StoreVault S500, Lefthand 2060, or Dell MD3000i for storage?

[mikes1p]

Anyone have any recommendations, or reasons to avoid either of these storage systems? Or have another suggestion that fits my budget?

BTW I've read numerous threads here on this and searched plenty, there are a million ways to go. I've boiled down a short list and am looking for feedback from people that have some real world experience with these systems.

I am trying to get a storage system in place that will

1. replicate to a secondary storage box in our remote office for DR purposes

2. allow me to connect one (maybe two) VMWare ESX via iSCSI or NFS.

I can spend about $10,000 for the main system at our HQ and about $7,000 for the remote office. I have looked into many iSCSI boxes but these hit my price point. EqualLogic looks really nice but are well beyond my budget, Lefthand Networks 2060's would be a stretch but if there is a compelling reason I could sell management on it. Whatever I buy needs to be on the VMWare HCL. Right now I must say the StoreVault system is my first pick.

StoreVault S500, with replication licenses same cost as Dell, expandable for my needs, bonus is it replaces a file server

Lefthand 2060, replication, highly expandable and full featured, network raid, but just beyond my budget

Dell MD3000i, no replication, probably would use DFS with a MS Storage Server in DR and a 2003 server at HQ

[dalepa]

S500 and NFS

With the S500 you get CIFS, NFS, snapshots!!, snapmirror (replication) and you can connect all your esx ESX hosts in seconds. You can expand AND shrink your volumes on the fly if needed. The replication is delta blocks, so only the change blocks get replicated saving on bandwidth...

Next year, you can easily expand/migrate to a new filer of needed. You can do a bidirectional snapmirror to backup sites with each other or use NDMP to backup to a local tape system.

dp

[deploylinux · Accepted solution]

StoreVault: no experience with them, but the netapp upgrade path is great and the newer S300's make them very affordable. We've avoided them however because of the windows-only management tools.

Lefthand: Excellent company and technology, we've evaluated their VSA appliances and the replication is great but the product was too new to meet our delivery deadline. I can't see your going wrong by getting their hardware.

Dell: We purchased and are currently using an md3000i in a small DRS/HA cluster. The primary motivation was being able to attach md1000 units and ~45 144GB 15K RPM drives that we already owned (allowing us to setup ~6 LUNS in raid10 config of ~400GB each). It's working fine and was quick and easy to setup. No replication or thin provisioning, management software and most features are limited...but it does have a command line unix client and a cross platform GUI. Performance is reasonable.

[roundorange]

Hi,

I'm currently also looking into the possibility of S500 vs MD3000i. One thing I noticed is that the S500 uses SATA disks (7.2k RPM) while the MD3000i uses SAS disks (10/15k RPM). Will this have a significant performance impact?

TIA!

[deploylinux]

Most people who've deployed SATA storage for small enterprise apps say it works just fine. Equallogic seems to sell alot of SATA based storage for vmware applications.

My opinion however is that an ESX cluster essentially follows database design guidelines, which means that you shouldn't care about the size of the disks deployed (SATA's advantage) but the number of spindles and their speed. The md3000i allows for up to 45 drives. 15Krpm drives do have significant performance gains over 7.2K. However, the lack of thin provisioning and other intelligence in the md3000i can put it at a disadvantage -- especially given that vmware uses scsi reservations so that your average sized array is going to be 4-10 drives @ 144GB each in RAID10 to balance out # spindles verse vm's / array given that most people's vm's are no more than 50GB each and you wouldn't want more than 10 vm's per array.

[TomHowarth]

Mike there is another option with the Lefthand, you could buy a DELL 2950 or a HP DL320 and Max the disk and then just buy the Lefthand Software, this option is acutally cheaper than buying the Lefthand Hardware as DELL and HP kit works out cheaper than the Teir1 hardware that lefthand use. (I actually got this info from a LeftHand Saleman!!! )

It is a much more common business model in EMEA than in the States though.

If you found this or any other post helpful please consider the use of the Helpfull/Correct buttons to award points

Kind Regards

Tom,

[mikes1p]

roundorange

I'm currently also looking into the possibility of S500 vs MD3000i. One thing I noticed is that the S500 uses SATA disks (7.2k RPM)

while the MD3000i uses SAS disks (10/15k RPM). Will this have a significant performance impact?"

I asked our StoreVault reps about this and they claim the cache in the S500 and their WAFL file system make up for it. I think it's 1GB cache.

A couple things about the MD3000i.

no replication to another unit (S500 and LeftHand 2060's do this)

no thin provisioning (S500 and LeftHand 2060's yes)

adding another array does not add processing power (S500 and LeftHand 2060's yes)

there's probably a few other nuggets I'm missing too

I think for local dedicated storage the MD3000i to replace DAS is fine. For the about the same money the S500 offers way more bang for the buck. Once you throw another site into the mix then the MD3000i does not stack up

[mikes1p]

I talked to a LH System Engineer, did a webex demo, and talked about that idea. You take a performance hit running their software versus buying their appliance. But this is what we cooked up as a possibility for our DR site:

- buy a Dell 2900 with VMWare Standard and lot's of disks

- buy LeftHands SAN iQ (the software can run as a VM) which will make the ESX's local disks into an iSCSI SAN that will replicate with our HQ

For our main office the idea would get a 2060 with SAS disks. I could save $$ by going with SATA but would rather avoid performance issues down the road

Virtual SAN Appliance for VMware ESX

http://www.lefthandnetworks.com/products/vsa.php

[roundorange]

Thanks everyone for the inputs. I read from the datasheet that the S500 uses either RAID4 or RAID-DP while the MD3000i can go for the "regular" RAID5 or RAID10. Will the S500's RAID-DP have a significant impact on the overall performance? Say for example compared to the MD3000i running RAID10 or even the AX150i running RAID10?

(assuming that overall capacity is not as big a concern compared to read/write performance)

[dalepa]

RAID-DP is a diagonal parity implementation of RAID 6, as recognized by the Storage Networking Industry Association. RAID-DP means, quite simply, dual-drive parity that can scale without downtime and is not subject to the performance penalties associated with other RAID 6 implementations.

With RAID-DP, your data remains protected even during a recovery rebuild and can even withstand a second drive failure during rebuild. RAID-DP is just one of the ways that the StoreVault S500 delivers peace-of-mind data protection.

RAID-10 performance wins just about every time in raw performance, however you pay with 2x the disks.

As a rule, the more spindles the better performance. The S500 has 12 spindles. I would love to see a S1000 with 24 15k SAS drives, but I guess that's too close to a fas2020

[roundorange]

Hi Dalepa,

I agree that RAID10 would definitely out-perform the other RAID levels in read/write performance.

But for the case of the S500, the "ideal" choice appears to be RAID-DP (which is not RAID10). But would the choice of using SATA (7.2K instead of 10/15K SAS) and RAID-DP introduce noticable performance penalties in real life? Or does the S500 has certain algo or hardware optimisations that mitigates this impact?

Cheers,

[Brad_Meyer]

Hi All,

The StoreVault S500 has the exact same architecture as the NetApp enterprise storage systems. The combination of the NVRAM (described simplistically as a write cache), the WAFL file system, and overall Data ONTAP operating system maximizes write throughput to the RAID subsystem. Data ONTAP and WAFL have been opitmized to work with RAID 4 and RAID-DP. The performance difference between RAID 4 and RAID-DP is minimal (less than 1%). The advantage of limiting RAID config choices is to allow for performance optimization.

[ronrob]

Please call me to discus the Storevault S500. We just sold to a Bank utilizing VMWare with Vmotion and they love it.

www.itdatastorage.com Ron Robinson 404-556-8828

This will meet your budget and we have an eval unit available

[canadait]

Why not just purchase a 2950 and install the LH software directly on the server not on a VM on top of ESX on the 2950. This would give you the best performance. Otherwise you have to buy the 2900, VI Standard, and SAN IQ.

[mikes1p]

"Why not just purchase a 2950 and install the LH software directly on the server not on a VM on top of ESX on the 2950. This would give you the best performance. Otherwise you have to buy the 2900, VI Standard, and SAN IQ. "

I checked into that. If you buy your own Dell 2950 server then buy the LH software it costs more than buying an NSM2060 (which really is a Dell 2950). Then you have to go to Dell for hardware support, or LH for software support. But if you have a 2950 or something suitable laying around it's a great way to go.

I bought a NSM2060 for our HQ to act as an iSCSI target for an ESX box and a couple other servers that need disk space. For our DR box I went with one piece of hardware running ESX and the LH Virtual Storage Appliance (vsa). I chose a PE2900 because it can hold 10 SAS disks, the VSA will virtualize the local storage on the DR box and it will appear just like another LH box on the iSCSI SAN. The LH VSA is limited to 2TB and some of the other features are not available (nic bonding/teaming, others) but for our DR box I don't need that stuff. The VSA option is what sold me on Lefthand. The 2060 will replicate to the VSA, at least that's the plan that I have to prove works

I could have gone with the S500 for our HQ and an S300 DR for a little less money but would have needed two pieces of hardware running in our DR site (an ESX server and the S300). The deciding factors were SAS disks in the LH gear, the SANiQ software network RAID, and everything we needed is included in LH software.

Mike S

[CCJNL]

I would look at Agami ... they have a very interesting product line that will work with your budget. I would have suggested Equallogic, but I don't think they will work with your budget.

ESG had a great write up on them... read it here...

[ronrob]

Please call IT Data Storage to discuss evaluation of the Storevault S500 at 770-933-6912

We can provide budgetary pricing for your review.

[ronrob]

Call me to discuss the purchase of the NetApp Storvault at 770-933-6912 or 404-556-8828

[ronrob]

Call us we have a demo of the Storevault we can ship to you to test.

Ron Robinson / Storage Technology Sales

IT Data Storage / 3330 Cumberland Blvd.

Suite 500 / Atlanta, GA 30339

Office:770-933-6912 / Cell:404-556-8828

www.itdatastorage.com

.

[ronrob]

How much did this entire solutions cost you and how much time did it take to

deploy?

Ron Robinson / Storage Technology Sales

IT Data Storage / 3330 Cumberland Blvd.

Suite 500 / Atlanta, GA 30339

Office:770-933-6912 / Cell:404-556-8828

www.itdatastorage.com

.