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J1mbo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Opinions on HP MSA2000i and Dell MD3000i

Morning all, as above really. Would be very interested to hear thoughts on these systems.

I'm looking at them to form the storage for a pair of ESXi hosts with about 20 Windows VMs. Storage throughput is pretty low,

  • 400 IOPS for 350GB (perhaps 6x 300GB SAS 15k RAID-6)

  • 120 IOPS for 1200GB (perhaps 6x 750GB SATA RAID-6)

I'm paritcularly interested in any issues encountered or performance (issues) with them.

Many thanks

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7 Replies
anujmodi1
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I haven't seen any performance issue on MSA2000i but not sure about Dell MD3000i. If anyone worked on that storage can tell you about that.

Anuj,

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Anuj Modi, If you found my answer to be useful, feel free to mark it as Helpful or Correct. The latest blogs and articles on Virtulization: anujmodi.wordpress.com
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AntonVZhbankov
Immortal
Immortal

I do not recommend HP MSA 2000 series. Looks like it is OEM product from Dot Hill, and our SAN engineer is not really happy with MSA 2000 failover logic.

http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627124817387494328353475&threadId=1204004


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pesinet
Contributor
Contributor

We have HP MSA 2012i Dual Controller and so far we're not happy with it, we have some issue with the Controller A (EVENT: RAID controller A failed, reason PCIE link recovery failed. Product ID , S/N, EVENT ID:#B1462 EVENT CODE:313 EVENT SEVERITY:Error) we call HP and said the issue was solved in the last firmware but not. We also have 4 Host ESXi 3.5 U4. In my opinion next time i'll go with FC instead software. We are now running another problem when the users access the Data, some kind of delay.

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jshuron
Contributor
Contributor

I've been running the MD3000i (10 SATA disks RAID-5 dual controllers) for several months now and am very pleased with the performance. Running varous apps (SQL, BES, AD) on multiple guests with no IO bottlenecks.

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azn2kew
Champion
Champion

We're happy with the Dell MD3000i solution and performance is fine without any issue. We're virtualize ESX 3.5 U4 on it with many general web, ftp, file, dns, dchp, exchange and sql servers no problem. Make sure to architected as specified with vendor best practices guide.

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

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 vExpert, VCP 3 & 4, VSP, VTSP, CCA, CCEA, CCNA, MCSA, EMCSE, EMCISA
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J1mbo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Thanks very much to everyone that has replied. Seems there could be issues with the HP, which is a shame as I like the look of that chassis.

Anyone care to comment on the controller or network path failure handling of the Dell system?

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jshuron
Contributor
Contributor

What are you looking to do? Each controller has 2 iSCSI ports. I have controller 0 port 0 and controller 1 port 0 in one vlan, and controller 0 port 1 and controller 1 port 1 in a second vlan. From the SAN management software I split duties between the 2 controllers. For example, if a server is on controller 0, controller 1 has the backup (ntbackup) virtual disk assignment. The windows servers have the iSCSI initiator software installed with the multiple path option and 2 virtual NICs for access to each iSCSI vlan. The MS iSCSI software allows connectivity to all 4 controller ports on the SAN so in the event one controller fails I can still access both ports on the second controller. I also have the 4 controller ports defined on the switch as a port group for fault tolerance.

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