Advice needed SAN or NAS

[AndyB4rks]

I'm after some advice, basically we budgeted for a new SAN and some servers to replace our old ones, long story short they cut our budget from 50k to 10k.

 

Out of this I need either a SAN or a NAS with at least 10 to 15tb of space and any other ancillaries.

 

Our network currently consists of an old NEC SAN that is end of life and it has around 8tb of space and is connected to a brocade switch.

The SAN is used with vmware and hosts around 28 vms and a few luns for staff/student work.

 

The plan is to reuse the 6 servers that run the vm's and move over to Hyper-V, this is the easy bit believe it or not.

We have around 2000+ students and around 550 staff.

 

So the question is what can I get for 10k or under that would best suit my needs?

[localzuk]

In simple terms - no. £10k is simply not enough.

 

A HP MSA P2000 with FC, and 24 x 600GB SAS2 drives (which is what I'd look at for your needs) would come in at around £18.6k. HP have a 50% cashback offer on the array itself at the moment, so that brings it down to about £14k. You *might* be able to get a deal if a supplier requests preferential pricing which might knock it down a grand or 2.

 

So, £12k - £13k minimum.

[AndyB4rks]

You totally echo my thoughts there, problem is we need to do something as the san is on its last legs and they are adamant that we cant have anymore despite my protests...

[localzuk]

If you went for the lower end of your space needs, then you might just about be able to hit that target - and you'd have 5 or so drive bays spare which you could add to next year to increase the size of the array.

 

Your best bet is to speak to some IT suppliers and see what they can do with your requirements, then post their results here for people to look over.

[tmcd35]

Have a word with someone like Novatech and see if they can bespoke build a solution for you. I bought a 4Tb array a couple of years back (16x450Gb 15k SAS) for around the £7.5k mark. You might need to look at installing Linux to manage the array and provide iSCSI support but it could work.

 

Failing that Buffalo do Terrastations with Windows Storage Server 2008 and iSCSI support but they'd be dog slow using commercial SATA drives

[broc]

You might get a DELL PowerVault MD3220i with 24x 600gb SAS disks for £10k or thereabouts

[localzuk]

Have a word with someone like Novatech and see if they can bespoke build a solution for you. I bought a 4Tb array a couple of years back (16x450Gb 15k SAS) for around the £7.5k mark. You might need to look at installing Linux to manage the array and provide iSCSI support but it could work.

 

Failing that Buffalo do Terrastations with Windows Storage Server 2008 and iSCSI support but they'd be dog slow using commercial SATA drives

 

As he's got an Brocade switch, I'd've suggested sticking with FC rather than iSCSI myself.

[rodent43]

We are currently using these

 

Qsan - making data smart - iSCSI, Fibre Channel, SAS, SCSI, JBOD, RAID Controllers, and iSCSI IP SAN Cabling solutions.

 

They are in a lower budget but they are working for us...we had the same issue last year moving to a new system so we have two qsan, one for share/files etc and one for hyper-v cluster

 

they have worked well so far, multiple options for connections

 

I have had a couple of disks report read warning but our support just ship us another drive...

[deano]

Have a look at the release of Server 2012 as it allows for live migration and high availalability by simply using a server/s with 3.0 SMB shares. No SAN required

[mrbios]

Why don't you split the file storage and VM storage on to separate SANs? That way you don't have to buy lots of stupidly expensive drives. Keep your current box for your file storage buy a new box to move your VMs on to, tier the storage rather than just filling it with lots of expensive SAS drives and move your VMs on to the appropriate tier for the IOPS required?

[Dos_Box]

Ring ICT Direct and see if they can help you. They often get in used SAN and NAS boxes and will warranty them as well.

[AndyB4rks]

As he's got an Brocade switch, I'd've suggested sticking with FC rather than iSCSI myself.

 

We have 2 of these but im open to suggestions.

 

Have a look at the release of Server 2012 as it allows for live migration and high availalability by simply using a server/s with 3.0 SMB shares. No SAN required

 

Been looking at 2012 for a while, looking forward to testing it a bit.

 

Why don't you split the file storage and VM storage on to separate SANs? That way you don't have to buy lots of stupidly expensive drives. Keep your current box for your file storage buy a new box to move your VMs on to, tier the storage rather than just filling it with lots of expensive SAS drives and move your VMs on to the appropriate tier for the IOPS required?

 

I thought of that but we cant rely on the SAN as its flakey.

[AndyB4rks]

Has anyone seen/used one of these?

 

QNAP TS-879U-RP 10GbE NAS Server

[tmcd35]

As he's got an Brocade switch, I'd've suggested sticking with FC rather than iSCSI myself.

 

Hadn't noticed that - still I was looking at the £10k budet...

 

Have a look at the release of Server 2012 as it allows for live migration and high availalability by simply using a server/s with 3.0 SMB shares. No SAN required

 

 

Interested in that myself - We are currently running Win2k8R2 on our NAS. Need to upgrade the Host Servers to 2012 as well though, not sure I fancy doing a live Windows update over the top of our main storage NAS with all our live data on. I have backups but this sort of thing makes me kinda nervous!

Edited July 12, 2012 by tmcd35

[AndyB4rks]

Interested in that myself - We are currently running Win2k8R2 on our NAS. Need to upgrade the Host Servers to 2012 as well though, not sure I fancy doing a live Windows update over the top of our main storage NAS with all our live data on. I have backups but this sort of thing makes me kinda nervous!

 

Don't blame you, I wouldn't fancy doing that either. What sort of speed are you getting with your nas at the moment?

 

Im quite lucky in some respects as we currently have vmware on the old stuff and for the new stuff im setting up mostly new vm's on Hyper-V so I can run side by side for a while.

 

Am liking the look of this after reading the review of that new qnap here

[broc]

Has anyone seen/used one of these?

 

QNAP TS-879U-RP 10GbE NAS Server

I am looking at buying one of these at the moment, I got a pretty good price quote from Luke at Millgate.....

[AndyB4rks]

I am looking at buying one of these at the moment, I got a pretty good price quote from Luke at Millgate.....

 

What sort of price are we talking, did you spec any other options like 10gb card?

[tmcd35]

Don't blame you, I wouldn't fancy doing that either. What sort of speed are you getting with your nas at the moment?

 

"bloody fast" I'd say. Certainly never notice any speed problems. Here's the background and topology:

 

We are a mid sized secondary school of around 850 pupils with about 400-450 PC's. We have three Hyper-V hosts servers running about 30 virtual servers. The host servers have a 2Gbps LACP connection to our LAN for the Hyper-V virtual switch, a 1Gbps LAN connection for us to mange them and a separate 2Gbps LACP connection to our Storage Server on a separate "Storage Network" (poor mans SAN?).

 

All server running Server2k8 to take advantage of SMB v2. The Network cards have TOE and Jumbo Frames enabled. All profiles, virtual hard drives, user areas, shared network drives, etc. are stored on the Storage Server. The home drives, etc are actually on the server NOT in virtual machine VHD's. The Storage Server has a 2Gbps LACP to the Storage Network and 2Gbps LACP to the main LAN so users can access their home drives. All VM traffic happens over the Storage Network.

 

The Storage Server: Quad Core 2.1Ghz Xeon, 6Gb Ram, Dedicated SAS Controller with plenty of cache, 16x450Gb 15k rpm SAS drives (2 hot spare, 14xRAID-50).

 

I'm now looking at a 8Tb Buffalo Terrastation Pro (WSS 2008) to use with Robocopy to keep a semi-live mirror of this array as part of our backup/DR plans.

 

As you can see, Windows 2012 Server has quiet a number of attractions with that topology (when I'm brave enough).

Edited July 12, 2012 by tmcd35

[AndyB4rks]

Wow that's some setup you have there how long did it take to setup?

[tmcd35]

I've been NM here for 3.5yrs and I'm not finished - It's been built piece mill year by year. Next up is redoing some of the switches, and seeing if we can incorporate vLAN's and have a plan for IPv6. Managed WiFi is most likely on the horizon and the host servers will start being replaced in 2014. The last host server we bought as 24 cores and 96Gb ram so should last a while yet!

 

The current setup is the result of not being able to afford a proper SAN. So I've had to be creative!

Edited July 12, 2012 by tmcd35

[broc]

What sort of price are we talking, did you spec any other options like 10gb card?

Sorry, I am not sure if our price is 'commercial in confidence'... I am sure Luke would be happy to receive a pm from you though.

[AndyB4rks]

I've been NM here for 3.5yrs and I'm not finished - It's been built piece mill year by year. Next up is redoing some of the switches, and seeing if we can incorporate vLAN's and have a plan for IPv6. Managed WiFi is most likely on the horizon and the host servers will start being replaced in 2014. The last host server we bought as 24 cores and 96Gb ram so should last a while yet!

 

All I can say is your place must have a nice pile of cash.

 

We moved into a new build in 2008 and had all new kit and were promised that we would have a decent budget year on year. As you can see that didnt happen and now were stuck with old unreliable kit.

 

Im still agonizing over what to do as we have the san and the 6 servers all on fibre to the brocade but if I swap to copper I would have to buy a new switch and cards to do it. Only alternative is to use the existing cards and fibre and find some decent storage. Its all a little sad really that were reduced to this.

[AndyB4rks]

Sorry, I am not sure if our price is 'commercial in confidence'... I am sure Luke would be happy to receive a pm from you though.

 

I have to produce a quick report to let SMT know what costs were looking at with a few different options so I may PM him later.

[tmcd35]

All I can say is your place must have a nice pile of cash.

 

If only! The server/network budget is £2500 per year. I got a 1 off a couple of years back for Storage Server. We also budget £1200 a year for HDD replacements. I replace 2 drives in the Storage server every year and 1 drive in each of our 2 back NAS boxes. This year I'm buying a 3rd NAS box instead of replacing HDD's in the other two.

 

Im still agonizing over what to do as we have the san and the 6 servers all on fibre to the brocade but if I swap to copper I would have to buy a new switch and cards to do it. Only alternative is to use the existing cards and fibre and find some decent storage. Its all a little sad really that were reduced to this.

 

The question is: will the exiting fibre cards fit in a new server? If not what are the cost of replacement fibre cards vs the costs of a couple of NIC's and a cheap managed switch?

[AndyB4rks]

The question is: will the exiting fibre cards fit in a new server? If not what are the cost of replacement fibre cards vs the costs of a couple of NIC's and a cheap managed switch?

 

Just been checking on the fibre cards and they will fit the servers no problem the question is can I get a nas with a fibre connection to the brocade 210. Its either that or a new set of switches and cards.

 

Im open to suggestions as there are so many ways to go about this.