SAN Choices

[jpeoples]

I have recently purchased ESX Enterprise and have 3- DL380 G5's to deploy them on. I need to incorporate a SAN and then deploy Exchange 2007 on a couple of Server 2008 Enterprise VM's. I have looked at Lefthand, Dell Equilogix, and just using an HP drive array. Looking for input as to what are the downfalls of each. Recommendations would be great.

Thanks,

James

[TomHowarth]

Welcome to the forums James, I have moved your post to a different section so that it will gain a greater audience

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "VMware Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment”.

[christianZ]

As hp shop I would think about Eva4400 kits - they could be quite suitable (by good negotiations).

The MSA2000 series (oem from DotHill) seems to have not quite good storage management.

[depping · Accepted solution]

Well that depends on your budget and expectations for the future. But if it will be three hosts for the coming years I would spend less money and buy an iSCSI array. Dell EQL / HP Lefthand / EMC Celerra / NetApp ... can't go wrong with any of these. First write down your requirements and send out and RFI to at least 3 vendors, see what they've got / comeback with and let them demo it etc.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator

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[Kevin_Gao]

We use HP LeftHand and NetApp here so I'll only comment on those 2 based on our experiences:

HP LeftHand - NSM2120's:

- Cheap (add-on licenses are also cheap)

- Easy to setup

- Achieves true redundancy easily

- Flexible enough that you can get other hosts (doesn't have to be HP's) and the SAN iQ software still works so you're not "tied down" with a single vendor / product line.

- No NFS option

NetApp FAS2020:

- Primary datastore deduplication can save you some space (unless you have a heavy load).

- Some really cool software addons such as SnapManager for Exchange and SQL (NetApp license costs a bit more and can add up pretty fas)

- Great performance over the HP LeftHand but you also pay more.

Hope this helps you.

[JohnADCO]

Budget? And how much expandability do you need with it?

I do think iSCSI would work fine for you.

[meistermn]

Maybe open storage helps.

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[_VR_]

jpeoples,

Can you provide more information as to what you're looking for? Usable disk space, software requrements (snapshots, replication, etc), raid level, HA controllers, budget?

From the sound of your original post you're looking at something more entry level. NetApp had a great product line called StoreVault which they recently decided to kill. Take a look at the MSA2012i from HP.

http://h71016.www7.hp.com/dstore/ctoBases.asp?oi=E9CED&BEID=19701&SBLID=&ProductLineId=450&FamilyId=...

[KungFuJoe]

Another vote for iSCSI.

For a cheap, no hassle, yet reliable and proven solution, go Equallogic. They are so simple to set up and use, you can have one up and running in less than 30 minutes (not counting time to rackmount and cable, of course).

For a higher end solution, go NetApp...2xxx or 3xxx.

[meistermn]

Why every time so price san enviroments?

Look at conraid

[mcowger]

Why dont people use it? A few reasons:

1) AoE is a niche player, and doesn't have nearly the market or technical support in the community as FC or iSCSI

2) until 2 weeks ago, there was no AoE driver for ESX

3) There is still no SUPPORTED AoE driver for ESX

For many, #3 is enough to kick it out of contention.

--Matt

VCP, vExpert, Unix Geek