Storage Recommendations

[Rob_Lisi]

I've looked around the forums in search of the best storage solution and they were all older threads so I'd like to start a new one for 2009.

We are looking at a San solution not only to host VM's but also as a file container for data asset management. We are presently looking at offers from HP Eva, Lefthand (HP), Equallogic, Pillar and Datacore.

Any input that would help me choose the best cost/performance/scalability balance would be very much appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

[mvoss18]

This is always a tough one to give a straight answer, and this is always debated. Here is my objective point of view:

Performance will be similar with all of these arrays, so it will probably come down what price you are able to get. I like the functionality of Lefthand and Equallogic. I know that with Equallogic you get all of the software features like mirroring, snapshots, etc. for one price. Others will charge you individually for each feature and that can be a pain. I also know that with each Equallogic shelf you add, you get more performance. Pillar and Lefthand work the same way. The last I looked at Datacore they were using commodity servers as storage controllers, and I wasn't very keen on that since the storage controller ran Windows. Overall you're probably going to save with iSCSI, but each of these arrays offer an iSCSI option.

As far as a file container, you could allocated storage from any of these arrays to a file server, which could be a VM. You didn't mention NetApp but I know their filers can behave like a file server.

[recon54b]

We have 2 EMC and 1 Compellent SAN. Compellent ease of use and configuration with VMware makes its a great choice. I would highly recommend Compellent.

[AndreTheGiant]

You have to look at price, features, extendibility and scalability.

Performance depends usual on disks type, RAID layout and storage cache.

Consider only storage with multipath and failover functions (don't buy basic storage that have only 1 controller).

If you use iSCSI use dedicated switches for iSCSI SAN.

Note that basic feature could be the same, but if you plan to have mirror/replica (for example) you can have big difference in costs.

Andre

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

[azn2kew]

Those storages are pretty good and can't be wrong in any of the solution but if you look at flexiblity and ease of deployment and management, I've found PS5000/6000 series are pretty easy to implement and with all the built in features that's pretty solid solutions for virtualization/DR purposes. You can always request to have a demo box for testing and decide which one you like most as everyone have different requirements and need. Compellent is pretty solid solution as well. If you're looking at Lefthand's Network VSA than look at SANMelody or something with Data Domain (which will be acquire by EMC or NetApp still contending) I've worked with different large clients and they seems to utilize a lot of EMC and NetApp gears which for larger environment and its very expensive to implement. So, really how big your environment and your IOPS requirements and budget.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[shepnasty]

When it comes to Virtualization NetApp is king. If you look a little closer at their solution it makes sense. How can you virtualize your servers if you aren't virtualizing your storage too? With the added benefits of NFS and the ability to expand and shrink your LUNs (datastores) on the fly without SCSI locking is a huge benefit!! NetApp offers Enterprise SAN Storage with the benefits of a NAS filer, delivering fiber channel, iscis, nfs, cifs, http and ftp protocols. I have worked with IBM 8100, 4100, Dell MD storage and NetApp FAS and V Series all in virtual environments and I am telling you that you cannot go wrong with NetAPP.

[Rob_Lisi]

Do you have ballpark prices for NetApp? I can't find anything on the web and there are no resellers here in Montreal Canada.

[dnetz]

I beg to differ. Even though Netapp are big on NFS and management software (snapvault/snapmanager/etc), they're not neccesarily that great performance wise and hugely overpriced. When we were looking to buy new storage this spring they were about four times more expensive than Sun Storage 7000 and the service per month was half of Sun's per three years. We've been a Netapp shop for several years and even though they've behaved nicely most of the time, we just can't justify the much higher cost with nothing to prove for it, and these days I'm sure few businesses can.

[azn2kew]

I wouldn't say NetApp is the king in storage virtualization solution, even though they have the management suites and works great with VMware View 3.0/NFS solutions using Rapid Clone Utility 2.0 which makes life easier for VDI provisioning, but that doesn't mean other storage vendors out there can't compete. There are lots of good vendors that works well EMC, HP, HDS, IBM etc...its great that they bought Data Domain which gives them much more market shares with storage solutions.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[shepnasty]

When it comes to straight IO there are some other storage solutions (database, high I/O applications etc.) that would be better, but when you need storage for VMWare virtualization it is hard to compete with Netapp. You based you reply purely on cost. If you can't see the benefit for your NetApp in VMWare then it tells me you aren't using it to its full potential. I just created a VMWare VIEW (VDI) pool of 20 XP machines with 20 GB hard drives. It consumed 400GB initially. I am using APPsense for a roaming profile solution so nothing ever changes on the XP Desktop. I used NetApp Deduplication on that one NFS LUN and it reduced it down to 13 GB (white spaces was eliminated). 400GB to 13GB for 20 XP VM's!!!!! Beat that with your SUN storage. I just lowered my total cost of ownership by over 3000%.

To the author of this thread. I can get you in contact with my NetApp rep if you are interested in a quote. Don't go straight off of cost. If you can afford it NetApp will give you what you need for your virtual environment.

[jayctd]

We are an equallogic shop right now but are evaluating Netapp and Sun ... while I like the price of SUN's hardware i have been unable to find any SAS or FC disk for their ISCSI product offering ... it seems to be SATA only.

On their FC offering yes but not on ISCSI

As for Nettapps performance I am taking that into account too ... they seem to do great at NFS but because of how they virtually re-publish ISCSI they seem to not be the fastest on the market

##If you have found my post has answered your question or helpful please mark it as such##

[dnetz]

Sun Storage 7000 is all about SATA drives, one of several reasons why they're so cheap. They leverage the slower performance of the SATA interface with SSD drives as both read and write cache as well as using RAM in the heads for cache. Your Sun rep. should be able to give you a good presentation on how all of this works and the Fishworks blog (http://blogs.sun.com/fishworks/) contains a lot of interesting benchmarking, although from Sun employees only, so be sure to borrow one for testing if you're unsure about the performance. From personal experience I must say I wished I'd borrowed one for test first, especially concering Active Directory integration and such, since the software is still very much in development. The raw performance is really impressive though.

[jayctd]

While that is fine and thanks for the info! We have a long history of leveraging SATA disk, with the number of spindles we are talking the performance can be significant. But we run into situations about 15 to 20 percent of the time that just requires a better disk technology because it is Large non sequential reads. In those cases we need to usually leverage a mixed solution with a higher end disk technology under those specific volumes

A SATA only technology, even a well implemented one is not enough for us we need to be able to support both to be cost effective and maintain our required performance levels

Either way we are working with a rep to get more info and for sure will not cut them out just at an initial look but when you need that performance profile there is not much you can do about it

##If you have found my post has answered your question or helpful please mark it as such##