SAN's - Who Has Them

[torledo]

Very interested in this thread, but £40K? no where near my budget.

So anyone any solutions for a REAL cheap alternative?

I have an ailing and full admin server, not enough tape backup and want to flatten the network. So going down the SANS route looks attractive but the budget is SMALL.

backing up a SANS. What do people do? expensive tapes? another SANS? if a disk solution, then what about 'offsite backup?

Alan

 

you can do cheap with iSCSI. The storevault option mentioned is a good choice, realtively simple to administer and £6K for a 1TB+ of storage is good value.

 

Have a look at also as Equalogic, we've have had one or two suppliers try and sell us this but we had the money to go down the Fiber Channel route instead.

 

As for backing up an iSCSI SAN, iSCSI backup tape libraries are available but they're no where near as popular as traditional SCSI or FC libraries. They're also quite expensive and require special software agents on the backup server - typically a SAN media option.

 

If you've already got a SCSI backup solution you can still backup data on an iSCSI SAN, just so long as you're backup server is connected via iSCSI to the SAN.

[fox1977]

Anyone here got an EMC AX4 or CX4. We have just been quoted 30k and 50k for them following a vmware capacity plan and disk analysis.

 

Is it worth plumping for the CX4 at 50k?

 

Anyone know what the EMC kit is like?

[ranj]

Anyone here got an EMC AX4 or CX4. We have just been quoted 30k and 50k for them following a vmware capacity plan and disk analysis.

 

Is it worth plumping for the CX4 at 50k?

 

Anyone know what the EMC kit is like?

DO you work in a school?

 

If so CX4's are an overkill. I have been doing some research and if you need the performance that CX4's are enterprise grade and will give you the all singing all dancing solution you are looking for.

[ssiruuk2]

We have a 4.5Tb SAN (Dell MD3000i with Dual Controllers) - 15 x 300gb SAS disks

 

I also have another one exactly the same with 3.5TB of SATA disks for backups. Got both for £6k.

 

Was a cancelled order so got it for a good price

[nicholab]

Lefthand networks SAN look good.

[ranj]

Lefthand certainly do look very good.

 

At our school I am currently looking at replacing some of our aged physical servers and migrating them to VMware. We currently use VMware on 2 separate hypervisor hosts but its only for web and proxy services.

 

I want to migrate our windows active directory, DNS, DHCP, print, exchange services over to the virtualised hosts.

 

Has anyone used any of the Equallogic iScsi PS6000 range or HP MSA2324fc range? I have currently investigating these two options for the school.

 

The HP is a fibre channel SAN which is aimed at entry level but the costing I have had back for the Equallogic is far greater than the MSA buts its iSCSI.

 

I always heard that if you have the option go for fibre channel over iSCSI because 4gb server to SAN bandwidth over iscsi 1gb server to SAN traffic will give far greater performance benefits. Fibre channel I have heard tends to be more expensive but the MSA is cheaper and it provides all the extra redundancy that the equallogic provides.

 

Is there something that I'm missing with the MSA range, why is so cheaper for a fibre channel SAN?

 

Would anyone recommend either of these two in a VMware setup? I appreciate the Equallogic is fairly new but if anyone has any links to some useful videocasts, whitepapers. that would be really helpful.

 

Thanks

Edited May 23, 2009 by ranj
rephrased

[torledo]

Lefthand certainly do look very good.

 

At our school I am currently looking at replacing some of our aged physical servers and migrating them to VMware. We currently use VMware on 2 separate hypervisor hosts but its only for web and proxy services.

 

I want to migrate our windows active directory, DNS, DHCP, print, exchange services over to the virtualised hosts.

 

Has anyone used any of the Equallogic iScsi PS6000 range or HP MSA2324fc range? I have currently investigating these two options for the school.

 

The HP is a fibre channel SAN which is aimed at entry level but the costing I have had back for the Equallogic is far greater than the MSA buts its iSCSI.

 

I always heard that if you have the option go for fibre channel over iSCSI because 4gb server to SAN bandwidth over iscsi 1gb server to SAN traffic will give far greater performance benefits. Fibre channel I have heard tends to be more expensive but the MSA is cheaper and it provides all the extra redundancy that the equallogic provides.

 

Is there something that I'm missing with the MSA range, why is so cheaper for a fibre channel SAN?

 

Would anyone recommend either of these two in a VMware setup? I appreciate the Equallogic is fairly new but if anyone has any links to some useful videocasts, whitepapers. that would be really helpful.

 

Thanks

 

My personal view is that HP's 'enterprise' fc arrays start with the EVA 4000 range. Similarly The equalogics are enterprise arrays and Dell have their own entry level products [including fc products] below the equalogic line. hence the difference in price between the equalogics and the MSA.

 

I think you'll be fine with an array capable of iscsi, with FC you have to be willing to invest in FC hba's and FC switches. Why don't you look at the MSA iscsi product or the Sun 7000, the sun does nfs aswell as iscsi.

 

btw, it appears storevault are no more, so in terms of affordable NAS/SAN capable devices the best options look like the Sun7000 or whatever deals you can get on netapp proper and EMC entry level kit.

 

As for lefthand, looks good, but it's a bit pricey isn't ?

[f21970]

FC SAN here with a header box and two SAN arrays each with 3tb usable space. They are located disparately - one is in the server room, one is at the far side of the site and I use this for backup (gotta say, real fast backup & restores!). Brocade switch plus Fujitsu hardware - cost around £11K installed (less worries!). Twas easy to set up - dead easy actually. The hard bit was migrating the data from a few Server 2003 servers to SAN running Server 2008. Because of the differences in the way security is handled, even taking across the shares using the 'registry tweak' to restore permissions caused issues. SAN has been in operation for 5 months or so now, and not a single glitch.

[Hebdenlad]

Very interested in this thread, but £40K? no where near my budget.

So anyone any solutions for a REAL cheap alternative?

I have an ailing and full admin server, not enough tape backup and want to flatten the network. So going down the SANS route looks attractive but the budget is SMALL.

backing up a SANS. What do people do? expensive tapes? another SANS? if a disk solution, then what about 'offsite backup?

Alan

Hi there.

 

Couldn't help but notice your posting on here... Have a look at the Sun 7000 series. It might be what you're looking for...

 

Cheers,

 

Phil

[Hebdenlad]

Lefthand certainly do look very good.

 

At our school I am currently looking at replacing some of our aged physical servers and migrating them to VMware. We currently use VMware on 2 separate hypervisor hosts but its only for web and proxy services.

 

I want to migrate our windows active directory, DNS, DHCP, print, exchange services over to the virtualised hosts.

 

Has anyone used any of the Equallogic iScsi PS6000 range or HP MSA2324fc range? I have currently investigating these two options for the school.

 

The HP is a fibre channel SAN which is aimed at entry level but the costing I have had back for the Equallogic is far greater than the MSA buts its iSCSI.

 

I always heard that if you have the option go for fibre channel over iSCSI because 4gb server to SAN bandwidth over iscsi 1gb server to SAN traffic will give far greater performance benefits. Fibre channel I have heard tends to be more expensive but the MSA is cheaper and it provides all the extra redundancy that the equallogic provides.

 

Is there something that I'm missing with the MSA range, why is so cheaper for a fibre channel SAN?

 

Would anyone recommend either of these two in a VMware setup? I appreciate the Equallogic is fairly new but if anyone has any links to some useful videocasts, whitepapers. that would be really helpful.

 

Thanks

Hi there.

 

Hope I'm not being too forward on this but have a look at the S7000 series from Sun.

 

Cheers,

 

Phil

[PEO]

this is the SAN that we installed during the Easter holidays

 

HDS: Storage Systems | Data Storage Solutions | Enterprise storage

[pcstru]

Here we have a San Melody plugged into an Infotrend SATA array populated with Segate 500GB discs (purchased before my time @ ~£30K). Failure rate on a new batch of discs has been high and we have just been quoted ~£30K to make the system more robust (replication of the array and elimination of the melody server as a SPOF). At £7 per GB (double for replicated) IMO this is not good value for money for a school.

 

My response to the failing discs was to spend £1.5K on a Thecus i4500R populated with 1TB drives and simply robocopy network shares over to the device. I also bought another of these to share between VMware ESX hosts as a backup device for server images. At around 40p per GB, these are rather better value for money and the performance while not quite as fast as the SAN is certainly adequate for the task. Given that I could just about buy two per year for the same price as the support and licencing on the SAN, I'm not too worried about longevity.

 

Anyone else got any comments on Thecus devices?

[mjs_mjs]

not sure if it counts as a SAN but we have an XSAN/XRAID - well an xserve and an xraid. has 2 fiber channel and 2 network for iscsi?

[andyrite]

Got a Equallogics SAN here. Work's a treat!

[DMcCoy]

not sure if it counts as a SAN but we have an XSAN/XRAID - well an xserve and an xraid. has 2 fiber channel and 2 network for iscsi?

 

 

Is it this? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Xserve_RAID.jpg

 

If so then it's not a SAN. I have one here, they are only DAS (direct attached storage). The fibre cards are the only fibre over copper cables I've ever seen. Those 2 NICs will be for accessing the managment controller on each half as it doesn't do scsi. I see why Apple stopped making the XRAID and uses someone elses now.

 

If it's the promise one then it is a SAN (or DAS, depending on how you configure it I think)

[torledo]

Is it this? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Xserve_RAID.jpg

 

If so then it's not a SAN. I have one here, they are only DAS (direct attached storage). The fibre cards are the only fibre over copper cables I've ever seen. Those 2 NICs will be for accessing the managment controller on each half as it doesn't do scsi. I see why Apple stopped making the XRAID and uses someone elses now.

 

If it's the promise one then it is a SAN (or DAS, depending on how you configure it I think)

 

The xserve raids from 2004 onward had SFP fc ports, so could be used on SAN fabrics. sounds like you have the v1 model with those odd HSSDC2 ports. The SFP xraids still came with short-length copper cables, but you could get inexpensive SFP transeivers and use fibre cables.

 

apologies if you know all of this already.

[DMcCoy]

I did think about connecting it to the FC switch at one point, but as it's only DAS there's not much point, then I discovered the copper connectors when taking it all apart (I didn't put it in).

 

The transcievers do come out so it may well be possible to change them, I didn't realise it would take normal fibre ones. In the end I flashed the supplied apple card (it's a custom LSI) with normal bios (only EFI normally). It's in an old server now running Backup Exec, the xraid does well enough as a D2D store at least!

[mjs_mjs]

I think ours is a post 2004 model. Can i connect the Xraid to a windows box?