will support direct FC connections with upto 4 hosts. We already have an IBM bladecenter so the thinking was that the FC switch will be cheaper if its integrated into the bladecenter. I doubt if dual FC switches will be possible on our budget, but the direct connection may work in emergency. Virtualisation is undecided, we have experience with free vmware on linux, we will also look at Citrix Xen, ESX and maybe free redhat Xen. The usual tossup between paying for good hardware vs paying for software. You will probably have to rule ESX out with direct attached. It is not a supported configuration and they will not help you if it goes wrong (plus you need to make sure everything else you have is on the rather limited HCL)
CyberNerd Posted February 7, 2008 Author Posted February 7, 2008 I'm going to include an FC switch in the costs, I guess I can always get another switch next year, and plan for esx then. A 10 port FC looks around £3.5k
Oops_my_bad Posted June 16, 2011 Posted June 16, 2011 Is anyone running a DS3400 (or a DS3x series) in a hyper-v failover configuration with 2 or more nodes? How did you configure the SAN? Specifically I' d like to know how must the SAN's drives be exposed to the 2 nodes? Thanks
PeteHopton Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 Why not buy some near line SAS (seagate constellation ES) they aren't much more than SATA these days and you get the SAS command set.
SYNACK Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 We have a 3500 that is configured like that with a mix of SAS and SATA which works really well, once you get it going (the LSI core can be a little squiffy). If you are getting SATA drives get the dual port variety if you can as they are faster.
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