Dell Equallogic or HP LeftHand

[superikey]

Hey All,

I can't make up my mind with respect to deciding which iSCSI SAN technology to deploy at a client.

The Client is currently running 12 Physical Servers, and the plan is the migrate to 3 Virtual Hosts running ESX and 12 Guests, Central iSCSI SAN, etc.

Servers include 2 SQL, 1 Exchange 2007, Citrix, Web, EDI/Gentran, Etc.

SQL and Exchange are pretty demanding and the Software Vendor for ERP is reccomending SAS Drives in either solution.

We will probably establish multiple clusters within the SAN; SAS for SQL, Exchange, VMDK's in general, and cheaper SATA for Nearline storage (Artwork, User Files, etc).

Future applicaitons in addition to the single Site SAN Above, are DR in a remote warehouse, and VI3 with SRM.

With respect to the SAN, There seem to be good reasons to chose either a Dell Equalogic SAN Solution or an HP LeftHand Solution.

The big problem is being able to make a decision when each company tells you all the negatives about the other. Now I take all this with a grain of salt, but what is the truth?

Network World seems to rate both solutions to be on par with each other, giving the slight performance edge to LeftHand is performance, but overall scoring both solutions the same.

Some questions I have to answer.

1. Does the MS ESRP Report from Equallogic really properly compare to LefhHands (older) report? And does it prove the Equalogic solution performs better than LeftHand?

2. When scaling with more and more nodes in the LeftHand Solution, does it really create superiour performance to the Equallogic Solution?

3. Does the fact that Lefthand has 2 Network Interfaces on Each node really allow it to provide better distributed performance than the Equallogic?

4. Is it better to have Purpose Built Hardware like in the Equallogic Arrays with prioriteary hardware, or is it better to have a platform that is built on x86 Hardware which seems to grow up at a much faster pace, giving a company like LeftHand the ability to focus on its software tehcnology and rely on well refined and well built hardware.

5. With the Equallogic Solution, is it dangerous to SPAN Volumes across multiple array enclosures, when there is no equivelent to "Network RAID" between enclosures? even though the enclosures are redundant, SPANNED volumes still seems to worry me.

6. Overall Is the LeftHand Solution as reliable and highly available as the Equallogic Solution, or is Equalogic really a more robust solution like their SE's make it sound?

7. Overall is the LeftHand Solution able to perform up to par with or even better than the Equallogic Solution, when there is presumably more overhead for is x86 based OS to do its work?

8. Also is the LeftHand Solution less energy efficient than the Euqallogic like Dell keeps pointing out?

I can keep going, but what I am really looking for is some unbiased opnion as to which solution to go with, and I want to know if either is really any different.

Also, The client is an HP Server Shop and all of their current servers, and even the 3 new Servers to be will be Proliant regardless of the SAN.

Thanks for everyones Help and Advice.

[bryantharp]

Superikey,

I am facing the same questions here in our decision for a new SAN for our development shop/servers. We will be running a much larger base of VM servers and VM desktops off of the same san, but have narrowed my search down to the same two SAN's you mention here. Did you ever get any answers to your questions, and or which did you end up going with and have you have any issues and or wished now you went with the other vendor.

Thanks,

Bryan

[Twingirls]

Don't know that much about Left Hand.. Know a little bit more about DELL>

All the sales reps are like that. They hammer each others products. Any thoughts with EMC. Only company that it is whitepapered to 5 x9's available with there SAN

There AX4 is isci and scales up to 60 TB and pretty inexpensive-- with Dell the usable capacity is horrible in the end. Ends up being around 32%.

They use a PS (shelf) of 16... here is a breakdown on how there usable storage isn't the best and isn't economically scalable

Dell box is only isci if that is ok. EMC's CX line and NS line are ISCI FC CIF/NFS.. YOu future proof your mission critical apps if yoiu need to with these options.

Here is a breakdown of Raw vs Usable for DELL in there architecture

2/16 - ratio hot spare

1/16 Over head

3 /16disks raid only offer 10 and 50 can't change it once it is set

5/16 for snaps

Buy the time you just buy the dell box you need to buy more disk soon there after. YOu can only buy a shelf of 8 at at time and may not even need that much. It used ot be you had to buy 16 a whole PS. not much disk space left.. After all said and done depending on how much disk you buy up front, you may need to buy more disk soon after.

Have you looked at EMC.. I truly think it is the most valued prop in the industry. You get what you pay for..... They are both good but EMC has more technology and benifits in the weeds that you don't worry about down the road or even see. You alwasy issues here and there with all SAN's.. The key is service in the end... Who has the experience and who will be there in the trenches when you need help.

Ask DEll to quote you on usable storage, you will see how expensive they truly are. Thats another reason we chose EMC. They are about 68-70% usable capacity in the end.

Best of Luck

[jayctd]

I have had limited dealings with Left hand but am happy to answer your questions about equallogic

We are a large equallogic shop and have been with them sense before Dell bought them out so have and are using everything from their PS100 to PS5000XV series and everything in between

1. Does the MS ESRP Report from Equallogic really properly compare to

LefhHands (older) report? And does it prove the Equalogic solution

performs better than LeftHand?

Unsure I have not read the report but will take a look and answer

2. When scaling with more and more nodes in the LeftHand Solution, does

it really create superiour performance to the Equallogic Solution?

The scaling is quite slick with equallogic, the logical volumes will actually span up to any 3 arrays, with MPIO you see an actual performance boost as you scale out reguardless of the increased load as the volumes will intellegently balance between arrays and logins will as well.

3. Does the fact that Lefthand has 2 Network Interfaces on Each node

really allow it to provide better distributed performance than the

Equallogic?

Unsure of the lefthand sollution but the PS5000 series and the older PS100's have 3 active interfaces (6 total 3 on each of the 2 controllers) The group balances logins to all the individual IP's on thoes interfaces as well as to other arrays as your group grow's

4. Is it better to have Purpose Built Hardware like in the Equallogic

Arrays with prioriteary hardware, or is it better to have a platform

that is built on x86 Hardware which seems to grow up at a much faster

pace, giving a company like LeftHand the ability to focus on its

software tehcnology and rely on well refined and well built hardware.

I like the custom hardware, they seem to have a comprehensive design behind it that reliably performs and seems to be built with the entire lifecycle in demand. We are running some older PS100's that are more then 5 years old without a hiccup. They perform on par with their larger cousins with no problem.

The code is also standard so we are on the SAME firmware/release on all our modles across the board, no managing different firmwears for different hardware. This reduces conflicts/problems

We do purchase the top end warranty but wtih that support I have no problems escallating things directly to support be it durring the day or 3 in the morning, I get consistant and high end support for firmware/hardware and software (server side). They also keep ESX specalists on hand for compleatly supporting a virtual envyronment

5. With the Equallogic Solution, is it dangerous to SPAN Volumes across

multiple array enclosures, when there is no equivelent to "Network

RAID" between enclosures? even though the enclosures are redundant,

SPANNED volumes still seems to worry me.

Absolutly no problems as far as that goes, each slice is protected by that arrays RAID set in concert. The performance of the increased spindals is amazing we are actually seeing a neer liniar scaling with MPIO (both MSISCI and Vsphere4) up to 3 arrays in Non-sequential large block IOPS. The performance if spanning a volume across 48 spindels is noticable.

I would also note that if you are warry you can keep building out single array pools, this would mean that the volume would be restricted to a single Array and not spanned.

6. Overall Is the LeftHand Solution as reliable and highly available as

the Equallogic Solution, or is Equalogic really a more robust solution

like their SE's make it sound?

We have had extreemly reliable performance out of equallogic (To put it in perspective we are running more then 11 arrays) We run it for both data as well as under our ESX platform.

Also The flexability provides uptime through maintinance. In our example when we get a new array and a new firmware is up for update we can put the new one in, then move the first old one out, up date it and put it in and move the whole group through it.

We have 0 down time even durring firmware upgrades on the arrays themselfs.

7. Overall is the LeftHand Solution able to perform up to par with or

even better than the Equallogic Solution, when there is presumably more

overhead for is x86 based OS to do its work?

Unsure without having solid lefhand experience but we are seeing amazing performance

8. Also is the LeftHand Solution less energy efficient than the Euqallogic like Dell keeps pointing out?

I can keep going, but what I am really looking for is some unbiased

opnion as to which solution to go with, and I want to know if either is

really any different.

Also, The client is an HP Server Shop and all of their current servers,

and even the 3 new Servers to be will be Proliant regardless of the SAN.

I know we were in the market looking between the two of them as well when we first chose to go the direction we did. For the feature set I have been extreemly happy with the product so far.

I know not the most unbiased but I can give you any further details at least on the one product

[jayctd]

With my experience I wanted to comment on a few of these things in the PS series

2/16 - ratio hot spare

Correct

3 /16disks raid only offer 10 and 50 can't change it once it is set

Not quite correct, Raid 5 also offered (Raid 6 to be added in the PS6000)

You are also able to change RAID with live data on it (we have done it) Though there ARE restrictions on doing so with live data on it ( RAID 10 -> Raid 10 -> 50 RAID 50 -> RAID5) Basically they can go to RAID sets with more size but cant go to ones with LESS size (Note that is LIVE with data if you can remove the array you can bring it in at any RAID policy)

I would also note as for the pricing comment that they have some pretty hefty discounting on "DEMO" Arrays that is benificial for the initial buy (or when you get Enterprise Archetecture Certified)

[AndreTheGiant]

(Raid 6 to be added in the PS6000)

RAID 6 was added with the new 4.x firmware.

And you can install 4.x firmware also on PS5000.

Andre

**if you found this or any other answer useful please consider allocating points for helpful or correct answers

[dnanders]

1. Does the MS ESRP Report from Equallogic really properly compare to

LefhHands (older) report? And does it prove the Equalogic solution

performs better than LeftHand?

I don't know

2. When scaling with more and more nodes in the LeftHand Solution, does

it really create superior performance to the Equallogic Solution?

The LeftHand solution is basically grid computing. The more nodes you add the better performance you get.

3. Does the fact that Lefthand has 2 Network Interfaces on Each node

really allow it to provide better distributed performance than the

Equallogic?

The performance comes from the more nodes you add.

4. Is it better to have Purpose Built Hardware like in the Equallogic

Arrays with proprietary hardware, or is it better to have a platform

that is built on x86 Hardware which seems to grow up at a much faster

pace, giving a company like LeftHand the ability to focus on its

software technology and rely on well refined and well built hardware.

This is more of a personal choice. The LeftHand software is pretty amazing and can be purchased as a VM. You can try it out by downloading a 30 day trial of it, attach your own storage and create an iSCSI SAN.

5. With the Equallogic Solution, is it dangerous to SPAN Volumes across

multiple array enclosures, when there is no equivelent to "Network

RAID" between enclosures? even though the enclosures are redundant,

SPANNED volumes still seems to worry me.

I am not sure if this has been fixed by DELL but if you lose an Equallogic box in an array you lose the whole array.

6. Overall Is the LeftHand Solution as reliable and highly available as

the Equallogic Solution, or is Equalogic really a more robust solution

like their SE's make it sound?

Personally, I like the LeftHand Solution. It is a lot more flexible because of the hardware it can be run on. Also by adding more boxes (storage always grows) you will get much better performance. IBM has a new product called the XIV (created by Moshe Yanai the man behind the Symmetrix that EMC purchased) but it works the same way. All grid computing based. That said LeftHand is doing something right.

7. Overall is the LeftHand Solution able to perform up to par with or

even better than the Equallogic Solution, when there is presumably more

overhead for is x86 based OS to do its work?

The LeftHand solution will perform better has you add more nodes.

8. Also is the LeftHand Solution less energy efficient than the Euqallogic like Dell keeps pointing out?

The LeftHand solution will be has energy efficient has the hardware its on. Before it ran on IBM, DELL or HP boxes. Now with HP purchasing them I am assuming it will only run on HP hardware going forward.

My suggestions is to look at the budget you have and what your company is willing to afford. You can also engage both vendors for demos of the products if you have not. You will need to play with the products to see if it what you want to use in your environment.

Hope this helps a little/

[AndreTheGiant]

2. When scaling with more and more nodes in the LeftHand Solution, does

it really create superior performance to the Equallogic Solution?

The scale out approach of Equallogic can linearly increase storage, cache, bandwidth.

Every new unit new new controllers, so new cache, new NIC, ...

Andre

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[dnanders]

Oh yes that is true. My only concern with Equallogic is the lose of one box takes the whole array down. (IF you lose a box)

[AndreTheGiant]

Oh yes that is true. My only concern with Equallogic is the lose of one box takes the whole array down.

No... your LUN (Volumes) are inside each Equallogic, you can move them across boxes, but there is no reason (and I'm don't know if is possible) di spread across boxes.

Andre

**if you found this or any other answer useful please consider allocating points for helpful or correct answers

[Kevin_Gao]

Hi,

I've never run any Equallogic's so I will skip the questions that make direct comparisons.

3) I don't know about the speed differences versus Equallogic but having multiple NIC's was a key for us as it helps us to achieve a greater deal of fault tolerence.

4) We went with LeftHand due to the fact that they used "standard boxes". This is great to us as parts are readily available and relatively cheap to support. When you want to to upgrade from 1Gb Ethernet to 10Gb it's not a fork-lift upgrade unlike many SAN's that use proprietary hardware.

6) Currently we got 4 of these NSM's and knock on wood haven't had any failures / downtime yet. We use network RAID so even when we do firmware upgrades on the SAN's there's no downtime for the replicated LUN's.

7) The LeftHand SAN OS is tiny. From what I saw it uses a tiny fraction of RAM and CPU from the box (there's over 90% free resources). SAN OS's don't chew up a lot of hardware resources...heck our NetApp FAS comes with a Celeron processor (no joke) and it runs great.

😎 It's just a standard branded server. If you know which model you want you can just calculate the power requirements using the manufacturer's calculator.

Both products have great features and reviews. As someone pointed out before...there's no such thing as a "best SAN" - only the RIGHT SAN for your company. My company wanted easy of management, scalability, high-availability, and low TCO..the LeftHands delivered and we're happy with them. Good luck in your search.

[BoxingSurfer]

based on my recent experience of lefthand after the HP takeover, I'd be EXTREMELY cautious about buying into these products.

It actually is a really great product, but HP are famous for destroying companies they acquire. Theyre doing it again with LeftHand.

The Lefthand support portal has been taken down since May this year, leaving customers with no access to any web resources for documentation configuration guides and troubleshooting information, as well as patches and updates. The lefthand documentation is nowhere to be found on HP ITRC. No ETA's have been provided for when and in what form this information will return

The costs for Support contrancts have increased by 100% under HP, with no improvement in SLA's, despite the above issues

Account management have become completely unreachable

Promised roadmaps for features and development timescales have dissappeared. HP are not commenting on anything regarding the products future.

I'm talking to Dell now about pulling our LeftHand kit out and replacing it with Equalogic.

[manfriday]

Because the Lefthand boxes are standard branded servers, the motherboard could be a potential single point of failure on the LeftHand solution, couldn't it?

[IRIX201110141]

Oh yes that is true. My only concern with Equallogic is the lose of one box takes the whole array down. (IF you lose a box)

This feature can be disabled in the GUI. If its disabled the LUN isnt spanned over the arrays(max.3).

We have 2 PS5000E.... if you dont have a need for all or most of the software features they are a bit pricy i think. Keep in mind that with Equallogic there are no extra costs for licenses or management. All is included in the main price for the array.

Older modells can combined within a group of newer arrays and offer the same functions.

Regards

Joerg

'Remember if you found this or others answers helpful do not forget to award points by marking an answer as helpful or correct'

[J1mbo]

I'm looking at these as well. I had a demo of the Dell kit, the guy was suggesting two PS6000s (or 4000s for that which is the old 5000 with one NIC disabled), one with SATA and one with 15k SAS drives. Supposedly the system will automatically migrate hot blocks onto the 15k SAS drives.

Please award points to any useful answer.

[meistermn]

Is Coraid an option ?

Prices :

Perfortmance :

[nick_bmt]

Superikey

We are in almost the exact same boat. Our company is looking to collapse 14 Windows server into 3 VM's w/ a SAN and have kinda narrowed our choice to Dell or LeftHand. I really like both products and was wondering if you had come to a decision and if you have what were you major factors. I am leaning toward the LeftHand but am wary because of one the post's mentioning the lack of access to their support portal now that they are owned by HP

Any of your thoughts and guidance would be appreciated

Nick

[amvmware]

The choice of ISCSI solution does depend on your requirements. This is my take on the lefthand option

Lefthand

Pros -

Cheaper than equallogic.

Uses standard intel servers.

Failure of a single storage node will still allow access to luns

Cons -

Failure of a node could impact performance due to reduced IO capability..

Uses H/W and software RAID - depending on the RAID levels selected you could consume a lot of disk space.

Don't forget to leave points for helpful/correct posts.

[meistermn]

Keep although in mind if the storage solution is support for vmware site recovery manager , if you want to use it now or later.

http://www.vmware.com/products/srm/resource.html

Technical Information from Partners

VMware storage partners have created the following pages and documents* to assist customers in configuring their storage and replication infrastructure for use with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

• 3PAR

• Dell Equallogic

• EMC SRDF

• FalconStor

• HP Continuous Access

• Left Hand Networks

• NetApp

[BoxingSurfer]

To:

i notice that you mentioned in your post the issues that I mentioned with HP-LeftHand's support and account management since the HP takeover, in a post i made some months ago in this thread

I thought i'd inform you all that - alarmingly - there has been no improvement in any of these areas since I made that post. And thats not through lack of effort . We've been making a lot of noise about our issues at all levels in HP to try to get the relationship fixed.

We still havent been able to find out who our account manager is now. We've been trying to get in touch with someone who looks after our business for the last 4 months without success. All the lefthand account managers have gone. HP-Lefhand appear now only to be interested in selling, not interested in managing their existing customers. We've been told pretty directly that they dont really care about our concerns, and that we should go elsewhere if we dont like it. I can provide you with the email if you want to see proof.

The Web resources for the product are still inaccessible. The absense of any web based support information - which was excellent before HP took over - means that you really have no choice but to take 24x7 support, which has added even more expense. Now it costs us something in the order of £5K per year to support 3 LeftHand nodes in a 6TB SAN.

After 1 year since the HP takeover, LeftHand have transformed from a small technically innovative company that were affordable, responsive and excellent to work with, into a company with arrogance and ambivalence you expect from Cisco or EMC... or HP.

I know we're not an isolated case. I was at an event recently where i met some IT Managers working in companies that also had lefthand kit in the UK who are having the same issues.

The product is good, but you have to make your choice if you can do business with a company thats going to treat you like this after they get your signature on the PO.

If i could make my choice again, I dont think I'd make the same mistake.

Maybe you see things differently.

regards

B