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Sun Storage 7110

Ric_

By Ric_
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teejay

teejay

Posted
Posted

To be honest, I was expecting more problems than I had as it's very much a version 1 product.

Have you tried the iSCSI side of things yet? Not really touched that as there was such an urgent need for more storage space for the network shares that I have had to concentrate on getting those up.

My intention is if these work as well as they appear to is to get two more when the 4TB version comes out and a couple of JBOD units for all the storage and use the two existing ones for iSCSI stuff.

Ric_

Ric_

Posted
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Posted

I'm using mine for iSCSI, CIFS and NFS... I don't do things by halves ;)

 

Procurve for me too - the 2510G on the main one and a 4104gl on the second. I'm using LACP port aggregation - oh the fun I had before updating the 7110s firmware!

pete

pete

Posted
Posted
I'm using mine for iSCSI, CIFS and NFS... I don't do things by halves ;)

 

Procurve for me too - the 2510G on the main one and a 4104gl on the second. I'm using LACP port aggregation - oh the fun I had before updating the 7110s firmware!

 

How's the multipathing working for you? (if you're using it?).

 

Don't suppose you've benchmarked NFS vs iSCSI under Xen have you? (Budget allowing, I'm eyeing up 2510Gs as well).

teejay

teejay

Posted
Posted
I'm using mine for iSCSI, CIFS and NFS... I don't do things by halves ;)

 

Procurve for me too - the 2510G on the main one and a 4104gl on the second. I'm using LACP port aggregation - oh the fun I had before updating the 7110s firmware!

 

Was this bios firmware or the storage software update? If it was the bios, where did you get it from?

RobFuller

RobFuller

Posted
Posted

I also have one of these units and I'm very impressed so easy to setup and the software on the unit is brilliant! Speed so far I haven’t even scratched the surface as my current switch isn’t up to the job.

The build quality of the server itself seems very good also and some nice guides to get you up and running in no time.

 

Will defiantly be purchasing a second unit (from Cutter) in the summer along with some JBOS to expand on the storage, also need to look at a better dedicated ISCSI switch so any recommendations welcomed! :cool:

Soulfish

Soulfish

Posted
Posted

Just setting up our new 7110 today and I have to agree with everyone else just how easy it is to use and configure!

 

Now I just need to set up the Sun Fire X4150's we've got and install Citrix XenServer on them :D

linescanner

linescanner

Posted
Posted
How's the multipathing working for you? (if you're using it?).

 

Don't suppose you've benchmarked NFS vs iSCSI under Xen have you? (Budget allowing, I'm eyeing up 2510Gs as well).

 

@pete, the NFS has not been done by us or Sun on Xen, but has on VMWare.

 

NFS is very very quick using the 7000 series, it also has another advantage that the analytics provided by NFS mounts is more in depth than under iSCSi (which is still good)

 

Andy

m1ddy

m1ddy

Posted
Posted (edited)

We are currently looking at implementing a SAN solution here. Trouble is im a bit confuzzled about how it all works, having no experience with them at all.

 

From what I can see, we have 2 choices of fabric. Fibre or iSCSI. iSCSI being the cheapest and most likely the one we will go for. We then have a choice of thousands of different solutions. ARGHHWGBNJSBGN!!111

 

The sun solution above does look nice and the price is appealing. I just need to understand a bit more on how it all links together.

 

We will be going virtual this year and want all our storage in the same place. We will be getting 2 (maybe 3) host machines (HP 380's 2xquad core xeon, 16gb ram). We will most likely be running VMWare ESXi (VI3 standard or enterprise, dunno yet) We would like all storage on all servers to be on the SAN.

 

SO...unless im being "special" we will need...

 

A SAN with iSCSI ports (I assume these are just normal NICs?)

A switch for SAN traffic (Again, just a normal 1GB switch with a fast backplane?)

Extra NICs on the hosts.

 

The hosts will most likely have 4-5 VMs on them. How many nics do you think I will need. I would like the keep the SAN traffic seperate to our main network. Does that mean I need say for example, 4 NICS for network traffic for the VMs and then say another 4 for SAN traffic between the VMs and the SAN.

 

Any pointers people can give me would be most appreciated. Been trying to get my head round SANS for days and with so many different vendors offering different solutions I feel like im going to fall over :)

 

Cheers Guys!

Edited by m1ddy
linescanner

linescanner

Posted
Posted

@m1ddy,

 

drop me a PM and I can go through it in detail.

 

Essentially the Sun 7110 can talk both iSCSI and NFS (also CIFS and WebDAV).

 

You can use either iSCSI of NFS mounts to connect to your VMware host servers. There has been some work done on testing VMWare to 7000 series over NFS, the performance is lightning fast and provides some more in depth analytics than iSCSI. The iSCSI on the units is also very very good.

 

iSCSI runs over normal eth ports so nothing special. Make sure your switches handle teaming etc. I would recommend that the iSCSI mount ports are kept off your normal LAN and have clean feeds from host to storage.

 

If you are open to changing from the HP servers, the Sun do some stunning x86 servers that are Currently buy one get one free. This would also allow you to buy a 7110 at half price. If you do not buy x86 servers the 7110 is on edu promo.

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Hebdenlad

Hebdenlad

Posted
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Posted
That's great to know. Currently looking at buying one of these (although given the conversation I had yesterday it may be turning into two!) later this week :)

Hi there. My name is Phil Lawrence. I've been involved on the S7000 project here at Sun for almost a year. If you need any technical assistance then drop me a line on here. More than happy to help anyone who is looking at this...

 

Cheers,

 

Phil

  • Thanks 5
Soulfish

Soulfish

Posted
Posted
Hi there. My name is Phil Lawrence. I've been involved on the S7000 project here at Sun for almost a year. If you need any technical assistance then drop me a line on here. More than happy to help anyone who is looking at this...

 

Cheers,

 

Phil

 

We've actually gone ahead and bought a 7110 (along with some X4150's!) to use as our SAN. Haven't had a chance to fully set it up yet (no air conditioning means I'm not risking frying our lovely new equipment until we get it :p ) but what little I have seen is amazing :)

 

Actually I have to complement the phone home function - the UPS that one of the PSUs was connected to died while it was on, got an email from Sun to say an automatic support call had been logged and then an email from Sun support asking me to try and couple of things to see if we could find the problem. Nice to know that the support is there if we need it :)

 

One quick question I do have for you Phil, and I don't know if you'll be able to answer it, is the JBOD addons that have been talked about for the 7110. I have heard that they may not be available for this version of the 7110 - do you know what the current plans are, or are able to shed any light?

 

Thanks,

 

John

Butuz

Butuz

Posted
Posted
One quick question I do have for you Phil, and I don't know if you'll be able to answer it, is the JBOD addons that have been talked about for the 7110. I have heard that they may not be available for this version of the 7110 - do you know what the current plans are, or are able to shed any light?

 

Thanks,

 

John

 

 

Yes this is something I am particularly interested in.

 

Phil - very big welcome to Edugeek. Will we have the ability to take our 7110s and plug in something like a J4200 or J4400 array, in order to repidly and easily expand the current storage with 7200, 10,000 or 15,000RPM SAS drives as and when we need them?

 

Cheers

 

Butuz

teejay

teejay

Posted
Posted

Just got the new software on, got some nice new features:

 

Snapshots now work with the Windows Previous Versions client

Share level ACL's

Webdav now works over https

 

That was 3 out of 4 things I had on my wish list! Brilliant stuff!

 

Now testing to see if copying ownership permissions works better now...

teejay

teejay

Posted
Posted
Hi there. My name is Phil Lawrence. I've been involved on the S7000 project here at Sun for almost a year. If you need any technical assistance then drop me a line on here. More than happy to help anyone who is looking at this...

 

Cheers,

 

Phil

 

Done some work with Phil a few weeks ago when we were deciding on the storage solutions, great bloke who really knows his stuff and is very keen on the education market. Great to see him on here.

linescanner

linescanner

Posted
Posted

Phil has asked me to post his email address here. You can contact him or us to ask questions.

 

His email address is Phil.Lawrence at Sun dot COM

 

Phil has given us at Cutter fantastic support in getting 7000 series into education.

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