psydii Posted July 10, 2023 Posted July 10, 2023 So I am looking at new servers and a SAN. It seems that the basic chassis is a rebadged Seagate (formerly DotHill) no matter what vendor is making the sale. (PowerVault ME5 / HPE MSA 2060) So (other than the bottom line and the confidence I have in the 3rd party engineer team to build and configure it), the only variable is really Dell vs HPE support. With our previous HPe kit I have been able to extend 24/7 warranty/support for at least four years after the initial 3 year term, their support has been excellent. But with Dell I haven't had any experience for nearly 20 years, but back when I used it was also excellent. Help me out! What should I be looking for/questions should I be asking these days?
FN-GM Posted July 10, 2023 Posted July 10, 2023 We have both and removing all HP for Dell. It’s a better product and a better service. We are also removing all our SANs for hyper converged. Is this something you have considered? 1
supportman Posted July 10, 2023 Posted July 10, 2023 Out of interest, why are you buying a SAN? I thought they were all the rage back in the day but really designed for data center storage, not local. I would think these days a far better solution would be cloud based storage for students and staff members as well as a hosted MIS.
psydii Posted July 10, 2023 Author Posted July 10, 2023 Out of interest, why are you buying a SAN? I thought they were all the rage back in the day but really designed for data center storage, not local. I would think these days a far better solution would be cloud based storage for students and staff members as well as a hosted MIS. Because we still have on prem critical stuff, that isn't going cloudward anytime soon. We are all in on 365, but with a significant legacy that takes large capital projects to change. Also moving from SIMS takes the will of SLT to change, however some strategic decisions have been taken assuming SIMS is the MIS, and I'm not about to wreck a DH's project (that is part of the SIP) by pushing for (and winning) an MIS change, that can wait a few (3) years - so in the meanwhile we need the infrastructure to run it.
psydii Posted July 10, 2023 Author Posted July 10, 2023 We have both and removing all HP for Dell. It’s a better product and a better service. We are also removing all our SANs for hyper converged. Is this something you have considered? This way is cheaper and easier. We're not building a platform for the future, its a refresh of current capabilities as we wind down over the next 3-10 years. Could you expand on Dell providing a better product and service?
FN-GM Posted July 10, 2023 Posted July 10, 2023 This way is cheaper and easier. Having manage both I can't see how this is to be honest. HCI is much easier to manage and has worked out much cheaper. Plus you remove a single point of failure - the SAN. I get it if you're only replacing 1 component but if you're replacing SAN and servers it totally makes sense. Could you expand on Dell providing a better product and service? Much more reliable than HP Management tools are superior and more reliable HP iLO has a recurring license. Dell iDrac is an up front cost Technical support is better with Dell, more streamlined an user friendly. Better train technicians 1
titch Posted July 10, 2023 Posted July 10, 2023 I have to agree with FN-GM I have burned badly by HP San and it seems mad we would have ever planned a single point of failure into our setup previously had hyper converge been around previously. Unless you are looking at 2 sans mirroring each other which would be mega bucks then shared storage over the hosts is way better IMO. Is it worth revisiting the project without the SAN involved....just to see what the price and spec looks like?
localzuk Posted July 11, 2023 Posted July 11, 2023 (edited) This way is cheaper and easier. We're not building a platform for the future, its a refresh of current capabilities as we wind down over the next 3-10 years. I would say this isn't the case honestly. We refreshed our entire central cluster for less than £10k - 3 servers in a HCI cluster. Servers are 3 x Dell R630s with dual Xeon E5-2680v4 (refurbs, with 3 year warranties), 192GB RAM each, and 4x 4TB Micron Enterprise SSDs (those are new), plus 4x10GbE SFP+ NIC ports for networking. OS on a 128GB Intel Enterprise SSD. We went for as cheap as possible, so there's some compromises, but if you went for something a little newer, you could have your OS on RAID1 as well. Setting up HCI, so long as you spec the servers/controllers right (which I didn't originally, so had to swap controllers out), is a doddle. Also, I agree with the HPE vs Dell discussion. We used to use HPE kit, and had some reliability issues with it - we had to have an engineer in to replace the drive backplane for one of our servers shortly after buying it. We also had a mobo die due to the sensor stuff going haywire at one point. Boot times on them are extremely long as well - more than double the time to boot past BIOS/CMOS vs our replacement Dell servers. Not had any issues with Dell stuff. Edited July 11, 2023 by localzuk
PotNoodleTech Posted July 11, 2023 Posted July 11, 2023 Plus you remove a single point of failure - the SAN. I get it if you're only replacing 1 component but if you're replacing SAN and servers it totally makes sense. Yes I've never quite understood the obsession with spending £20k-£50k plus licence fees plus high recurring support costs on a single point of failure which is on average less reliable due to over-complexity than just a bog standard server with 20 disks in Raid6. But hey ho. I wanted to go Vmware Vsan 10 years ago but when VMware changed their licences they wrote themselves out of the education market (well, in Wales anyway) and so will be trying Hyperconverged on the next refresh. I've only bought refurbished dell PowerEdge's over the last 10 years. 100% uptime............................. ................(now I've said that, I am probably screwed...........)
Norphy Posted July 11, 2023 Posted July 11, 2023 Yes I've never quite understood the obsession with spending £20k-£50k plus licence fees plus high recurring support costs on a single point of failure which is on average less reliable due to over-complexity than just a bog standard server with 20 disks in Raid6. But hey ho. I wanted to go Vmware Vsan 10 years ago but when VMware changed their licences they wrote themselves out of the education market (well, in Wales anyway) and so will be trying Hyperconverged on the next refresh. I've only bought refurbished dell PowerEdge's over the last 10 years. 100% uptime............................. ................(now I've said that, I am probably screwed...........) I know it's off topic, but I wouldn't use RAID 6 for anything apart from backup or CCTV storage. It utterly destroys write speeds with its extra parity calculations. RAID 10 would be my preference. RAID 50, maybe, if that's too expensive in terms of disks.
PotNoodleTech Posted July 11, 2023 Posted July 11, 2023 I know it's off topic, but I wouldn't use RAID 6 for anything apart from backup or CCTV storage. It utterly destroys write speeds with its extra parity calculations. RAID 10 would be my preference. RAID 50, maybe, if that's too expensive in terms of disks. True enough. I actually use Raid 5 myself as I am all SSD storage and Raid 5 stays fast, and reduces unnecessary writes (compared to Mirroring) which should theoretically improve the lifespan of the array! I still use Raid 6 on spinning rust disks for veeam backup and TBH have never had any issue with write speeds.
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