S2D vs SAN in 2021

[sonofsanta]

Our Hyper-V hosts are approaching their 5th birthday, so we'll be packing them off to the great retirement rack in the sky* and need something to replace them.

 

When I was looking in 2016, Storage Spaces Direct was new and exciting and not at all ready for a risk-averse little school to take on, so we went with the good old Fibre Channel SAN + 2 hosts set up again. It's stood me in good stead, as did the similar set up before that, but I'm aware that hyperconvergence is the new hotness and there's supposedly money to be saved on not having the SAN.

 

I'm a practitioner of Keep It Simple, Stupid when it comes to my network, because I'm the stupid, but it's not necessarily clear if S2D is a simplification or complication. I know and understand the SAN architecture, but I'm hoping S2D is not particularly any more complicated to set up. I do hear rumblings that it's not as efficient on a 2-node set up, though, and is really designed for larger deployments; I'm definitively looking at 2 nodes, and won't need that to grow over the lifespan because the server estate is pretty settled at this point.

 

So looking for opinions on how many have gone S2D/hyperconverged (e.g. Stone Equinox), how the set up was compared to installing a SAN, and what the savings and reliability have been like. Conversely, I'd love to hear from people who looked at it and decided to stick with the tried and trusted formula, and what swung it for you.

 

*the switch rack in my office, where I'll reformat them to work as Handbrake factories for all the video evidence we have to capture these days

[mrbios]

So looking for opinions on how many have gone S2D/hyperconverged (e.g. Stone Equinox), how the set up was compared to installing a SAN, and what the savings and reliability have been like. Conversely, I'd love to hear from people who looked at it and decided to stick with the tried and trusted formula, and what swung it for you.

 

I've just this month replaced a 3 host + 2 iSCSI switches + SAN setup, with a StarWind 2 node hyperconverged solution. They set everything up for you as part of the process, so i literally just had to connect it all into the rack and arrange with them for a time to finish the setup remotely over a gotomeeting.

 

I considered S2D and spent quite a bit of time researching alternative options but ultimately, with two nodes in S2D there were a few limitations i wasn't a fan of and i didn't want to move to Hyper-V either due to 12 years experience of VMware, and although there are multiple other edugeekers using S2D with good success, i kept coming across the odd horror story and wasn't confident. (There was also a situational reason for choosing StarWind due to support etc)

 

No idea if that helps but if you end up being interested in StarWind as an option to look at I'm happy to answer any questions.

[sonofsanta]

I've just this month replaced a 3 host + 2 iSCSI switches + SAN setup, with a StarWind 2 node hyperconverged solution. They set everything up for you as part of the process, so i literally just had to connect it all into the rack and arrange with them for a time to finish the setup remotely over a gotomeeting.

 

I considered S2D and spent quite a bit of time researching alternative options but ultimately, with two nodes in S2D there were a few limitations i wasn't a fan of and i didn't want to move to Hyper-V either due to 12 years experience of VMware, and although there are multiple other edugeekers using S2D with good success, i kept coming across the odd horror story and wasn't confident. (There was also a situational reason for choosing StarWind due to support etc)

 

No idea if that helps but if you end up being interested in StarWind as an option to look at I'm happy to answer any questions.

 

 

Does StarWind support Hyper-V too? I'm coming from the opposite direction, after a decade of Hyper-V I don't want to switch the other way, heh.

 

What were the limitations you were seeing with 2-node S2D? I can find lots of obvious stuff about fault-tolerance and surviving multiple node failures (which feels a very unlikely chance, and honestly, is a single SAN any more resilient even with all its built in mechanisms?) but I've not seen anything discussing lowered performance, which would be of more concern to me.

[willtech]

Does StarWind support Hyper-V too?

Yes they do: https://knowledgebase.starwindsoftware.com/guidance/starwind-appliances-quick-start-guide/ Edited April 6, 2021 by willtech

[nicholab]

I take it you have given some thought as to what can go in the cloud? Or can go into the cloud in the next few years?

 

There is also datacore https://www.datacore.com/products/sansymphony/hci/

Edited April 7, 2021 by nicholab

[sonofsanta]

I take it you have given some thought as to what can go in the cloud? Or can go into the cloud in the next few years?

 

There is also datacore https://www.datacore.com/products/sansymphony/hci/

 

 

Probably not much more to migrate to the cloud from where we are--maybe cashless catering and the finance system in future, but neither of them are (a) quick (b) entirely in my power. I don't see any benefit (for our single-site school) to making AD and SCCM cloud-based, and stuff like print servers are obviously better here if I've got any on-site infrastructure available anyway.

 

What benefits does Datacore offer over S2D? As presumably it will cost more (given that S2D is effectively free)

[BKGarry]

I have S2D running nice and effectively and works fine for us, has the advantages of a SAN without actually having one.

 

What i would say is if i was doing it now, I would use NVME for Performance tier and SATA SSD for Storage Tier, to really speed it up.

 

I did what @Katy did here though, as Windows Admin Centre really does do most of the setup for you now without much of a fuss

 

https://katystech.blog/2021/01/wac-hyperv-cluster-s2d/

[smarties11]

I've just this month replaced a 3 host + 2 iSCSI switches + SAN setup, with a StarWind 2 node hyperconverged solution. They set everything up for you as part of the process, so i literally just had to connect it all into the rack and arrange with them for a time to finish the setup remotely over a gotomeeting.

 

I considered S2D and spent quite a bit of time researching alternative options but ultimately, with two nodes in S2D there were a few limitations i wasn't a fan of and i didn't want to move to Hyper-V either due to 12 years experience of VMware, and although there are multiple other edugeekers using S2D with good success, i kept coming across the odd horror story and wasn't confident. (There was also a situational reason for choosing StarWind due to support etc)

 

No idea if that helps but if you end up being interested in StarWind as an option to look at I'm happy to answer any questions.

 

This looks interesting, and sounds like you came from a similar setup to what we have now. Would you mind sharing specs and costings of your solution? (by PM if you'd prefer)

 

Thanks

[mrbios]

This looks interesting, and sounds like you came from a similar setup to what we have now. Would you mind sharing specs and costings of your solution? (by PM if you'd prefer)

 

Thanks

 

Yea sure, the hosts are 2 x Xeon Silver 4208 cpus, 256gb ram, Intel X520-DA2 SFP+, Mellanox 25Gbe SFP. Plus 25TB usable all flash storage. 5 Years proactive support and NBD onsite warranty. They pre-configure everything for you prior to sending it out.

 

I was comparing it to a Dell VRTX, S2D, direct replacement of hosts + san, and vmware vsan. VMware vsan was crazy expensive, the VRTX and StarWind were very similar in cost, the VRTX would have included 2 years extra support but the starwind being technologically superior felt like the more tempting solution. StarWind, VRTX, S2D all came in comparatively similar in price if S2D was considered over 3 hosts, 2 hosts would have been a lot cheaper but obviously there are other technical limitations there i didn't want to tangle with, even though i doubted our need to ever go over 2 hosts again.....but you never know till you know, you know? All solutions were between £30-35k. S2D with only 2 hosts would have been about £22k from the quote i had. All were including 5 years support and warranty, except for the final attempt to pull me in from Dell throwing in 7 years.

 

I think if the school had been in a more restrictive financial position i'd have just done my usual "save money" route and gone S2D, but i had a rare opportunity to buy something that wasn't just the cheapest for a change, so i seized upon it lol

[smarties11]

Thanks for the detail. Will be way out of our budget though I suspect :-( Can I ask what size School you are and how many VMs you have?

[mrbios]

Thanks for the detail. Will be way out of our budget though I suspect :-( Can I ask what size School you are and how many VMs you have?

 

30 VMs, roughly 1000 students.

 

I think a large part of the cost is support and storage. If i was cloud based for file storage i would only need 5-7TB which would cut the cost significantly. However it looks like it's a few years off before it'll be right for us yet. (Waiting to see if Windows 10X solves a few problems on that front) It's not a very progressive school from a technological front, lots of old fashioned staff and old fashioned ways of doing things that I struggle to change. On top of that if you dropped the proactive support and just had a standard support and warranty it'd probably cut the cost a fair chunk.

[PotNoodleTech]

Last refresh 5 years ago went with local enterprise SSD storage as storage spaces seemed a bit new/underwhelming and, IMHO, SANs are just money spinners for storage companies preying on the marketing blurb that paints normal servers as unreliable.

 

Storage spaces had my attention 5 years ago - hopefully, S2D is a good option, really need to look into this for the next refresh. I'd better start studying Katies blog by the look of it!!