VMware Cloud Community
eolson-uf
Contributor
Contributor

Any Compellent SAN users out there?

We're seriously considering the Compellent SAN solution. Is anybody out there using one? Would you care to share your experiences?

Thanks in advance,

Eric

Reply
0 Kudos
17 Replies
crazex
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

We have just begun implementing a Compellent SAN. Go-Live is the end of the month. So far we are very happy with it. After considering a varitey of SAN solutions (EMC, FalconStor, Equallogic,Compellent), we felt that the Compellent offered the best price to performance, and also the best ability to scale to the company needs. I really like the option of using iSCSI and FC together, whereas our lower I/O servers are on iSCSI, and our high I/O DB servers are using the fibre.

Currently we are still in the planning phase for VI3, but we have had alot of success with VMware Server.

-Jon-

-Jon- VMware Certified Professional
joakim_ohman
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Eric

Yes we are running Compellent and VI3 with great success. We do full data protection in the Storage Central using both the snapshot and replication functionality. No problems so far.

/Joakim

nordsj
Contributor
Contributor

Question; How are you presenting storage to a set of Clustered Vi3 ESX servers from within compellent, also when zoning are you creating 1 storage group for your ESX hosts?

Would you basically mind running thru your practices for setting up a set of clustered VI3 servers.

Also are you booting from SAN?

thx much!

Reply
0 Kudos
meistermn
Expert
Expert

Was the Compellent SAN much cheaper than EMC or IBM DS8000 ?

Reply
0 Kudos
christianZ
Champion
Champion

Reply
0 Kudos
crazex
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

For our config the Compellent ended up being about 30k cheaper than the EMC equivalent, and it has some nice extra features that EMC didn't offer. So far we are very happy with it, and we are just beginning our implementation of VI3.

-Jon-

-Jon- VMware Certified Professional
Reply
0 Kudos
meistermn
Expert
Expert

Yes ChristianZ mentioned can you make a test here:

http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=611397#611397

Reply
0 Kudos
djschmitz
Contributor
Contributor

The Compellent operates a little differently than other storage products in the market due to how we virtualize storage, but to answer your question, this is essentially how to setup an ESX clustered environment.

Lets say you have 4 ESX servers. Within the Compellent you would first create a volume and specify it's raid type(s) through the volume creation wizard. Once the volume has been created, the wizard will then walk you through mapping the volume to your ESX servers. For example, your first volume may be LUN 1, mapped to ESX1, ESX2, ESX3, and ESX4 used for your templates, ISO's, and virtual floppies. (Please note that when you are mapping the volume to the ESX servers, the wizard will let you specify more than one path to each server for multi-pathing via FC or iSCSI if you choose to do so.) Once that volume is mapped to your ESX servers you would rescan the HBA's and then initialize that LUN as a new datastore from the VI Client. From there, you would perhaps create a 300GB volume and (following the wizard) map it as LUN 2 to ESX1, ESX2, ESX3, and ESX4, repeating the process to create the VMFS datastore for your virtual machine storage. As you create new volumes for ESX whether it be for a VMFS datastores or RDM's you essentially just follow the wizard and it will guide you through step by step. The process is very intuitive and takes just minutes to create storage and assign it to your servers.

Also are you booting from SAN?

Yes, the Compellent is on the HCL and is certified by VMware as capable of booting your ESX servers from SAN.

If you have any questions, we would be more than happy to discuss this in more detail, just PM me.

thx much!Question; How are you presenting storage to a set of

Clustered Vi3 ESX servers from within compellent,

also when zoning are you creating 1 storage group for

your ESX hosts?

Would you basically mind running thru your practices

for setting up a set of clustered VI3 servers.

Reply
0 Kudos
crazex
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I'll gladly post up some IOMETER readings from our Compellent, as soon as I get some free time. Right now, I'm in the middle of our VI3 rollout.

-Jon-

-Jon- VMware Certified Professional
Reply
0 Kudos
meistermn
Expert
Expert

That will be great.

Thanks crazex.

Reply
0 Kudos
eolson-uf
Contributor
Contributor

We've ordered our Compellent SAN. Once everything is up and running, I'll also gladly post some IOmeter results.

Eric

Reply
0 Kudos
eeades
Contributor
Contributor

Yes we have had a SAN for about 7 years, and what you can do with a compellent is great, replays, replication, and recovers from a Disaster. The IO is fast also no problems there we have done many speed tests and the results were impressive. The new code rocks many of the old bugs were fixed and the IO was really increased for raid 10

We are also booting from the SAN for years now and have no problems doing that. We are a pretty big shop over 100 servers booting of the SAN and using Gigamans for replication to our Disaster recovery site

Any other questions give me a call if you like 248 672 0703

Ed Eades

Message was edited by:

eeades

Message was edited by:

eeades

Message was edited by:

eeades

Reply
0 Kudos
vieraj
Contributor
Contributor

How much storage do you have on your Compellent array?? Could you tell me the types of concurrent applications your running on the array (OLTP, email, etc).

Thanks

Reply
0 Kudos
strudd
Contributor
Contributor

I've started a web site for Compellent users and would like to invite you all to join. Compellent has agreed to participate with its content, so we may see some good things in a short while. The site is free and I'm more than willing to accept postive feedback. Visit http://www.compellentusers.org

Reply
0 Kudos
meistermn
Expert
Expert

Anyone have Results about the compellent san performance?

Reply
0 Kudos
christianZ
Champion
Champion

Reply
0 Kudos
marniholm
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Here is some performance results from SearchStorage: comparing Compellent, HP & NetApp:

#

Regards

M.J. Holm

Reply
0 Kudos