It's crunch time, iSCSI SAN advice

[fontyyy]

Hi there,

Well, it's been a while since I posted about us getting ESX and a SAN[/url]to both help with our ever growing file storage and server expenditure but the powers that be have finally given the go ahead;

So out of those we contacted the ones left who've not got bored of me so far are;

EqualLogic PS 300E IP SAN with 14 500gig SATA drives and the VI3 enterprise licences to run on the 3 Dell 1850's we've got already.

A Dell CX3-10c with 15 300gig FC drives and the same VI3 licences

A Hitachi AMS200 with (you ready for this?) 15 300gig FC drives and 15 500 gig SATA drives with the same VI3 licences again.

The price on all three of these is pretty similar so it's down to our (so basically my) preferance.

I can see reasons to go with all three;

EqualLogic as there's plenty of positive feedback here and elsewhere with regards to their perfomance with VMware.

Dell as they are our prefered supplier for server, client machines etc etc. they are probably cheapest and fibre is an option for connectivity if we choose it later.

Hitachi as the thing is massive (to any non tech guy here it looks like a no brainer, Hitachi all the way they say, but they will go with my choice), formatted capicity of the EqualLogic box is likely to be around 4.4tb, the Dell around the 3.2 tb mark and obviously the Hitachi is massive around 3.2tb on the FC and 4.5tb on the SATA.

But has anyone any experience of this box or the Dell? I'm happy they can all deal with our file sharing requirements in their sleep (our main file share box now is a server fibred to an AX100, it's hardly quick and does the job fine) but I have more concern of the performance of ESX, especially in a year or so's time when I'll be looking to get a quad core beast or two to VM on itstead of the servers we've got anyway.

Anyone like to say what they'd do? Have done? Did it work?

[JDLangdon]

When we began looking at iSCSI SAN's the decision makers went with LeftHand Networks and I'm glad they did.

The devices are easy to setup and their tech support guys are awesome.

Jason

[simmonsco]

I second Jason's opinion. We went with Lefthand and have not looked back. Easy setup GREAT support and works like a champ all at a very good price.

[doubleH]

My comments are the same as the other 2 posters, but directed at EqualLogic. They are well supported and highly regarded on these forums and have built in SAN replication if that is a requirement. Even if you don't need it now you may need it down the road. Also the ability to add another array into the group and not only increase capacity, but performance as well.

[rexchoi]

We just went down this road and were down to a two horse race between Equallogic and EMC.

We were leaning heavily towards a PS400 based on the ease of use and software bundles that come with the array (and the nice performance scaling when adding arrays) which all came at a cheaper cost than the EMC solution.

EMC pushed back pretty hard and came in with a cost of a CX3-20c that was almost the same as the PS400 array and threw in some licenses for us as well. When we started to look out 6 year cost and the cost to expand the array and maintenance costs (20TB total storage which is ~equal to two PS400 arrays) the EMC total 6 year cost dropped below the EqualLogic boxes (although pulling/finding estimates on the the year 4/5/6 support cost from EMC was a pain in the a**).

So at this point, we are nearing our final decision (should be final in a week).. and I'll post more once the papers are signed.

[christianZ]

Don't forget when you get the PS300E now you can expand it later with PS3000 series and move some volumes into it (online) - you won't need to replace the storage heads (like by EMC).

The expanding of EQL is foolproof.

In addition with EQL storage virtualization your volumes could be spanned over many spindles - normally over all spindles of one box, but you can change it later when you have more boxes and let it to be spanned over e.g. 2 boxes.

Those all tricks you can't do with EMC - I think.

And all those storages which can run fc and iscsi perform with iscsi worse than with fc.

[mattjcom]

I have used both the EqualLogic boxes and Compellent and found both very easy to use and setup. The EQL is easily expandable and yes all the features come with it which is a very handy feature for future proofing. The Compellent offered us iSCSI and FC in the same box so we could use it for our SQL environment on FC and then ESX on iSCSI, it is very flexible so made it easy for us to setup without any real training.

I can recommend both of these boxes for ESX environments.

M

[sstelter]

Hi Fontyyy,

I hope you take the advice of the other posters and give LeftHand Networks a look. You mention performance concerns as you add new server hardware to your VMware environment - that's the tough part with the EMC and Hitachi boxes - whatever you pick today will make life challenging if you need to upgrade performance in the future. EQL provides a nice offering in the PS300E, but it is limited in its lack of support for 10Gb Ethernet (no plans for another 12-18 months, if at all), lack of synchronous replication, and hardware lock-in. You are also committed to scaling in pretty big chunks in terms of capacity and dollars.

LeftHand Networks' SAN/iQ offers great flexibility and more features. Over here we're usually priced in the same ballpark as EQL for apples-to-apples comparisons (or at least as close as they can get given the feature limitations). And you get your choice of HP or IBM or LeftHand-branded hardware to boot. How's that for leverage the next time you want to buy servers?

I hope this helps - feel free to PM me if you have any questions or need a reference in the UK.

Message was edited by:

sstelter

[epping]

this is not true.

when you expand a EMC CX array, i take it you are talking about disks !! it easy just wire in another shelf, it can all be done on line. If you wish to upgrade the controllers at a later date i.e. u want more cache or faster processors this too can be done online.

all options seem good, what are your needs, is it just for ESX. if so go with low price and recomendations that u consider valuble on here.

where the EMC range really seperates itself from some of the smaller vendors mentioned here is if you wish to do advanced replication with Exchange, Oracle and SQL the have some very good software to handle this (at a cost), if you dont have these requirements at the end of the day its just disks in a box.

good luck

[christianZ]

>If you wish to

upgrade the controllers at a later date i.e. u want

more cache or faster processors this too can be done

online.

.. and what can you do with the old controller ?

[epping]

i guess if the old controller no longer meets your requirements ebay would be a good answer

[JayMiller29]

This a very interesting thread, as I'm kind of being tossed into the iSCSI platform as a storage back end for a future VI3 environment at my new job. The last implementation I did was ESX 2.5 on an EMC Clariion CX300, and I kind of still have a hard time believing that a VI3 infrastructure will run well on an iSCSI SAN. Apparently it does, otherwise I"d be reading about it in here.

Anyone heard anything about StoreVault's solutions & compatibility w/ VI3? I know they're certified as of recently.... just curious if anyone in here has heard anything good or bad.

[sstelter]

I would be wary of a solution that only offered one controller, no choice of disk (SATA only), with no easy path to FAS. 12 drives is all you'll ever get. Nice price point, but limitations likely outweigh the price benefits for VMware environments in my opinion. Also, as I understand it, features like snapshots are a-la-carte.

If you're going to have several servers depending on your SAN, you'll want an architecture that gives you the option to add controllers as needed for performance and availability. Just my 2 cents...

[christianZ]

One again for clarity-

expanding of EQL means to get a new box (incl. all disks and 2 storage controllers) - your capacity and performance increase quite linear;

when your new box should be the sas model then you can use your old box e.g. as 2. tier storage - you won't loose your investment;

all this with single point of management

By others (EMC, IBM, NetApp) you must replace the heads (theoretically on line - who makes it this way?) to get more processor performance; your old controllers you can "sell" only by eBay - your investment will be partiially lost. You haven't any chance here to manage the old and the new controllers together.

For me the future belongs to vendors they can expand modular, can build tiered storage and give a single point of management.

On HCL I see Equallogic, LefthandNetworks, 3Par,... they can do it.

[mattjcom]

With the Compellent I have dual controllers going up to around 300Tb if I needed it. I also have two speeds of FC disk and SATA disk all being managed by the controllers and their software does the automated tiered storage at block level so my "old" data is moved down to SATA for me automatically. The thin provsioning really helped me with my VMware rollout as well. I am also going to be replicating over IP to a controller with just SATA at my remote site in the future.

[christianZ]

To date we haven't any Compellent's results here:

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=73745

Maybe interesting ?

[epping]

hi out of interest with the EQL devices, if you add in a new box is the lun shared by the new controllers as well as the old ones, be great if it works this way.

thanks

[doubleH]

yepper! that's why you get more performance on top of capacity with equallogic.

[epping]

interesting, how does it cope with the cache

[christianZ]

It will work, but the question is here, is that rational to spann one volume over sata and sas disks (I think no).