which storage ds3400 vs ds4700

[gaserideal]

Hi Guys,

We are set to buy first storage and in this times we are budget limited.

Options are IBM DS3400 or DS4700 (idealy 1tb of 15k disks, 2tb of sata for storage)

Our envoriment consist of oracle server, file server, ISA proxy, blackberry server, exchange server...

We have have set plan to 3 phases:

1st phase migrate oracle + exchange + file server to storage

2nd phase migrate to vmware

3rd phase making off site server redundancy

Phases are devided to 3 due to budget constraints

My question is would 3400 handle the load of oracle (currently 3x 15k 140gb disks in raid5 for db) ?

How would either of the two work with VMWARE?

Are there any big advantages for 4700 compared of 3400 (speed and so on) ?

Any advice would be appreciated!

Regards,

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I use a DS3400 as a SAN and it works just fine. The number of spindles in you RAID will help with oracle, but the 3400 does limit on how those spindles can be put together. Your granularity is the disk.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

[caciolli]

Both storage works well with vmware.

I usually suggest 3400 for small environments, where I/O is not so important (but I am still impressed on 3400 performance!)

DS4700 can support higher loads, and support storage replica.

In both case having a lot drives in the shelf help a lot performance. Base DS3400 has only 512MB cache per controller, I always have an upgrade to 1GB

DS4700 costs much more.

[ppohl]

If you decide to buy ds4700, there are two models 70 and 72. I have heard voices that only model 72 works realiable with ESX.

ds4700 supports two speeds 2 and 4 Gbps. Buy hard disks for the storage that can handle 4 Gbps. There are some that can work only with 2 Gbps.

[caciolli]

Both models 70H and 72H are supported, most of my environments use 70H.

Model 72H is preferred for storage replicated scenario because of twice host ports than model 70H. Using model 70H you need to use all host ports to conect the FC switches (SAN config guide), this way there are no more free ports to use for storage replication.

I agree, use only 4GB and 15K hard disk!

[gaserideal]

thanks!

Is there somekind of comparison or test of storage models on the internet?

Like comparison between 3400 vs 4700 and Hp...

That would be really helpfull to see how model fares with databases, vmware....

you know like cpu tests.

It's really so hard to get an idea since most of the sellers say different things...

Well just a thought

[cb1honda]

I do not have numbers for you (but there are a number of SAP and Oracle benchmarks published), but we actually use two DS3400 configs (1 x VMware ESX Development, 1 x AIX/Oracle Development) and have a 3rd on order (VMware Production).

We currently use 2Gbps DS4300 (not Turbo) for VMware Production, 1.1 TB Raid-10 (2 x 8 x 146GB 10K) and 2.2 TB Raid-5 (2 x 5 x 300GB 10K). ESX farm is 5 x HP Proliant DL385.

Now we recently built VMware Development on 4Gbps DS3400, 5 TB Raid-5 (3 x 5 x 450GB SAS 15K) and 2 x HP Proliant DL385 G2. Both controllers had the 1GB Cache Upgrade (which actually is an upgrade to 1GB). Then we did DS3400 I/O performance tests with a few VM servers. It turned out that even in intensive write tests the DS3400 RAID-5 outperforms our DS4300 Raid-10. These DS3400's work like a charm.

One remark: we created the DS3400 Raid-5 arrays from the command line to have a 64KB segment size (the GUI lets you choose 128KB as minimum segment size).

3rd DS3400 for VMware Production (all 450GB SAS 15K) will arrive next week, and will be configured with Raid-10 and Raid-5, obsoleting the DS4300. We are very confident it will boost our ESX Production environment at a much, much lower TCO.

Please keep in mind Vendor i/o ratings for Storage Systems are always based on maximum configurations, and yes, a 128 spindle system will outperform a 48 spindle system. But what if both systems had only 12 or 24 spindles?

If you don't need replication, DS3400 might do the trick for you.

Cheers,

Hans

[JohnADCO]

We use MD3000i's from Dell which I am told is virtually identical to the DS3400 and with SAS drives, performance is good bordering on impressive. I think the Dell's only come with 256meg cache.

Of the 24 VM's running we do have an SQL which is a large full blown imaging system server, heavy load exchange box, and several file servers.

[StevoIBM]

Hey,

I saw your post and if budget is the main consideration I would definitely steer towards the DS3400 . .

reason being is that with the two systems they differ primarily on disk capacity and ma I/O speeds under heavy load or

serving a larger environment which the DS4700 will clearer be more adept to cater to.

The DS3400 is wonderful little SAN that performs well and is very stable in a virtualized environment. From your post

I do not have a doubt in my mind the DS3400 could easily handle the oracle database.

If you need anything PM me and I'll help anyway I can.

Cheers,

Steven