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jpedrocarvalho
Contributor
Contributor

IBM DS4700 vs CX3-10

Hi,

Can anyone help me choosing one of these 2 SAN. They are beeing proposed at the same price.

CX3-10: 15x146GB FC4

DS4700: 10x300GB FC4

Thanks

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34 Replies
CoreyIT
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Performance wise the cx310 and 20 are the same really. The difference is in scalability. The cx320 offeres 4gb of cache and the cx310 offers 2gb. However your not going to see a large difference between these cache unless you are running enough disks to offload the the queues to the bus. the cx320 is scalable to about 60tb with sata disks if my memory serves and about 40tb with sas but i could be a little of. the cx310 is about half that.

i think dell has the specs on their site. you could cross reference with ibm. performance wise they are going to perform close to the same and i think its going to come down to price and vendor preference. the only real differentiating factor i could see would be in the software offers from both.

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CXSANGUY
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The CX3-10 has a 1.8GHz CPU per Storage Processor vs the CX3-20 which has a 2.8GHz CPU per Storage Processor. Also it is the system memory that is 2GB on the CX3-10 and 4GB on the CX3-20. This results in the cache actually being 1053MB on the CX3-20, but only 310MB on the CX3-10.

The CX3-10 support max 60 disks, vs 120. 64 hosts vs 128. 512 Luns vs 1024. 30 Raid Groups vs 60. 128 Storage Groups vs 256. 64 RLPs (Snap Cache) vs 128.

Also the CX3-10 supports only the DAE3P/DAE4P disk enclosure whereas a CX3-20 will still support DAE2, DAE2-ATA, and DAE2P disk enclosures.

Other enhanced feature sets are similarly bound (SnapView, Mirrorview, MetaLUNs, etc.) usually with the 20 supporting about double the 10.

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christianZ
Champion
Champion

Model 72 (70 a little smaller) seems to be comparable with cx30-20 :

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1960497,00.asp

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jpedrocarvalho
Contributor
Contributor

>For instance, IBM's DS4700 Model 72 features 8 ports to the CX3-20, >which has 4 ports.

It seems the 72 model has more ports (8) than the CX3-20. I know the 70 model has 4 ports, 2 per controler.

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christianZ
Champion
Champion

Yes, and the cache is 2 GB by 70 and 4 GB by 72.

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Amcomsupport
Contributor
Contributor

Hello, I was under the impression that the CX3-10 could run in either iSCSI or FC mode, but not both at the same time. That is what I was told by my EMC rep. Can you confirm?

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CoreyIT
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I stand corrected then. Thanks for the clarification for myself and others.

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CXSANGUY
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello, I was under the impression that the CX3-10

could run in either iSCSI or FC mode, but not both at

the same time. That is what I was told by my EMC

rep. Can you confirm?

The correct statement would be that a single server cannot connect via iSCSI and FC to the same combo system. A CX3-10 can have both iSCSI and FC server connections though. So it was a misinterpretation. This statement applies to any combo unit in the CX3 series.

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jpedrocarvalho
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks all for the info. We went with IBM. Hope we made the right choise.

The only thing that troubles me is that the DELL servers where the 2900 with 7 slots, while the IBM servers are x3650 with 4 slots. (I have a few questions regarding this, but I think it belong on another post)

Thanks again for all your help.

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britton_kerr
Contributor
Contributor

I'm also looking at IBM/EMC. Does anyone have any performance data or can speak to the performance difference between the ds4700 model 70 and 72? Spec throughput numbers are the same so how much of a difference (or at what level) will the model 72 be worth the extra 10K for the extra 2GB cache(Host port numbers are not an issue)?

I've already chosen the DS4700 as you can add the FC drives later as opposed to the DELL/EMC solution which forces you to start off with FC + SATA and close to $70K.

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sipsipi
Contributor
Contributor

We bought a Model 70 - we have 8 Nodes, 40 some virtual machines, and it's perfect. I love it. No Qualms.

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sysmexnz
Contributor
Contributor

I had this exact dilemma myself and went with

IBM x3650's (Dual Core 5140's) and DS4700 (70) over the Dell's. Except when I did this excercise I did not have the option of the 2900 (I was comparing with the 2950). Same SAN options though.

Was a hard choice to choose IBM as I am a Dell/EMC guy of many years. But comparing Tech and $$$ the IBM won out at this point in time.

For what it is worth, the 2900 does take up 5U of rack space.

The IBM x3650 Server also has 12 memory banks where the 2950 only had 8, which was the clincher for me, as I could put in 16GB (8 x 2GB) and have expansion to 24GB without having to buy the super expensive 4GB RAM chips.

and if you buy the right cards, 4 exp slots should be more than enough.

My current config uses the 2 onboard Gig NICs + a dual port Intel Pro Gig NIC + a dual port 4Gb QLogic FC card (I looked at all the pro's and cons for buying 2 x single port cards). So I have 2 slots free.

Have had this system running for 6 months and loving it.

Started with 10 x 146GB 15K RPM Drives (one big RAID 5 and a hot spare). Just about to add 6 x 300GB 15K RPM drives.

I have 2 x Dell 2850's also connected to this SAN, but these are the older hyperthreaded XEON procs. Not really a fair comparison, but the x3650's perform a heap better under load.

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britton_kerr
Contributor
Contributor

For my last purchase I went with the x3650 for my DR site because of the extra memory capability. If IBM keeps up the price/performance advantages over DELL by the time I get to replacing the 6850s in 4 years I'll be going with IBM on that as well and shrinking down to the 2 phys processor machines. 2 machines with 48GB of ram and by then probably 2x8 core CPUs (maybe 16?) Hard to beat.

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arnoobbb
Contributor
Contributor

He meant EMC Direct Support....you can get EMC products directly supported by EMC, instead of Dell....however, you will still have to buy through a reseller like Dell. But when you pick up the phone and dial 800 support, you will get EMC instead of Dell, because you asked for EMC direct support.

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williambishop
Expert
Expert

I've both EMC and IBM, and it's really a coin toss. My one peeve about the DS series is the adding licenses per "group", past 8(I think which is included by default).

Performance wise, I like them both, and they're both great vendors. I'm not a user of the cx line, but I've heard about it from peers(we use several high end frames from EMC, but not much of their lower tier stuff except centara's--which is archive). You won't be disappointed with your choice.

--"Non Temetis Messor."
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