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evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003



Got to play with a FAS today, and it makes other arrays look straight up retarded.

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wwb
Aug 17, 2004


So, I finally got around to setting up my video encoding and editing workstation. Which consists of a mac mini and a free NAS box for mass storage. They are connected via ethernet and iSCSI using a dedicated cable.

Storage layout on the NAS is a RAID-Z2 w/ 4 2tb drives plus a 36gb 10k drive setup to cache.

Reading from the NAS is great and the speeds feel "right". But writing isn't so pretty -- it seems to write a chunk, pause and wait for the NAS to write, then write another chunk to the disks before taking another chunk.

I'm not even sure where to start looking. None of the typical system logs are reporting any issues.

Any advice?

devmd01
Mar 7, 2006

SEE MORE NOW at hinchtown.com

WARNING! Web Content Unrated!


What kind of 36gb 10k drive? If it's a raptor, lol.

ehzorg
May 31, 2011


Hey good storage peoples, advise me please.

I've recently been hired as the first and only dedicated IT support person in an medical R&D firm of about 100 employees in Switzerland. The current corporate mass storage needs are met by about a hundred external USB hard drives, mostly chained up to everybody's workstations by USB hubs. Oh, and they've got a ~4TB linux based fileserver managed by externally contracted IT. It's a loving mess. As the IT department, I'm expected to make it all better.

I'd like to push for a centralized storage solution. The problem is that I'm pretty far out of my experience envelope here. I'll explain our situation, usage characteristics, and desired features - if you could point me in the right direction, I'd be eternally grateful.

We're going to be storing mostly simulation results - no databases or virtual machines. These are huge files created and accessed by typically not more than 10 people at a time over 1Gb ethernet via SMB (so, high bandwidth - low IOPS... right?) We currently have at least 30TB of poo-poo that needs storing, but the ability to grow to 100TB+ within the next 3-5 years is probably needed. Would be nice to also have this data backed up to another location in house, but right now any kind of fault-tolerance is better than what we've got.

Budget concerns.... well, since up until now management hasn't been convinced about the necessity of upgrading past 2TB USB external hard drives, this may be a concern. I'm pretty sure I can get 15k eurobux approved, possibly 25k if I can make a solid argument and pretty powerpoint slides. More than that is unlikely to be approved.

What should I be looking at? Gigantic prosumer level NAS devices (Synology / QNAP)? Small business level storage (NetApp / Dell)?

Erwin
Feb 17, 2006



ehzorg posted:

Hey good storage peoples, advise me please.

You know you can say gently caress and poo poo around here, right?

Your budget is a bit tight, but there's no harm in calling up the vendors and seeing what they'll do. If they know your budget and needs, and feel like they can meet them, they'll come visit and give you a demo. Have a higher-up sit in on some demos so the vendors can tell them what an absolute god-damned nightmare shitpile you're sitting on right now.

I feel like Dell and EMC might be able to offer you something at that price (but they'll push for a little more).

wwb
Aug 17, 2004


devmd01 posted:

What kind of 36gb 10k drive? If it's a raptor, lol.

lol.

Corvettefisher
Sep 8, 2007



I asked it on the last page but I don't think anyone saw it as it was the last reply. Anyone know a challenging SAN environment to set up? Studying for my VCP and want to have storage down pat, even if Storage DRS makes it easy

Fourteen
Aug 15, 2002

No, no, no you imbecile! That's not talc, that's paprika!

Anyone have any experience with DataDirect? Specifically their NAS Scaler line?

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005

OFFICIAL BITCH OF DANBO DAXTER

Corvettefisher posted:

I asked it on the last page but I don't think anyone saw it as it was the last reply. Anyone know a challenging SAN environment to set up? Studying for my VCP and want to have storage down pat, even if Storage DRS makes it easy

I'm a little confused by what you're asking. You mean like an open SAN system that you can use on whitebox hardware, or are you going to buy some NetApp/EMC gear to test with?

Corvettefisher
Sep 8, 2007



Internet Explorer posted:

I'm a little confused by what you're asking. You mean like an open SAN system that you can use on whitebox hardware, or are you going to buy some NetApp/EMC gear to test with?

Sorry, allow me to explain, I plan to go for a VCAP-DCA some day, so I can work as a Virtualization Admin or engineer. So I want to know as much as I can about everything.

Running a basic SAN environment Freenas/openfiler doing iscsi at home with Storage DRS and Storage vmotion fully working. Just wondering what areas may be good know for taking into the job market. I do a good deal of HA, DRS, FT, vMotion, and still working on getting DPM fully working;Storage work FC, FCoE, Iscsi, NFS, NAS replication, and Iscsi Multipathing.

I Have a good bit of EMC expirence, almost got the cert, Guess I can still take it after taking the EMC class. Just looking for something more.

Corvettefisher fucked around with this message at Dec 15, 2011 around 18:22

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005

OFFICIAL BITCH OF DANBO DAXTER

I am not exposed to a wide variety of tech in my job, but it sounds like you have most of it covered. You said NAS replication, what about Block level replication? Snapshots, Dedupe, etc? To me the ability to deal with performance issues and the ability to plan out IOPS, etc., for new projects is a big one.

Corvettefisher
Sep 8, 2007



Internet Explorer posted:

I am not exposed to a wide variety of tech in my job, but it sounds like you have most of it covered. You said NAS replication, what about Block level replication? Snapshots, Dedupe, etc? To me the ability to deal with performance issues and the ability to plan out IOPS, etc., for new projects is a big one.

Haven't done Block level replication, might be fun to do. Snapshots have done, Dedupe, will look into. My previous job had me consolidate the whole infrastructure 4 windows hosts, 2 linux hosts, 1 BSD host, with shared storage, Good there, as well as NIC teaming and failover.


Thanks!

Moey
Oct 22, 2010



Corvettefisher, what kind of hardware are you using for your home test lab? I am setting up something similar for myself for both studying and personal use with some old hardware I have laying around. I'm still on the fence about either building a dedicated storage box, or doing something virtual.

Corvettefisher
Sep 8, 2007



Moey posted:

Corvettefisher, what kind of hardware are you using for your home test lab? I am setting up something similar for myself for both studying and personal use with some old hardware I have laying around. I'm still on the fence about either building a dedicated storage box, or doing something virtual.

I can get the full hardware list at home. Most of my work up until now has been done in workstation
All thin provisioned on SSD's
3-4 Freenas
2 Windows 2008r2 installs one doing Remote Routing to my computer to the net and providing the vm's with internet on the Virtual Network. The other doing vCenter hosting
Running in 3 ESXi Vm's 5
4 XP installs
2 RH/Fedora installs
4 Win7 installs
1 BSD install
1 2003 server

it helps I have an x6(150), 32GB ram(wich is only $200 now), and an 256GB(300) SSD with 25k IOPS getting another soon.
I have some other hardware at home too, but running all that on my PC runs me about 80% CPU, 75% ram, using 200 out of 248GB on the SSD

Corvettefisher fucked around with this message at Dec 15, 2011 around 19:26

ehzorg
May 31, 2011


Erwin posted:

You know you can say gently caress and poo poo around here, right?

Yep.

So I have a feeling that any solution I choose is going to be "OMFG" so much better than what they've got... do you think there's a significant reason to push for a real enterprise level solution over say, a big 'ol NAS with enough storage? I can't see more than 10 simultaneous users accessing this thing at once at any point.

My biggest fear is recommending a solution which ends up underperforming - second only to recommending a solution which is so loving expensive it gets me laughed out of a job.

As you recommended I'll see what vendors I can get a hold of here in die Schweiz. It would be nice to hear someone else second my plea for basic IT necessities around here.

Misogynist
Jul 14, 2003

hubthumping

ehzorg posted:

Yep.

So I have a feeling that any solution I choose is going to be "OMFG" so much better than what they've got... do you think there's a significant reason to push for a real enterprise level solution over say, a big 'ol NAS with enough storage? I can't see more than 10 simultaneous users accessing this thing at once at any point.
Backups and replication.

ehzorg posted:

My biggest fear is recommending a solution which ends up underperforming - second only to recommending a solution which is so loving expensive it gets me laughed out of a job.
There's plenty of IT shops that would love to have someone like you that actually gives a poo poo and cares about doing things the right way. Don't worry about your job.

Misogynist fucked around with this message at Dec 15, 2011 around 19:43

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003



ehzorg posted:

So I have a feeling that any solution I choose is going to be "OMFG" so much better than what they've got... do you think there's a significant reason to push for a real enterprise level solution over say, a big 'ol NAS with enough storage? I can't see more than 10 simultaneous users accessing this thing at once at any point.
What Misogynist said and also the ability to find someone who can manage the stuff should you get hit by a bus.

Corvettefisher
Sep 8, 2007



ehzorg posted:

Yep.

So I have a feeling that any solution I choose is going to be "OMFG" so much better than what they've got... do you think there's a significant reason to push for a real enterprise level solution over say, a big 'ol NAS with enough storage? I can't see more than 10 simultaneous users accessing this thing at once at any point.

My biggest fear is recommending a solution which ends up underperforming - second only to recommending a solution which is so loving expensive it gets me laughed out of a job.

As you recommended I'll see what vendors I can get a hold of here in die Schweiz. It would be nice to hear someone else second my plea for basic IT necessities around here.

If I were you this is how I would do it,
Order something like a NX3100 Get 10-20Tb on that. 7.2k drives will give you a decent amount of I/O(1k-1.25k) Rate performance on that, see if you are maxing out I/O. Order more to fit space and I/O requests. Provision Luns and Arrays per servers and Clients as needed. You are going to need more than one storage device anyways, might as well start it off as a modular storage array.

My previous employer
I worked with a PowerVault 20TB NAS RAID 0 all my VM server, hosted: Sharepoint/Lync/2 Domain r2 serves/NFS/DFS and backups and was able to server 150-200 clients with ease.

Don't run it in raid 0 but Raid 5/6 should give you ample performance over daisy chaining externals

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005

OFFICIAL BITCH OF DANBO DAXTER

That NX3100 looks like a pretty decent suggestion. The one thing I will repeat, as it already has been said, is make sure you plan out your backup strategy IN DEPTH, before you start consolidating 30TB worth of data. Depending on how you do things, you could make life very difficult with 30TB of data.

Misogynist
Jul 14, 2003

hubthumping

Has anyone in here had an opportunity to play around with the IBM Storwize V7000 kit? How do you like it? What's awesome, and what are your pain points with it? How does it compare to full-on SVC and SONAS?

bort
Mar 13, 2003



Internet Explorer posted:

it already has been said, is make sure you plan out your backup strategy IN DEPTH, before you start consolidating 30TB worth of data.
This is especially crucial if you have tight budget. Tight budget leads to "what the hell, we need it, let's just not do X" where X is support, backups, replication or redundancy or something else you'll need when the substandard thing you build fails. You've got a tough sale: your management doesn't give a poo poo and seems like they haven't been bitten yet. They're not gonna go for what they really need, so you have to either get creative with your engineering (and have something likely difficult for anyone but you to support) or sell 'em and get them closer to what they actually need for growth.

I don't get to build cool systems without some politics to loosen up purse strings. If you ever find you do, you should try to embed yourself in that job forever. You may have to cajole and fearmonger a little. For example, numbers: How much does losing one of those little hard drives cost? How bout if you got robbed? Those would probably all be gone, but it takes a special kind of thief to take a shelf of disk out of a building. The standard "current state, proposed state, how we get there" presentation is a pretty good tool here, too. e: If you do your homework, it'll show them you've thought about it and you're not just approaching them with a purchase req and some tech whitewash. Then you at least get some discussion going, and maybe you don't get what you want now but get it when the business can budget for it.

bort fucked around with this message at Dec 15, 2011 around 23:21

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003



Misogynist posted:

Has anyone in here had an opportunity to play around with the IBM Storwize V7000 kit? How do you like it? What's awesome, and what are your pain points with it? How does it compare to full-on SVC and SONAS?
Pretty sure another department here is getting one of those in Jan. If you have specific questions, let me know.

paperchaseguy
Feb 21, 2002

Of course you know I have no target on my back.


Misogynist posted:

Has anyone in here had an opportunity to play around with the IBM Storwize V7000 kit? How do you like it? What's awesome, and what are your pain points with it? How does it compare to full-on SVC and SONAS?

I work for IBM. The v7000 is good mid-range storage that uses the SVC stack. It has less memory than a SVC, so while it can do virtualization you wouldn't want to put a ton of arrays behind it.

Usability is extremely nice. Here's a GUI tour. Performance is very good for midrange. About a month ago they announced the v7000 Unified (san plus nas).

szlevi
Sep 10, 2010

[[ POKE 65535,0 ]]


three posted:

Technically, Compellent controllers are built using SuperMicro hardware (for now).

Correct and I was told that it is likely to stay this way until next Summer when their new controllers are due.
That being said there's not much difference between using Dell or SM server, failing rates are pretty much the same (they are all made in the same country, heh) and as long as you get CoPilot premium support it's a moot point anyway. BTW I was also told that Dell will use CoPilot as a support model all across its storage business (like they are busy unifying we-based mgmt per EqualLogic's web UI standards.)

szlevi
Sep 10, 2010

[[ POKE 65535,0 ]]


ehzorg posted:

Hey good storage peoples, advise me please.

I've recently been hired as the first and only dedicated IT support person in an medical R&D firm of about 100 employees in Switzerland. The current corporate mass storage needs are met by about a hundred external USB hard drives, mostly chained up to everybody's workstations by USB hubs. Oh, and they've got a ~4TB linux based fileserver managed by externally contracted IT. It's a loving mess. As the IT department, I'm expected to make it all better.

I'd like to push for a centralized storage solution. The problem is that I'm pretty far out of my experience envelope here. I'll explain our situation, usage characteristics, and desired features - if you could point me in the right direction, I'd be eternally grateful.

We're going to be storing mostly simulation results - no databases or virtual machines. These are huge files created and accessed by typically not more than 10 people at a time over 1Gb ethernet via SMB (so, high bandwidth - low IOPS... right?) We currently have at least 30TB of poo-poo that needs storing, but the ability to grow to 100TB+ within the next 3-5 years is probably needed. Would be nice to also have this data backed up to another location in house, but right now any kind of fault-tolerance is better than what we've got.

Budget concerns.... well, since up until now management hasn't been convinced about the necessity of upgrading past 2TB USB external hard drives, this may be a concern. I'm pretty sure I can get 15k eurobux approved, possibly 25k if I can make a solid argument and pretty powerpoint slides. More than that is unlikely to be approved.

What should I be looking at? Gigantic prosumer level NAS devices (Synology / QNAP)? Small business level storage (NetApp / Dell)?

Forget all the consumer crap.
Give a call to Dell and ask about their new (came out around May-June) NX3500 clustered NAS, it should be within your budget: http://www.dell.com/ch/unternehmen/...vault-nx3500/pd

AFAIK this is two Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Enterprise in a HD cluster, sharing local SAS storage and giving you unlimited client access license (Storage Server.) There used to be another NX3500 in Storage Server 2008 R2 flavor but apparently Dell stopped offering it... anyhow, this NX3500 utilizes Dell's scalable file system formerly known as Exanet FS. This thing scales up to ~500TB or so.

Make sure your quote comes with everything redundant (power supplies etc) + proper same day support, possibly 4-hr one, for at least 3 years (5-y would be even better.)

As for growing to 100TB+ in few years... well, it would be better to start with an EqualLogic SAN + clustered NAS but that's unlikely in your budget.

Not sure how is it in Europe but here in the US I usually work with a reseller because they get 50% and more discount from list price.

Just my $0.02...

szlevi fucked around with this message at Dec 18, 2011 around 18:53

szlevi
Sep 10, 2010

[[ POKE 65535,0 ]]


Vanilla posted:


The EMC and Dell relationship is dead. Not surprised they did that with the quote, they did it to all their Clariion customers to get them to move over to their platforms....and mostly failed. Latest IDC figures have EMC going up and Dell going down and trying hard to stay out of the 'others' catagory despite their best efforts.

Ehh, just read a month or so ago that in disk storage systems Dell is right behind the EMC-IBM-HP triumvirate, ahead of Netapp. Also last time I checked Dell pretty much ruled the fastest-growing segment, the iSCSI storage market with EqualLogic.
If you strictly mean higher-end storage then yes, Dell lost its EMC sales but got Compellent though obviously it will take few years until they will start generating similar revenue the Dell|EMC was making.

(FYI I have nothing to do with Dell, I'm just an EQL user who also like Compellent's approach.)

szlevi fucked around with this message at Dec 18, 2011 around 15:20

Vanilla
Feb 24, 2002

Hay guys what's going on in th

szlevi posted:

Ehh, just read a month or so ago that in disk storage systems Dell is right behind the EMC-IBM-HP triumvirate, ahead of Netapp. Also last time I checked Dell pretty much ruled the fastest-growing segment, the iSCSI storage market with EqualLogic.
If you strictly mean higher-end storage then yes, Dell lost its EMC sales but got Compellent though obviously it will take few years until they will start generating similar revenue the Dell|EMC was making.

(FYI I have nothing to do with Dell, I'm just an EQL user who also like Compellent's .)

There are different numbers which mean different things, vendors like showing the chart that shows them in the best light (of course) but it's important to realise that disk storage systems includes servers while anything marked 'external' does not and actually means true storage arrays market share.

So by IDC numbers total disk storage systems (includes server sales in it as a server meets their definition of a storage system). It's basically total disk shipped and it goes EMC 21.7%, HP 18.9%, IBM 14.8%, Dell 11.6%.

In external Disk Storage Systems, which is what we'd call real storage sales it's more like EMC 28.6%, IBM 12.7%, Netapp 12.1%%, HP 11.3%, Hitachi 8.8%, Dell 8.0%.

Dell was 9.0% last year.

So there are two things to remember about iSCSI. Firstly while it is a fast growing segment it still is a tiny part of the storage market.

Secondly a large chunk of Dell's iSCSI figures (and general external storage) is still based on EMC Clariion. This is because Dell manufactured their own Clariion range so it was classed as leaving their own factory, not an EMC factory (EMC name, Dell manufactured, Dell supported and Dell recognition in IDC). Naturally as these arrays grow old Dell will be trying to get them swapped out with EQL and Compellent but as it stands it's not strictly Dell technology and some custoemrs are staying with EMC (example - Dell has seen a drop, EMC has seen increase).

Vanilla fucked around with this message at Dec 18, 2011 around 07:57

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
00110100101101100011011
000110010101110010


sanchez posted:

Seeing a lot of positive equalogic feedback in this thread, on the low end, has anyone had experience with the PS4100 series? I need to get a demo from them but what I've read so far sounds pretty good when compared with netapp at a similar price level.

I agree with EoRaptor said. Easy to use and nearly zero issues. My only issues was getting CPU panics when mixing ps4100 and a ps4000 that was fixed in a early release firmware. Never affected production or reliability, but its pretty amazing getting email at 3am from dell letting us know they are on the case.

incoherent fucked around with this message at Dec 18, 2011 around 08:27

Bitch Stewie
Dec 17, 2011


sanchez posted:

Seeing a lot of positive equalogic feedback in this thread, on the low end, has anyone had experience with the PS4100 series? I need to get a demo from them but what I've read so far sounds pretty good when compared with netapp at a similar price level.

Apologies as I know I'm stating the obvious, but keep in mind that if you're comparing Netapp to EQL you're not comparing like with like.

EQL is iSCSI only (they do a NAS head but if you buy just a PS4100 you just get iSCSI) whilst a Netapp will be block and file.

EQL give you all licenses, Netapp may or may not depending on the model you're looking at.

When we did our last SAN refresh EQL weren't the right fit for us, neither were Netapp, but when the Netapp quote came, the software licenses were more than the hardware, which was pretty scary.

Bitch Stewie
Dec 17, 2011


We've had a HP P4000 for the last year or so.

I have mixed feelings about it.

It's cool that an entire server room can lose power and the SAN keeps on running. It's not cool that it happened to us, but the power cut was an exceptional length, but the SAN kept running.

Downsides are that their update process scares me - not so much the process but the way that it still sends you all the "your SAN is hosed" alerts that you'd get if you just pulled the plug on nodes, rather than having a "I'm doing an upgrade, I won't scare you" mode.

Also HP support. 'nuff said. L2 are good once you get through to them.

Mausi
Apr 11, 2006



Bitch Stewie posted:

When we did our last SAN refresh EQL weren't the right fit for us, neither were Netapp, but when the Netapp quote came, the software licenses were more than the hardware, which was pretty scary.
This is true for all the enterprise vendors, NetApp are just honest about it (so are compellent iirc).

When it comes down to it, the metal you run the SAN on isn't that expensive (although some are certainly better quality), what costs is software-hardware development, support teams and loving salespeople.

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003



Mausi posted:

When it comes down to it, the metal you run the SAN on isn't that expensive (although some are certainly better quality), what costs is software-hardware development, support teams and loving salespeople.
This can never be understated enough. There really isn't much difference between MD36xx hardware and EQL, what you pay for is the software smarts.
People don't like paying for software because it has no marginal cost but welp.

Bitch Stewie
Dec 17, 2011


Mausi posted:

This is true for all the enterprise vendors, NetApp are just honest about it (so are compellent iirc).

When it comes down to it, the metal you run the SAN on isn't that expensive (although some are certainly better quality), what costs is software-hardware development, support teams and loving salespeople.

It's more the "surprise" factor that I'm wary of tbh.

How big a part that plays may come down to the salespeople but I'd be wary of buying a SAN from any vendor and getting a great discount and then six months later I have a need to do SQL snapshots or replication or something.

Then the fuckers bend you over.

No such thing as a free lunch and yes you pay for it either way, but it's why I like the EQL and P4000 model of getting all the licenses in the purchase price.

Compellent will be interesting when we have our next refresh. When I last looked at them their product looked fantastic, but it was about 3 months before Dell took them over and they just didn't seem to want to compete on price.

Vanilla
Feb 24, 2002

Hay guys what's going on in th

Bitch Stewie posted:

It's more the "surprise" factor that I'm wary of tbh.

How big a part that plays may come down to the salespeople but I'd be wary of buying a SAN from any vendor and getting a great discount and then six months later I have a need to do SQL snapshots or replication or something.

Then the fuckers bend you over.

No such thing as a free lunch and yes you pay for it either way, but it's why I like the EQL and P4000 model of getting all the licenses in the purchase price.

Compellent will be interesting when we have our next refresh. When I last looked at them their product looked fantastic, but it was about 3 months before Dell took them over and they just didn't seem to want to compete on price.

When you are making the choice of platform it's important to make sure upgrade costs (hardware & software) are received so you can factor these into the purchase decision.

It's easy to keep the cost of the items low this way The salesman doesn't care what the cost is in a year so you will likely get a good deal, he will likely be at another company or on other accounts.

Muslim Wookie
Jul 6, 2005


ehzorg posted:

Yep.

So I have a feeling that any solution I choose is going to be "OMFG" so much better than what they've got... do you think there's a significant reason to push for a real enterprise level solution over say, a big 'ol NAS with enough storage? I can't see more than 10 simultaneous users accessing this thing at once at any point.

My biggest fear is recommending a solution which ends up underperforming - second only to recommending a solution which is so loving expensive it gets me laughed out of a job.

As you recommended I'll see what vendors I can get a hold of here in die Schweiz. It would be nice to hear someone else second my plea for basic IT necessities around here.

You should absolutely be looking at a NetApp FAS2240 or even cheaper a FAS2040A.

Do not go directly to NetApp. Don't be that guy. Everyone thinks they are that guy, but only Microsoft and Chevron size companies are. Go and find the best NetApp partner in Switzerland and tell them you're situation and budgetary requirements and they will put something together for you. Forget about list prices, you need to get actual quotes from the "real" parters. If you get the poo poo kicker partners that don't do much NetApp you won't get a good build or price.

The 2240 is a NetApp shelf of 24 disk (a DS4243) with module on the back replaced with a mini controller. Why is this good? It means you can reuse this shelf when you need to get a larger controller, it's about as plug and play as you can get in storage. A 2040 can have internal disk, but if you get a shelf as well then you can also just drop in a new controller when time to expand comes about.

With the NetApp you'll have iSCSI if you want it, and CIFS and NFS all from the same box. Snapshots will give you good protection against user error, and you can dump to tape from the filer for offsite really easily. And if you want to do a disk based off site backup you can grab another FAS and make it a SnapMirror destination. It doesn't even have to be the same model, if you get an offsite FAS in 2 years from your initial buy and lets pretend the model you originally bought doesn't exist anymore, it doesn't matter, there's no complication.

Also don't listen to these people complaining about the software licenses. That's what you are really paying for, and NetApp offer a hugely discounted (as in when clients say they just want to get the hardware and say the license for iSCSI I tell them it's been a nice meeting but we aren't the right fit, a Dell system is more suited to their requirements) "Complete Bundle" of the licenses for all new hardware purchases.

The key points are don't discount a NetApp based on your stated budget, because your situation is one I constantly deploy into, don't go to NetApp direct, use the most well known and respected NetApp partner (I'd even ask NetApp to just tell you who they think that is in your area), expansion with minimal fuss is key to NetApp systems.

Edit: Another one which I usually make sure to mention to small IT teams is that those teams will often not realise a disk is dead until the replacement has already arrived, shipped automatically courtesy of NetApp the moment the disk failed.

Muslim Wookie fucked around with this message at Dec 18, 2011 around 15:48

Bitch Stewie
Dec 17, 2011


30tb of Netapp with all licenses and support for €15k

Where do I sign-up?

Tbh, from what ehzorg has said I'm struggling to see the push for NAS or any kind of shared storage vs. something simple and centralised like a big old server full of disks?

A NAS or SAN, yep great if you need multi-protocol or shared access, but from his post it comes across as doing anything will be a struggle so it seems a bit of a jump going from USB HDD's on peoples desks to a full blown NAS/unified storage when nobody has really mentioned the options in between.

I suspect you'd get change from €10k for a Dell R510 stuffed full of 3tb 3.5" MDL SAS drives.

szlevi
Sep 10, 2010

[[ POKE 65535,0 ]]


Bluecobra posted:

I disagree. My definition of a whitebox is to use your own case or barebones kit from a place like Newegg to make a desktop or server. If Compellent chose to use a standard Dell/HP/IBM server instead, it would be miles ahead in build quality. Have you ever had the pleasure of racking Compellent gear? They have to be some of the worst rail kits ever, thanks to Supermicro. The disk enclosure rail kits don't even come assembled. It took me about 30 minutes to get just one controller rack mounted. Compare that with every other major vendor, racking shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes due to railkits that snap into the square holes.

This is nonsense. What rails have to do with the quality/longevity of server parts?

FYI I like my Dell servers but out of the 4-5 I bought back in January and installed by March there is NONE that did not give me at least one part failure.
My EqualLogic box went through SIX CONTROLLERS (unit has two) in its first 4 weeks of use... since August we had to replace 6 drives total (unit has 48 drives), we've even had a double-disk failure (RAID6 I praise your name.)
Yeah, I know, bad batch in the controllers, box has 2 hot spares anyway and support is top-notch, we always get a replacement drive within 2-3 hours but still.
And it's not just Dell: my new $30k+ 8212zl HP Procurve, full of v2 modules, came with ~100 gigabit ports where the alu around the RJ45 port openings on modules was already coming off the chassis (gigabit-only, the 8-port 10Gb modules are solid.)

Generally speaking my experience is that overall part quality went downhill and not just because we now use SATA in enterprise units (though Constellation is sold as enterprise SATA) but because literally everything is made in China and further East, from the cheapest materials, by the lowest-paid labor available.
Sure, we all buy premium support for all our server room gear and now Dell's ProSupport is actually matching IBM's (both being well ahead of HP) but now it's a recurring adrenaline shot every time to check my phone when I hear the sound of a new message arriving to my work email...

szlevi
Sep 10, 2010

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Bitch Stewie posted:

30tb of Netapp with all licenses and support for €15k

Where do I sign-up?

Tbh, from what ehzorg has said I'm struggling to see the push for NAS or any kind of shared storage vs. something simple and centralised like a big old server full of disks?

A NAS or SAN, yep great if you need multi-protocol or shared access, but from his post it comes across as doing anything will be a struggle so it seems a bit of a jump going from USB HDD's on peoples desks to a full blown NAS/unified storage when nobody has really mentioned the options in between.

I suspect you'd get change from €10k for a Dell R510 stuffed full of 3tb 3.5" MDL SAS drives.

Two things: redundancy and scalability. 30TB which scales up to 100TB and can maintain storage bandwidth while, say, recovering RAID6 from a double-disk failure?
R510 won't really fit the bill here, I think.

The smallest would be two NX3000 NAS in a HA cluster + storage:
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...wervault-nx3000

A reseller can push it down to $10k or lower (last quarter!), all you need to add is an MD3xxx storage with lots of 1-2TB disks... I bet even with 4-hr support you can get it under $20k...?

Bitch Stewie
Dec 17, 2011


szlevi posted:

Two things: redundancy and scalability. 30TB which scales up to 100TB and can maintain storage bandwidth while, say, recovering RAID6 from a double-disk failure?
R510 won't really fit the bill here, I think.

The smallest would be two NX3000 NAS in a HA cluster + storage:
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...wervault-nx3000

A reseller can push it down to $10k or lower (last quarter!), all you need to add is an MD3xxx storage with lots of 1-2TB disks... I bet even with 4-hr support you can get it under $20k...?

Third thing: limited budget

If he can get something that size out of Dell, or anyone, then sure, it's going to be a better long term bet than an R510.

It's being made to sound like money is a big issue though, and once you factor in current HDD prices + backing it all up as well, I think it's going to be a heck of a squeeze on $$$

I would say to ehzorg that whatever you do, do not cut corners on backup. Centralised storage also means centralised data loss - in a perverse way you at least have some redundancy through all those individual HDD's you have kicking around. Drop it all on <anything> and sure, you have redundancy but if you should suffer some logical or physical issue you've also just lot the whole lot or a big chunk of it.

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Spamtron7000
Oct 15, 2003

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood.

EMC just took a major step back in my book. I've been working on getting my entire infrastructure back online for the past 20 hours due to a failed SSD. The SSD is only used in FAST cache but the failure caused one of the SP's to flip out and knocked more than half of our hosts off of the array. To reduce the risk of further outage, EMC disabled FAST cache until they can get a replacement in which WON'T BE UNTIL MONDAY MORNING. What the gently caress happened, EMC? 3 years ago this poo poo would never have been acceptable. It's one thing for hardware to fail - I understand. It's dubious at best that a single SSD failure causes such mayhem within the array. But it's downright unacceptable that it takes 2 days to get a replacement part delivered to San Diego to a company who paid you $50,000 in maintenance for this array. Anyway, I'm getting off of my EMC high horse and will absolutely be looking to other vendors in 2014. Whether or not I love the technology, I can't afford to put my entire infrastructure on a platform that can't be supported 24/7. 24/7 means nothing if it takes 48 hours to replace a common part. Just to spite them I'm going to replace the DataDomains with Quantum DXi's.

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