HP P2000 SAS vs Dell MD3200

[RalphyBoy]

Hi All,

In the market to buy one of the following SAN's for our ESXi5 deployment soon.

Which one would be a better purchase in terms of performance, managability, scalability, features.

Is there a clear winner between the two. Or are they neck and neck?

Thanks for any advice.

[agott]

At work we are running an MD3200 with ESXi 5.0 Update 1. It is used with two R610s. No problems so far, its been very solid.

[RalphyBoy]

What is the performance like?

Example: If you are running Veeam or other backup software, how fast does it backup in MBps?

Thanks for the comment.

[agott]

I'll see if I have time to check that tomorrow. We only have the two ESXi hosts and a very small amount of users (like...12) so we're not the best use case. I can say that the file transfers are noticably faster than my homelab which uses iSCSI with MPIO. But that is to be expected since its fiber channel...

[RalphyBoy]

Thanks, would be great to see what speed you are achieving.

Does the dell have active / active path to one host via dual SAS HBA?

Thanks agott

[PabloADell]

RalphyBoy,

The MD3200 can do IO to same LUN from each controller but not both at the same time. If a path to the fails on one controller (cable pull, failure, etc) IOs will continue on the other controller

[cdmit]

Pablo,

Do you know of any other SAN's that use multiple paths at the same time?

Thanks for confirming the functionality.

Thanks.

[PabloADell]

cdmit,

If what you are asking is to do IOs on both controllers at the same time, the MD does that, what you cannot do is IOs from both controllers to the same LUN at the same time. If you have 4 LUNs, 2 owned by one controller ans the other 2 by the other, you can do IOs to all 4 through both controllers at the same time, 2 LUNs fron one controller and the other 2 from the other. Also, each controller has mutiple ports so you can do IOs through multiple paths to the same LUN at the same time, as long as those paths are on the same controller.

If you are asking about doing IO to the same LUN from both controllers to the same LUN, then you need a more expensive solution.

Pablo