New SAN Question

[Archipelego1]

Good afternoon all,

 

we're currently looking to make a decisions on a new SAN for our VM environment.

 

We have the following options :

 

NetApp FAS2552

Dell Equallogic 4210X

Dell Compellant 2020

 

All will have similar config in terms of 2 controllers and 24 drives.

 

Price wise, the Equallogic is the cheapest, followed by the NetApp, then the Compellant. Each step up this ladder increases the price by a couple of thousand.

 

I'm aware that Dell are looking to EOL the Equallogic range and with their recent aquisiion, may decide to do something with the Compellant range.

 

My question is though, does anyone use the above SANs and have any feedback?

 

We'll be running three hosts with initially 15 VM's (though this will change).

 

Also, as a follow up, what RAID level are people using. I'm currently split between 50 and 6.

 

Thanks

[Katy]

We don't use any of the three options (got a HP MSA2312 and a Hitatchi HUS110)

Also, as a follow up, what RAID level are people using. I'm currently split between 50 and 6.

We have RAID6 for everything except a LUN devoted to the SQL server, which ran RAID10 (although this has since been removed and converted to RAID6 as we got rid of the need for a local SQL server when our MIS went cloud hosted)

[Norphy]

I wouldn't bother with Equallogic any more. Dell are still selling them but after the acquisitions of EMC and Compellent, they're not developing them or releasing any new models. My account manager at Dell confirmed as much to me. It's a shame as the Equallogics I've used have been really good.

 

Write performance on RAID 6 is pretty poor, if your going to put anything write intensive on this SAN, I'd use RAID50