Need more storage for servers - What to buy?!

[maxrebo]

Currently we have 3 VMware hosts with local storage for our VM`s and were at the point now where we need more storage, so whats the best route to take? Buy a SAN and transfer all the datastores to this or buy more disks for the servers and continue with locally attached storage?

 

If a San, Can anyone recommend one up to the £4-5k mark?

[Norphy]

You're not going to get a SAN worth having for £5k. You could quite easily spend that on the iSCSI fabric, let alone the actual storage device.

 

If £5k is all you've got to spend, expand your local data stores.

Edited March 15, 2017 by Norphy

[mjk]

You're not going to get a SAN worth having for £5k. You could quite easily spend that on the iSCSI fabric, let alone the actual storage device.

 

If £5k is all you've got to spend, expand your local data stores.

 

 

^ This.

Just one of our FC switches cost more than your budget, and we have one for redundancy.

 

Have you considered cloud storage?

[localzuk]

How much space are you talking about? Are you wanting redundancy? What fabric are you thinking to connect it up (FC, iSCSI - if so, how fast 1Gbit, or 10Gbit, and do you have a compatible switch for that speed already)?

[maxrebo]

^ This.

Just one of our FC switches cost more than your budget, and we have one for redundancy.

Have you considered cloud storage?

 

Ahh ok, Yeah thought it might be on the cheap side, I will look into building up our server storage then

 

thanks

[Oaktech]

You aren't going to get a whole one for that...

 

You can get a storage array for that, but you'll need to spend about the same again filling it with disks, buying a fabric/switch with deep packet buffers and then interconnects, even if you can go with DA cables.

 

I'd just whack some more WD red in what you've got unless you can make the case for more money.

[MYK-IT]

I am not saying these suit your specific needs / specifications... but may be an option...

 

Server Source - Europe's Leading provider of Refurbished Dell PowerEdge and PowerVault servers

 

Dell MD3200 Storage Array

12 x 4TB NL SAS HDD

 

Front Bezel

Dual 6Gps Controllers

Redundant PSU

12 x 4TB NL SAS HDD

Rackmount kit

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Mission Critical 24/7 & 4HR

 

Dell Price: £11,500.00

Our Price: £4,595.00

 

Dell MD3220 DAS SAN

24 x 300Gb 15K SAS HDD

 

Front Bezel

Dual 6Gbps Controllers

Redundant PSU

24 x 300Gb SAS HDD

Rackmount Kit

3Yrs Professional Support for IT

Mission Critical 24/7 & 4Hr

 

Dell Price: £8,500.00

Our Price: £3,495.00

[Norphy]

I don't think that either of those are actual SANs though, they're direct attached storage devices. At best, you'd be able to attach them to a server then install something like FreeNAS on it to act as an iSCSI header. Even then, you still need some kind of interconnect to attach it to your vHosts, whether fibre or iSCSI.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

For £2500 I could do you a HP MDS 600 with 70 x 400GB SAS Drives, plus a Proliant DL380 to link it to

 

That should be enough space!

[Oaktech]

I don't think that either of those are actual SANs though, they're direct attached storage devices. At best, you'd be able to attach them to a server then install something like FreeNAS on it to act as an iSCSI header. Even then, you still need some kind of interconnect to attach it to your vHosts, whether fibre or iSCSI.

 

Yeah, you're looking at about another 2 or 3k to get a pair of half decent switches/rear modules to support >1gbps/interconnects and server adapters.

[bossman]

@maxrebo

 

One of these filled with 8TB WD Reds will be more than sufficient and come in at around £5k on RAID 6 this will give you approx 80TB storage with 16TB used for protection.

 

See here: https://www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator

 

I have 3 of the RS3614x+ and have been running them for nearly 2 years now, ohh! btw you get 5 years warranty with them.

Edited March 15, 2017 by bossman

[richbrowncardiff]

We can't afford what's Deemed a "Proper" SAN so Also Synology RS3614XS+ been using for years and always worked exceptionally well for staff and Student Data. We use WD RE (Now "Gold") Data centre class disks. We use 10gbps Card connected to a standard 10gbps switch and use ISCSI to Present to our servers. Not saying its the best solution out there but works well for us. Planning on using Additional units for CSV to put our VM's on too (with SSD's) they also do High availability (Active + passive) which works well enough.

[Mistert89]

Synology for us too. When we found the features available at their price point, we were surprised more didn't use them....

[richbrowncardiff]

^ This.

Just one of our FC switches cost more than your budget, and we have one for redundancy.

 

Have you considered cloud storage?

 

Out of interest what SAN and switches are you using and for how many users ? (I'm really interested in how others have their storage setup)

Cheers

[mjk]

Out of interest what SAN and switches are you using and for how many users ? (I'm really interested in how others have their storage setup)

Cheers

I think it's a pair of brocade fibrechannel switches for an IBM V7000. 2000 students and staff ( we have another 3000 adult students, and another 3000 parents with accounts but only occasional access)

[CAWJames]

Equalogic PS6100X here with a full compliment of 900GB disks for 14TB of RAID 10'ed useable storage. iSCSI with its own switch. That's a baby SAN and that was quadruple your budget Look at drive shelfs and storage spaces, or just fill your empty slots with new disks, buy decent WD drives and get the caddies on ebay

[PotNoodleTech]

What servers are they, and what disks are in them? I'd think seriously about just replacing all the actual drives in the servers with much bigger drives. That will be your cheapest, best value option - just the price of disks and a little bit of work for you transferring the VMS off each host and upgrading the drives.

 

As mentioned above, the Synology Kit is really good as NAS storage, they're not really a SAN but they come close and are cheap, fast and reliable. I've got two I use as backup targets.

 

The third option is DAS - Fitting 12GB HBA card in each host and an appropriate sized 24 bay or 48 bay disk tray. Something like a Dell MD3200/3420 This can work out really good value as it's cheap and many (including me) would argue faster and more reliable than a SAN. Depending on the make/model of the disk tray and controllers you may find the "storage tray" can be shared across all three hosts to make it very "SAN like".

 

So theres a few options for you!

[RobFuller]

What servers are they, and what disks are in them? I'd think seriously about just replacing all the actual drives in the servers with much bigger drives. That will be your cheapest, best value option - just the price of disks and a little bit of work for you transferring the VMS off each host and upgrading the drives.

 

As mentioned above, the Synology Kit is really good as NAS storage, they're not really a SAN but they come close and are cheap, fast and reliable. I've got two I use as backup targets.

 

The third option is DAS - Fitting 12GB HBA card in each host and an appropriate sized 24 bay or 48 bay disk tray. Something like a Dell MD3200/3420 This can work out really good value as it's cheap and many (including me) would argue faster and more reliable than a SAN. Depending on the make/model of the disk tray and controllers you may find the "storage tray" can be shared across all three hosts to make it very "SAN like".

 

So theres a few options for you!

 

DAS is a very good option to make a Hyper-Converged setup, this is the way forward in my eyes.

VMware have there own product vSAN which might be worth researching into, Microsoft's equivalent is Storage Spaces Direct.

[localzuk]

I'd suggest that SANs are unnecessary in a school - there's just no need for that level of spend.

 

I'd say look at a NAS instead. We're running QNAP NAS's here filled with 2TB SSDs. Faster than a SAN, much cheaper than a SAN etc...

 

You can handle redunandancy in various ways also.

[PotNoodleTech]

DAS is a very good option to make a Hyper-Converged setup, this is the way forward in my eyes.

VMware have there own product vSAN which might be worth researching into, Microsoft's equivalent is Storage Spaces Direct.

 

Agree with you. Worth mentioning that vSAN is very expensive optional extra regarding per host licencing costs, whereas Storage Spaces is free with the O/S.

[maxrebo]

What servers are they, and what disks are in them? I'd think seriously about just replacing all the actual drives in the servers with much bigger drives. That will be your cheapest, best value option - just the price of disks and a little bit of work for you transferring the VMS off each host and upgrading the drives.

 

As mentioned above, the Synology Kit is really good as NAS storage, they're not really a SAN but they come close and are cheap, fast and reliable. I've got two I use as backup targets.

 

The third option is DAS - Fitting 12GB HBA card in each host and an appropriate sized 24 bay or 48 bay disk tray. Something like a Dell MD3200/3420 This can work out really good value as it's cheap and many (including me) would argue faster and more reliable than a SAN. Depending on the make/model of the disk tray and controllers you may find the "storage tray" can be shared across all three hosts to make it very "SAN like".

 

So theres a few options for you!

 

Thanks everyone for the feedback,

The servers are Dell Poweredge R720`s, SAS Disks.

Reading the reviews on the Synology NAS drives this seems to be a very good option that I will look into, Would you recommend these to use for a Datastore, moving a few VM`s off my hosts to this might be an option.

[RobFuller]

Also worth looking at QNAP as a good comparison to Synology, we have several units of theres for iSCSI targets for DPM backups have been very reliable and support very reasonable as well.

[bossman]

@maxrebo

 

Our Hyper-V hosts are Dell R710s with 196GB RAM in each with 2 x 15k SAS drives mirrored and connected via 2 x GB switches to 2 x Synology units with with 4 x 500GB SSDs and 8 x 4TB WD Reds units are HA configured and backups are to another Synology unit which backs up to the cloud.

 

We have 20 VMs running various Services and they have been solid.

 

Storage on the 2 HA configured Synology units is 24TB RAID 6

 

Storage on the Backup Synology with 12 x 4TB WD Reds is 32TB, more storage could be added at anytime with a secondary unit which would just plug in.

 

Never looked back as @localzuk has mentioned SANs are no longer cost viable in these cost cutting days.

[mjk]

I'd suggest that SANs are unnecessary in a school - there's just no need for that level of spend.

 

You should probably justify that with schools under X users.

Some large schools and MAT's have in excess of 5000 users.

[localzuk]

You should probably justify that with schools under X users.

Some large schools and MAT's have in excess of 5000 users.

If they are centralising that data then maybe a SAN would be a possibility. 5000 users sounds like a lot, sure, but we are odd in education - concurrent users is usually a lot less than that. We have 1600 users in our MAT, but at peak only half use the network at the same time.