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Wicaeed
Feb 8, 2005

Maneki Neko posted:

We once hit a bug in Data Ontap while resizing a LUN that knocked one head offline, then the other head took over and continued the same operation, hit the same bug and died too. It took about an hour for everything to come back up and be happy after replaying the logs, but I would classify that as a failure. :)

Going by word of mouth here because I don't actually work in the data center that suffered the failure, but this is kind of what happened to us. We had two SAN's, one was serving as a backup SAN to the first. The first one failed (the reason is being looked into by 3Par) and the second one was supposed to immediately pickup where the other one left off....well it didn't due to a firmware bug that prevented it from coming online.

It was fixed by simply rebooting the device, but it took over 5 hours to come up for some reason and a lot of customers lost data from what I hear.

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Maneki Neko
Oct 27, 2000

Catch 22 posted:

I would say so. Wow, was this a firmware bug?

Just a bug in Data Ontap, the OS the filers run. Granted, that's the ONLY failure we ever had on those boxes (outside the occasional drive, but Netapp is fairly aggressive about failing drives), but it was a bit disconcerting at the time.

1000101
May 14, 2003

BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY FRUITCAKE!

Catch 22 posted:

Your not kidding, I just got a quote on a EMC, for a AX4-5i DP with 1.7TB of SAS 15K drives and a second DAE with 12TB of SATA 7.2K including my SnapView, Navisphere, and SAN Copy for 30K.
I also found out that the Equallogic Dell buy is making for bad blood between EMC and Dell as they are trying to push the Equallogics on people (like me) that don't need or want to pay that much for a poo poo SAN (again, like me).

That EMC box is a fine piece of equipment. I have a customer who just installed one and is pretty happy with it.

Your concerns about NetApp are certainly valid.

Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug

1000101 posted:

That EMC box is a fine piece of equipment. I have a customer who just installed one and is pretty happy with it.

Your concerns about NetApp are certainly valid.

What reasons can I use to convince management to go with the AX4-5 instead of the MD3000i? The Equallogic box is cheaper, and I fear that's all they're looking at right now :(

Tell me tales of woe, SHSC.

H110Hawk
Dec 28, 2006

Maneki Neko posted:

We once hit a bug in Data Ontap while resizing a LUN that knocked one head offline, then the other head took over and continued the same operation, hit the same bug and died too. It took about an hour for everything to come back up and be happy after replaying the logs, but I would classify that as a failure. :)

Hah! We had this same thing happen with our BlueArc once, only the bug triggering data was committed into the logs. Replaying the logs caused both the clustered heads to crash. Wound up having to wipe the logs (data loss ahoy!) and go from there.

Never again with BlueArc. I've never had an error like that on a NetApp.

spoon daddy
Aug 11, 2004
Who's your daddy?
College Slice

Wicaeed posted:

Spoon Daddy, who do you work for? My employer just had a SAN failure the other day that managed to take down our backbone for all of our west coast customers. We had 60 customers down at one time, and it took over 12 hours to bring them all back up.

Wasn't a happy day :(

I'm working for a startup in the medical industry. Thankfully, our failure had zero impact on production data. Only our training data was hosed. Thankfully, it turns out to have had a minimal impact but holy poo poo I had a pit in my stomach when I read that "oops" email.

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

Mierdaan posted:

What reasons can I use to convince management to go with the AX4-5 instead of the MD3000i? The Equallogic box is cheaper, and I fear that's all they're looking at right now :(

Tell me tales of woe, SHSC.

BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT!!!! I JUST went through this hell and I will be HAPPY help.

EMC is cheaper, better and way cooler on the feature side. I have spent 3 solid WEEKS 8 hours a day nonstop researching these 2 EXACT models. There is only 1 instance were the EQL comes out on top (only on performance), and I don't think your looking to buy 5 of them, right???

If it comes down to them REALLY going with a Equallogic, I will talk directly with your people to show them, and compare pricing to help.

GOD DAMNIT I COMMAND YOU NOT TO BUY THAT EQUALLOGIC!

Connectivity- The AX4s are optional and can be upgraded later to Fiber, EQL is iSCSI only.
Controllers-The EMC works in a Active/Active mode, meaning they both do work and should one fail the other takes on the full load. This gives it better performance over the EQL Active/Passive controllers because you only get to use one controller (thus 3 ports even though it has 6 total)

Host ports- EMC has 4, 2 per controller and you can use all 4 when both controllers are working. EQL is 3

Max Host- EMC is 64 and the EQL is 512. *gasp* EQL wins? Not exactly, if you want to try and pound out 512 hosts on that thing, be my guest. EMC scaled the hosts correctly for environments the AX4 is applicable for, don't let the Dell rep talk it up because it has a higher number.

Drive options- EMC lets you mix and match in the same array enclosure and lets you span LUNs over multiple DAEs, EQL is a all or nothing in one enclosure and it can only be one mass array. NO LUNS. This means your applications are all trying to get a bit of the pie, unlike a dedicated performance LUN. Ask the EQL guy about LUNs, he will avoid it or try to say the "array" in the box is like a LUN.

Capacity-EMC 584 GB to 60 TB, You can scale it one drive at a time. EQL will make you drop a cash load to buy another fully populated DAE.

Cache-EMC, 1 GB per Storage Processor (2GB), EQL-1 GB per controller

Tell me abit more about your environment and I can help more.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Sep 25, 2008

Dr. Kayak Paddle
May 10, 2006

Not really a technical post, but just wanted to say that I have pretty impressed with EMC for the past couple of years. We have purchased quite a bit of equipment from them and they are always helping however they can.

I'm sure its just a sales gimmick type slash deal but they have sent me to a couple of classes at their place in Franklin, MA and that type of thing.

Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug

Catch 22 posted:

Connectivity- The AX4s are optional and can be upgraded later to Fiber, EQL is iSCSI only.
Agreed, this is a potential bonus though I don't see us moving to FC anytime soon.

Catch 22 posted:

Controllers-The EMC works in a Active/Active mode, meaning they both do work and should one fail the other takes on the full load. This gives it better performance over the EQL Active/Passive controllers because you only get to use one controller (thus 3 ports even though it has 6 total)

Host ports- EMC has 4, 2 per controller and you can use all 4 when both controllers are working. EQL is 3
Where are you getting that? I think the controllers can be active/active on the Equallogic as well, but may not be that way by default. Also each controller on the Equallogic has 2 gigE ports for iSCSI and 1 gigE for management, which is exactly the same as the AX4 as far as I know...

Catch 22 posted:

Max Host- EMC is 64 and the EQL is 512. *gasp* EQL wins? Not exactly, if you want to try and pound out 512 hosts on that thing, be my guest. EMC scaled the hosts correctly for environments the AX4 is applicable for, don't let the Dell rep talk it up because it has a higher number.
Yeah, either of these numbers is overkill for us, so it doesn't matter much now.

Catch 22 posted:

Drive options- EMC lets you mix and match in the same array enclosure and lets you span LUNs over multiple DAEs, EQL is a all or nothing in one enclosure and it can only be one mass array. NO LUNS. This means your applications are all trying to get a bit of the pie, unlike a dedicated performance LUN. Ask the EQL guy about LUNs, he will avoid it or try to say the "array" in the box is like a LUN.
I know the spanning between enclosures issue is true (yes on EMC, no on EQL) but I'm pretty sure you can mix drive types in an enclosure with either. I'll check into the monolithic array, I hadn't heard that and our reseller surely didn't mention it.

Catch 22 posted:

Capacity-EMC 584 GB to 60 TB, You can scale it one drive at a time. EQL will make you drop a cash load to buy another fully populated DAE.
EQL maybe, but how does this work buying from Dell? I didn't seem to get the impression I couldn't just pop drives in as needed to expand.

Catch 22 posted:

Cache-EMC, 1 GB per Storage Processor (2GB), EQL-1 GB per controller
So, identical assuming a dual controller EQL box?

Catch 22 posted:

Tell me abit more about your environment and I can help more.

I'm not trying to pick apart your post; I really want there to be good reasons to go with the AX4 as I keep hearing ghost stories about horrible performance etc with the MD3000.

Our environment is pretty simple for right now; we'd be running, at most, an ERP and Exchange 2007 for a 200-person company, light file sharing, and potentially an PE2950 ESXi box hosting a few light-work Server2003/2008 VMs.

Vanilla
Feb 24, 2002

Hay guys what's going on in th

Mierdaan posted:



Where are you getting that? I think the controllers can be active/active on the Equallogic as well, but may not be that way by default. Also each controller on the Equallogic has 2 gigE ports for iSCSI and 1 gigE for management, which is exactly the same as the AX4 as far as I know...


AX4 is an Active/Active configuration with 2 front end ports per controller. EQL runs active/passive and although it has '3' ports per controller one of those ports is used for shelf-to-shelf communication only (AX4 does that internally, doesn't list those ports). So really AX4 has 4 active FE ports to EQL 2.

Other AX4 benefits against the EQL box - the EQL box only provides MPIO path failover while you should get PowerPath for free wit the AX4 to give load balancing, path failover detection, etc.

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

Mierdaan posted:

Agreed, this is a potential bonus though I don't see us moving to FC anytime soon.
No but this could change and also could appeal to others if you ever need to sell it, when you company bombs....hehehe.

Mierdaan posted:

Where are you getting that? I think the controllers can be active/active on the Equallogic as well, but may not be that way by default. Also each controller on the Equallogic has 2 gigE ports for iSCSI and 1 gigE for management, which is exactly the same as the AX4 as far as I know...
http://www.4equallogic.com/?p=42
4th line down.

Its marketing. "oh look we have passive its there when you need it"
were as Active/active (with trespassing) is what EMC uses and it too is fault tolerant and you get the throughput of both controllers.

DELL has GREAT marketing. Don't be fooled like I was at first.

Mierdaan posted:

Yeah, either of these numbers is overkill for us, so it doesn't matter much now.
None the less, do you see the marketing BS I speak off? You would need to move to another class SAN to look at covering that size of connections.

Mierdaan posted:

I know the spanning between enclosures issue is true (yes on EMC, no on EQL) but I'm pretty sure you can mix drive types in an enclosure with either. I'll check into the monolithic array, I hadn't heard that and our reseller surely didn't mention it.

Nope. Try and configure one with them. They will tell you they have to be 50% full or 100% full to work, and they all have to be the same size. Just ask. And when you need to add another SAN, you will face the same deal. Keep in mind that you will also be re-buying all the software for each box you expand with down the road, were as with the EMC, its PER-AX4, and you just add on a DAE to expand with, costing you 2 grand + drive cost.

Edit: to clarify myself, you can add SAS and SATA but each must be in a separate unit, were as EMC you can mix and match in a single DAE.
Update:

http://searchsmbstorage.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid188_gci1304869,00.html posted:

According to EMC senior director of product marketing Barry Ader, the AX4 can be differentiated from EqualLogic's midrange iSCSI SANs because it supports Fibre Channel and SAS/SATA intermix in the same enclosure. EqualLogic's PS Series systems use modular "building block" arrays that can be either SAS or SATA, but not both.

Mierdaan posted:

EQL maybe, but how does this work buying from Dell? I didn't seem to get the impression I couldn't just pop drives in as needed to expand.
When I say EQL, I mean DELL Equallogic. Its the same company.

Mierdaan posted:

So, identical assuming a dual controller EQL box?
Yes, and no. Remember Active/Passive? Yes they both have 2GB total, but only the EMC can use each 1GB as it is Active/Active. In the EQL the other cache sits unused, and for a SAN cache is a BIG deal.

Mierdaan posted:

I'm not trying to pick apart your post; I really want there to be good reasons to go with the AX4 as I keep hearing ghost stories about horrible performance etc with the MD3000.
Compare hard facts like this. Then compare cost.
Dell did a $49,000 Quote for me on a PS5000E with 16 X 500GB, 7.2KSATA, Dual Controller 3 year silver warranty. (You might get a different number and if its lower with better hardware PM me, so I can dog cuss my rep for trying to screw me so bad.)

EMC gave me a AX4-5i with DP (dual controller) 12 x 146 15K SAS, a second DAE with 12 x 1TB 7.2K SATAs, SnapView, Replication Manager, and NaviManager,3 year 4 hour onsite warrenty for $25,000

What do you say now? Thats SAS and SATA, more space with software to clone, replicate etc. for HALF the price, and the SAS WILL make a diffrence. FYI to remember is 15k drives deliver 180-190 IOPs while SATA delivers 80-90 IOPs, no matter who’s disk array.

Mierdaan posted:

Our environment is pretty simple for right now; we'd be running, at most, an ERP and Exchange 2007 for a 200-person company, light file sharing, and potentially an PE2950 ESXi box hosting a few light-work Server2003/2008 VMs.
I will be using 2x 2950s as well with ESXi embedded. No HDDs, and 32Gigs of RAM.
Get some metrics just to be safe, but I am half your size, and with my metrics I could grow 4 times my size and still have plenty of overhead to feel safe.
But GET some metrics on you IOPS and MB read/write. THIS is a must for any environment looking to buy ANY SAN

Also
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?p=380

This touches on something else about support (Dell and India) to think about :
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid5_gci1285915,00.html

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Sep 27, 2008

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

Vanilla posted:

AX4 is an Active/Active configuration with 2 front end ports per controller. EQL runs active/passive and although it has '3' ports per controller one of those ports is used for shelf-to-shelf communication only (AX4 does that internally, doesn't list those ports). So really AX4 has 4 active FE ports to EQL 2.

Other AX4 benefits against the EQL box - the EQL box only provides MPIO path failover while you should get PowerPath for free wit the AX4 to give load balancing, path failover detection, etc.
drat YOU!

I forgot about Powerpath.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Sep 26, 2008

Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug
Thanks Catch 22 and Vanilla, I'll do some more reading :)

For reference, the EQL box we were quoted was
- Dual controller
- 4x 300gb 15k SAS
- 4x 146gb 15k SAS
- 2x 73gb 15k SAS
- 5x 450gb 15k SAS

for $14914. Since that comes to 15 spindles total, we'd need a DPE+DAE AX4 setup. An identical combination of drives (+4 for the vault software) would leave us 5 empty drive slots, but the first quote we got (different resellers here) was $23432. So the price difference is definitely non-trivial :(

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

Mierdaan posted:

For reference, the EQL box we were quoted was
- Dual controller
- 4x 300gb 15k SAS
- 4x 146gb 15k SAS
- 2x 73gb 15k SAS
- 5x 450gb 15k SAS

for $14914.

I just cussed, more than I have ever loving cussed in my ENTIRE life. I am calling my Dell rep. Don't worry animosity is key, no direct number will be used and nothing I say will link it back to you, but Jesus loving H, seeing how bad they just tired to gently caress me, is going to make them pay.

On another note, what EQL series number is that? The Dell "Storage Specialist" (Har) and the site both say 8,16 drives per array. You said 15 total and you used multiple drive types, is that what you want, or what you were quoted? I want to make sure I am doing apples to apples like I think I am.

Mierdaan posted:

- 2x 73gb 15k SAS
- 5x 450gb 15k SAS
Edit: wait wait wait...These drives don't exist from Dell, if I'm not mistaken. Were you planning on buying these drives and putting them in the EQL?
The smallest, full size SAS drive is 146GB 15K and the largest, full size SAS 15K is 300GB. The largest SAS drive they have is a 400GB 10K.

Thank you for that price btw.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Sep 29, 2008

Kullrock
Mar 21, 2006

rage-saq posted:

Get an HP SmartArray P800 card and then attack up to 8 MSA60 12xLFF enclosures.
P800 is about $1k, each shelf is about $3k and then add your 1TB LFF SATA drives and you are good to go. If you need more attach another P800 and more shelves etc.

What is LFF short for?, Can you use regular 1TB sata disks on those, or do you need to pay out your rear end for HP's own disks?

Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug
I was originally talking about the Dell MD3000i; I don't know what EQL product number that is (it is EQL hardware, right? Not Dell-manufactured?), I only know it under the Dell line. Their configurator tool on the Dell site lets me pick any of these drives:

73GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$209]
146GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$244]
300GB 10K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$454]
300GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$489]
400GB 10K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$524]
1TB 7.2K RPM Universal SATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$482]
450GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$559]
500GB 7.2K RPM Universal SATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$244]
750GB 7.2K RPM Universal SATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$328]
1TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$489]
500GB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$307]
750GB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$391]
1TB 5.4K RPM Energy Efficient SATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$482]

rage-saq
Mar 21, 2001

Thats so ninja...

Kullrock posted:

What is LFF short for?, Can you use regular 1TB sata disks on those, or do you need to pay out your rear end for HP's own disks?

LFF = Large Form Factor aka 3.5"
SFF = Small Form Factor aka 2.5"

I believe you could use any old 1TB drives in there as long as you found the empty trays and purchased them, but I don't recommend it to my customers as they wouldn't get HP warranty coverage.
Plus HPs has Dual Port 1TB 7200 SAS and have a more uniform higher performance and reliability than standard SATA. The Dual Port means your shelves can have two data paths all the way from the drive to shelf to controller(s) to give you fiber-channel like availability for a fraction of the cost.

HP's LFF drive lineup looks like this right now.
code:
SP = Single Port
DP = Dual Port

Online SAS
HP 72GB  3G 15K SAS SP 
HP 146GB 3G 15K SAS SP 
HP 300GB 3G 15K SAS SP
 
HP 72GB  3G 15K SAS DP 
HP 146GB 3G 15K SAS DP 
HP 300GB 3G 15K SAS DP 
HP 450GB 3G 15K SAS DP 

Midline SAS
HP 750 GB 3G 7.2K SAS DP 
HP 1TB    3G 7.2K SAS DP 

Midline SATA
HP 1TB    3G 7.2K SATA SP 
HP 750 GB 3G 7.2K SATA SP 
HP 500 GB 3G 7.2K SATA SP 
HP 250 GB 3G 7.2K SATA SP 

rage-saq
Mar 21, 2001

Thats so ninja...

Mierdaan posted:

I was originally talking about the Dell MD3000i; I don't know what EQL product number that is (it is EQL hardware, right?

No, the MD3000i is a box from LSI. Equallogic are totally different products, but I wouldn't buy either. They are both rather immature products in a large number of ways (web management, strange limitations and non-competitive price/performance).

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

Mierdaan posted:

I was originally talking about the Dell MD3000i; I don't know what EQL product number that is (it is EQL hardware, right? Not Dell-manufactured?), I only know it under the Dell line. Their configurator tool on the Dell site lets me pick any of these drives:

73GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$209]
146GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$244]
300GB 10K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$454]
300GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$489]
400GB 10K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$524]
1TB 7.2K RPM Universal SATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$482]
450GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$559]
500GB 7.2K RPM Universal SATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$244]
750GB 7.2K RPM Universal SATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$328]
1TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$489]
500GB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$307]
750GB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$391]
1TB 5.4K RPM Energy Efficient SATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive [$482]

Ohhh I see. Glad I waited to chew my Dell reps rear end until after you clarified that.
No the MD3000i is Dell made and the iSCSI licence is with LSI Logic. Its basically a reprogrammed/redesigned Dell Poweredge server. It has no connection with Equallogic, thus the cheapness of hardware cost, and cheapness of the units functionality. I thought you were talking about the PS5000 line, which is Equallogic. I don't think your going to have anyone here vouch for the MD3000i, as it is as low end as it gets. You might as well look at some NAS with SAN like features if you want the MD3000i. It would be cheaper and probably perform near the same as all the arrays you just listed out to carve from the MD3000i.

Also, I am sure that the 7.2 SAS is really SATA drive made to operate on a SAS interface, as your IOPS are going to be the same on 7.2k RPM.

rage-saq posted:

Plus HPs has Dual Port 1TB 7200 SAS and have a more uniform higher performance and reliability than standard SATA. The Dual Port means your shelves can have two data paths all the way from the drive to shelf to controller(s) to give you fiber-channel like availability for a fraction of the cost.
I stand corrected. So there is such thing as 7.2K RPM SAS.

EDIT: SON OF A WHORE I TYPE TOO SLOW!

rage-saq posted:

No, the MD3000i is a box from LSI. Equallogic are totally different products, but I wouldn't buy either. They are both rather immature products in a large number of ways (web management, strange limitations and non-competitive price/performance).

He nailed it on the head right there.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Sep 29, 2008

Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug

rage-saq posted:

No, the MD3000i is a box from LSI. Equallogic are totally different products, but I wouldn't buy either. They are both rather immature products in a large number of ways (web management, strange limitations and non-competitive price/performance).

Thanks rage-saq. What would you say is the best bang for your buck in the $15-$25k range? As previously mentioned we don't currently need anything with crazy good performance, but we don't want to handicap ourselves later. Only need about 3-4TB usable space, with the ability to scale up later.

rage-saq
Mar 21, 2001

Thats so ninja...
Catch-22 what kind of configuration are you looking at and what kind of features? I can estimate to you how much a good HP setup would cost, and worst case you could use that to get a better price from EMC.

rage-saq
Mar 21, 2001

Thats so ninja...

Mierdaan posted:

Thanks rage-saq. What would you say is the best bang for your buck in the $15-$25k range? As previously mentioned we don't currently need anything with crazy good performance, but we don't want to handicap ourselves later. Only need about 3-4TB usable space, with the ability to scale up later.

What kind of features? How many hosts? What kind of disk configuration?
HP has a really great lineup with the MSA2000. There is an FC model, iSCSI model and SAS (still a SAN, think FC without FC) model with both single and dual controller/fabric versions and they are all pretty awesome from a management and price/performance standpoint.

Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug

rage-saq posted:

What kind of features? How many hosts? What kind of disk configuration?
HP has a really great lineup with the MSA2000. There is an FC model, iSCSI model and SAS (still a SAN, think FC without FC) model and they are all pretty awesome from a management and price/performance standpoint.

Snapshots are really all we'd be looking for right now. Don't need replication as I'm still working on getting the first device in the door :(

20 or so hosts would be reasonable for the forseeable future.

Disks, we could realistically go for a mix of large SATA and smaller faster SAS drives, but our first stab at carving up 15 spindles in the MD3000i was:
1) RAID 10, 4x 300GB 15K RPM SAS drives: SQL DB
2) RAID 10, 4x 146GB 15K RPM SAS drives: SQL transaction logs
3) RAID 1, 2x 73GB 15K RPM SAS drives: Exchange transaction logs
4) RAID 5, 4x 450GB 15K RPM SAS drives: VMimages, light file server use
(with 1 spare drive for whatever RAID set we decide most needs it)

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

rage-saq posted:

Catch-22 what kind of configuration are you looking at and what kind of features? I can estimate to you how much a good HP setup would cost, and worst case you could use that to get a better price from EMC.

EMC 2U SAS/SATA 12 DRIVE DAE
EMC SECOND SPS OPTIONAL AX4-5SPS
EMC FACTORY CONFIG SERVICES AX4-5 DP
EMC AX4-5 EXPANSION PACK AX4-5EXPAN
EMC 4 - 146 GB 15K SAS W VAULT SOFTW
EMC 146GB 15K SAS DRIVE AX-SS15-146
EMC 750GB 7200RPM SATA II DRIVE
EMC NAVI MANAGER FOR AX4-5
EMC SNAPVIEW FOR THE AX4-5
EMC 2U DUAL SP DPE FC FRONT END W 1U
EMC MIRRORVIEW ASYNC FOR THE AX4-5
Sub-Total $26K

This is one of 3 vendors pricing, I am supposed to get better pricing from Dell/EMC but I am waiting on the quote...4 days now. Slowasses.

Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug

Catch 22 posted:

EMC 2U SAS/SATA 12 DRIVE DAE
EMC SECOND SPS OPTIONAL AX4-5SPS
EMC FACTORY CONFIG SERVICES AX4-5 DP
EMC AX4-5 EXPANSION PACK AX4-5EXPAN
EMC 4 - 146 GB 15K SAS W VAULT SOFTW
EMC 146GB 15K SAS DRIVE AX-SS15-146
EMC 750GB 7200RPM SATA II DRIVE

EMC NAVI MANAGER FOR AX4-5
EMC SNAPVIEW FOR THE AX4-5
EMC 2U DUAL SP DPE FC FRONT END W 1U
EMC MIRRORVIEW ASYNC FOR THE AX4-5
Sub-Total $26K

This is one of 3 vendors pricing, I am supposed to get better pricing from Dell/EMC but I am waiting on the quote...4 days now. Slowasses.

What's the quantity on those lines? That's close to what we were quoted, would love to compare prices ;)

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe
Ok a bit of a question/conundrum here.

I work as an animator at company A, a production studio, who is owned by the same guy that owns company B, an advertising agency. We're sister companies and fairly small (20 employees each). I handle IT stuff here because it's fairly low key and "know computers" (we all know how that works out). The other guys, co B, just let their IT guy go and are currently using me as their support.

Now they don't have any complicated setups so that's all fine and dandy. However we just landed a HUGE client so they are restructuring and want a better IT infrastructure. They aren't solely relying on me but they are valuing my opinion and I told them I'd check some things out for them.

We have two huge issues. Storage and Backup (with offsite backup as well). Since this is the storage thread I'll just stick with that for now.

Currently they have two frankenstein server solutions just sitting in a closet. They are basically just two computers with external 500 gig drives attached which people access over the network. 1 is current use stuff and the other is archive.

I'm currently looking at solutions that may involve getting them a proper SAN so that stuff will be organized better and on 1 server. The basic needs are very simple. Just a drive that has all the asset files that everyone can access if they have proper permissions.

All the terminology in this thread can be a bit overwhelming, but looking at a SAN or NAS is the correct solutions yes?

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

Mierdaan posted:

Snapshots are really all we'd be looking for right now. Don't need replication as I'm still working on getting the first device in the door :(

But you could use the Cloneing features of a EMC to clone to another LUN and run backups from, making your production LUNs run nicely while backups run if your a 24hour shop. Equallogic would have your backups fight (for the right to par- never mind) for bandwidth and disk access.

skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

rage-saq posted:

What kind of features? How many hosts? What kind of disk configuration?
HP has a really great lineup with the MSA2000. There is an FC model, iSCSI model and SAS (still a SAN, think FC without FC) model with both single and dual controller/fabric versions and they are all pretty awesome from a management and price/performance standpoint.

I just bought a MSA2012 iSCSI dual controller with 12 300GB 15K SAS drives with all the warranties etc for right around 15K. Word of warning though, the UI is strictly IE only. Ours locks up if it sees firefox. I don't manage the thing, the engineers do, but they seem to like it.

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

Mierdaan posted:

What's the quantity on those lines? That's close to what we were quoted, would love to compare prices ;)

Opps, sorry forgot that.

12 x EMC 146GB 15K SAS DRIVE AX-SS15-146
12 x EMC 750GB 7200RPM SATA II DRIVE

Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug
How does the Snapview SKU work for the AX4? We didn't have it on our quote, but were assured we had the capability to do snapshots. Does Snapview get you some additional functionality we wouldn't have, or is our reseller just including but not as a line item?

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

BonoMan posted:

Ok a bit of a question/conundrum here.

I work as an animator at company A, a production studio, who is owned by the same guy that owns company B, an advertising agency. We're sister companies and fairly small (20 employees each). I handle IT stuff here because it's fairly low key and "know computers" (we all know how that works out). The other guys, co B, just let their IT guy go and are currently using me as their support.

Now they don't have any complicated setups so that's all fine and dandy. However we just landed a HUGE client so they are restructuring and want a better IT infrastructure. They aren't solely relying on me but they are valuing my opinion and I told them I'd check some things out for them.

We have two huge issues. Storage and Backup (with offsite backup as well). Since this is the storage thread I'll just stick with that for now.

Currently they have two frankenstein server solutions just sitting in a closet. They are basically just two computers with external 500 gig drives attached which people access over the network. 1 is current use stuff and the other is archive.

I'm currently looking at solutions that may involve getting them a proper SAN so that stuff will be organized better and on 1 server. The basic needs are very simple. Just a drive that has all the asset files that everyone can access if they have proper permissions.

All the terminology in this thread can be a bit overwhelming, but looking at a SAN or NAS is the correct solutions yes?

I don't want to dwell on this to much but because you have never had a SAN and you are not %100 the "tech guy" I want to stress this so bad to you.
GET some metrics on you IOPS and MB read/write. THIS is a must for any environment looking to buy ANY SAN

rage-saq
Mar 21, 2001

Thats so ninja...

Mierdaan posted:

Snapshots are really all we'd be looking for right now. Don't need replication as I'm still working on getting the first device in the door :(

20 or so hosts would be reasonable for the forseeable future.

Disks, we could realistically go for a mix of large SATA and smaller faster SAS drives, but our first stab at carving up 15 spindles in the MD3000i was:
1) RAID 10, 4x 300GB 15K RPM SAS drives: SQL DB
2) RAID 10, 4x 146GB 15K RPM SAS drives: SQL transaction logs
3) RAID 1, 2x 73GB 15K RPM SAS drives: Exchange transaction logs
4) RAID 5, 4x 450GB 15K RPM SAS drives: VMimages, light file server use
(with 1 spare drive for whatever RAID set we decide most needs it)

The MSA2000 series can do snapshots and volume copies, but not array based replication. Additionally, the MSA2000 series is a block-level virtualized storage system, so you don't necessarily have to carve up disk groups based off I/O patterns like you do with traditional disk-stripe arrays.

MSA2000 main controller shelf is 12 disks, and additional shelves are also 12 disks.

Also, transaction logs are nearly 100% sequential, and an array that operates in nearly 100% sequential mode will perform ~2.5x as fast, so you can really get by with a lot fewer disks and consolidate your LUNs there.
You could probably get the space and the performance you need by going with 8x 450gb in RAID10 and 4x146GB (logs) in RAID10.

At 20 hosts you are looking at either FC or iSCSI, and given your tight budget you'll probably want to go iSCSI.

For reference, a dual-controller MSA2012i with 8x450gb and 4x146gb would come in around 17k or so.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

Catch 22 posted:

I don't want to dwell on this to much but because you have never had a SAN and you are not %100 the "tech guy" I want to stress this so bad to you.
GET some metrics on you IOPS and MB read/write. THIS is a must for any environment looking to buy ANY SAN

Oh definitely that is what I'll be doing this week.

Mierdaan
Sep 14, 2004

Pillbug

rage-saq posted:

Additionally, the MSA2000 series is a block-level virtualized storage system, so you don't necessarily have to carve up disk groups based off I/O patterns like you do with traditional disk-stripe arrays.

Can you explain this a little more? I've always felt like I was missing something by carving up disk groups like I did before, so I'm glad to know I am. I just don't understand quite what :)

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

Mierdaan posted:

How does the Snapview SKU work for the AX4? We didn't have it on our quote, but were assured we had the capability to do snapshots. Does Snapview get you some additional functionality we wouldn't have, or is our reseller just including but not as a line item?
Yes, much more robust than the built in snapshot management. But by defualt you do have snap capability. It ran about $1,200

rage-saq
Mar 21, 2001

Thats so ninja...

Catch 22 posted:

Opps, sorry forgot that.

12 x EMC 146GB 15K SAS DRIVE AX-SS15-146
12 x EMC 750GB 7200RPM SATA II DRIVE

Whats your AIM? Some of those other part numbers you mentioned don't really mean anything to me because I'm not well versed in EMC part numbers.
Or you can come into #shsc on irc.synirc.org, we've a few storage pros in there quite regularly.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe
I guess I can ask this part of the question as well...what's a good pipeline for backing up from a SAN or NAS?

They want server A to be current work. Server B to be archived work. All of that work backed up to tape for offsite storage and then also have physical backups in house (DVDs or whatever). They would also like a synced offsite server somewhere for fast restoration only.....they really won't pay for jack. :( Or at least not the massive costs it would cost for that.

rage-saq
Mar 21, 2001

Thats so ninja...

BonoMan posted:

I guess I can ask this part of the question as well...what's a good pipeline for backing up from a SAN or NAS?

They want server A to be current work. Server B to be archived work. All of that work backed up to tape for offsite storage and then also have physical backups in house (DVDs or whatever). They would also like a synced offsite server somewhere for fast restoration only.....they really won't pay for jack. :( Or at least not the massive costs it would cost for that.

You need to hire a consultant to come in and help you understand what you want. You could be talking about something in the 40-50k range (unless you need new servers too) or you could be talking about something in the 300k+ range. A qualified consultant will help you figure out what you want vs what you want to pay for.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

rage-saq posted:

You need to hire a consultant to come in and help you understand what you want. You could be talking about something in the 40-50k range (unless you need new servers too) or you could be talking about something in the 300k+ range. A qualified consultant will help you figure out what you want vs what you want to pay for.

Yeah we have one coming in next week. Like I said this is just me putting feelers out there to see what other folks use.

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Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!

BonoMan posted:

I guess I can ask this part of the question as well...what's a good pipeline for backing up from a SAN or NAS?

They want server A to be current work. Server B to be archived work. All of that work backed up to tape for offsite storage and then also have physical backups in house (DVDs or whatever). They would also like a synced offsite server somewhere for fast restoration only.....they really won't pay for jack. :( Or at least not the massive costs it would cost for that.
Call EMC, they will come out, do metrics for you, go over everything they think you need, and they will do you right. You can then use this info to compare at other products. Be frank with them and do not think of them as "demoing" a product to you.

You can Even do this with Dell, and they will shove a Equallogic down your throat but they can give info and help you figure out what you need.

This is all free. Just call some vendors.

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