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

1000101 posted:

So this poo poo all sounds fancy and expensive; how much does it cost man!?!?!

Depending on options you can consolidate all of your storage for <30k fairly easily. I think you can get 4TB of StorVault (low end netapp) for ~12-15k if not less.

I collected some IOPS data for my environment, and we are looking at a average of 300, top end 600 IOPS, excluding when my backup is running. I am looking at a Equallogic SATA SAN 8TB now (3000 IOPS), and its 50K+ or 60K+ for SAS.

Mind you this is SATA, and I assume you are talking about SCSI, SAS high end enterprise stuff. You say 30K for comparable specs? What am I getting hosed on, or what are you leaving out?

I was thinking 30K when I started this trek and I don't know what happened now that I hold this quote in my hands.

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

1000101 posted:

What software options are you looking at? Why are you buying 8TB of storage? Do you need 8TB? For 60k you can buy a lot of decent storage.

Equallogic SANs come with everything, Replication, Snapshots, Exchange and SQL Shapshots and...well I don't know whatever other SAN vendors part out software wise.
I need all of the options I just listed. I don't need 8TBs, I need 3.5 but 16 500GB SATAs running in RAID 10 give me the storage and speed I need. Dell loves to shove RAID 50 down my throat.

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

optikalus posted:

I'm curious how you're calculating 3000 IOPS for the Equallogic. 7200RPM SATA drives yield about 80 IOPS per spindle, so you would need 38 drives to reach 3000. You would need to fill the box with 15k RPM drives to get anywhere near 3000 IOPS.

I can't imagine that the Equallogic is doing that fancy pilardata thing where they split up the disk and put the 'faster' data on the outside edge, but that'd be neat.

I didn't calculate that number, that comes from my "Storage Specialist" at Dell telling me my peak IOSP to use a Equallogic. I calculated MY IOPS for my environment, and I added on to my real number to account for the RAID overhead.

I assure you I wont argue if someone calls "bullshit". I don't trust anyone trying to sell me poo poo, thus why I am here.

Its a nice device, but 60K for a SATA SAN just boggles my mind.
He did show me a 2000 mailbox Exchange 2007 environment running off a SATA one though.

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

Vanilla posted:

I would consider this to be awful. SATA drives just are not made for the random IO of Exchange.

Can they do it? Sure they can if you use enough.....but I would always recommend using SAS / FC drives.

Also, you shouldn't share exchange spindles with other applications because they will just grind to a halt. So that means dedicating spindles for exchange. If you use large SATA drives then you have a huge amount of wasted space and typically Exchange wants performance, not massive capacity. 146GB and 300GB FC spindles would be perfect.

FC anything is pointless for me. I have 60 users, most who dick off all day, read internet stuff, and redraft word docs. Server network load never peaks over 10Mb until I run the backup.

I do hear you about SATA though, as honestly I am scared to move to it, but now that I have been really looking at our numbers, I don't think we need anything high end. Who knows, I might shoot myself after this is all done.

But like the focus of my question, am I overpaying, as a EMC comes out cheaper, even with SAS, but could I be forgetting something? Am I losing out on a feature that I need and would out weigh the cost of a Equallogic? I mean, I am small potatos compared to all of you here, but I like the DR aspect of VMs in ESXi on a SAN.

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

Vanilla posted:

Let's start fro the bottom. What are you after?
A SAN to host everything, Flatfiles Data, SQL, Exchange and my Local VM store to boot from, and something that will play into my DR plan for replicating offsite at some point set for late next year.

Vanilla posted:

How much capacity?

1TB for Data/SQL/Exchange, 500Gigs for VMs, 500Gigs for Snaps, 1TB for extra growth on top of what is already allowed for in the former numbers. My enviroment uses about 550Gigs as of right now, that's EVERYTHING on my tapes and estimated OS/Applications size.

Vanilla posted:

What are you going to put on it?

Again -everything, Flatfiles Data, SQL, Exchange and my Local VM store

Vanilla posted:

What do you want?
See above

Vanilla posted:

What apps?

See above, if you need more detailed kinds of apps, they are all flatfile crap, nothing special.

Vanilla posted:

Typical users?

30 Lawyers 30 Staff/Secretary...they pittle around in word docs, web apps, and emails between counting large piles of money. (i.e. - dick off all day as said before.)

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

1000101 posted:

As an alternative;

http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/s-family/s-family-product-comparison.html

you get iSCSI and CIFS for free though.

Pay for options you might find useful:

Snap Manager for MS Exchange

Snap Manager for VMware

Snap Manager for MS SQL

EMC and NetApp both make fine products and it shouldn't be too difficult to get an eval.

Both should come in <60,000 USD. NetApp may be cheaper since RAID DP will give you sufficient performance without having to buy double your required capacity in disks. It also virtualizes storage on the backend making management a little less of a hassle for you.

Cool, I will get on that Monday. I would need all the Snap Managers you just listed as well.

Thanks for everyone help. This lets me know I need to keep hunting a bit more.

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

StabbinHobo posted:


Click here for the full 1088x747 image.


magic yellow box

What? Is that a tool? Google turns up nothing for that. How did you make that chart?

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!
Wanted to say thanks for all you advice, I have put together a quote for an EMC CX4 and its coming out with SAS, more storage space that before and should cover all my needs while being 30K cheaper than the Equallogic. Goons - You rock.

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

1000101 posted:

What software options are you looking at? Why are you buying 8TB of storage? Do you need 8TB? For 60k you can buy a lot of decent storage.

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).

Screw Equallogic and the Dell horse they road in on. I'm sold on the EMC after all this. I did look at NetApps but I had some issues with how they perform as the array fills.

spoon daddy posted:

...they thought that it would realize...
When will people see that computers are not REALLY smart yet. They don't "realize" anything and do exactly what you tell them to do. (most of the time)

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 :(

How does a SAN fail? I mean, I can see by SpoonDaddys way of failing, but has anyone had a SAN truly fail? And I don't mean you ignored it after it had multiple hardware failures. I mean, everything is working and BAM, SAN dead.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Sep 25, 2008

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

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. :)

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

rage-saq posted:

EMC actually came out onsite and did some performance monitoring to determine IOPS usage patterns before you gave them any money?

I've not actually heard of them doing this, just coming up with random guesstimates for customers based off a little input from the customer. They were horribly wrong (short by about 40% in some cases) that I ended up fixing their order at the last minute before they placed their order (but sometimes after and having to fix it by buying more disks).

Moral of the story: You can't cheat by guessing at IOPS patterns, you really need to know what your usage patterns look like.
Some applications (like Exchange) have decent guidelines, but they are just that, guidelines. I've seen the 'high' Microsoft Exchange estimates be short by about 50% of actual usage, and I've also seen peoples mail systems be 20% under the 'low' guideline.
SQL is impossible to guideline, you need to do a heavy usage case scenario where you record lots of logs to determine what to expect.

They even made a pretty report with charts and such making the prefmon data look nice. Yes, all for free. I just called them up to ask a quick question about Snapview, and they set everything up.

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

lilbean posted:

Here's a storage question that's unrelated to SANs and NASs - I just upgraded my company's backup system from LTO2 to LTO4 (which is loving awesome I might add). But now I'm stuck with LTO2 tapes from offsite coming back every week and I'm not sure what to do with them. Blanking them is easy enough, but is there somewhere that recycles them or something? Anyone else have to deal with that?

IronMountain will shred them. Yes SHRED them. They even shred harddrives. HARDDRIVES!

P.S- I love my LTO4 too, its bitchen fast.

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

lilbean posted:

Yeah I know that, but it'd be a waste to shred a couple hundred tapes.

Shredding is cooler that being green but...
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/dell_recycling?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Looks like a odd site, but hey.
http://www.recycleyourmedia.com/

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

BonoMan posted:

Ok on a seperate note we are looking at a MacBookPro for field use with our RED One cameras. We need some serious external storage of course and are looking at things like Caldigit systems and various other RAID arrays.

Any suggestions for portable, but sturdy RAID arrays (preferably eSATA) for use with in the field video editing? At the moment we probably just need around 2 TB.

And holy poo poo that gets expensive.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=410
It would match your gay rear end Mac. (Sorry) I'm a PC (Hurr)
Maybe? Portable and sturdy are two words that don't really mix with what you are talking about.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Sep 30, 2008

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

Intraveinous posted:

I guess my questions are:
- Is it feasible to have a high-avail, fairly high volume Oracle DB on the same storage system as the rest of my systems, or should I keep it segregated as it is now?
Yes (soon). Check the Virtualization megathreads last page, read about VMware FT.

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

Intraveinous posted:

But I digress. What I'm more asking is can I have the LUNs for my Oracle boxen on the same storage system (still on a segregated array, I assume) as my less performance intensive things like File Servers, AD DC VMs, DHCP, support databases, etc for easier management. (One disk system to buy and support rather than two)

Thanks for the pointer back to that thread though, I've not looked at it since before VMworld, so there's been some interesting reading.
I don't see why not. With a true LUN you can get dedicated performance as long as the overall load will not max out the particular SAN you go with.

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

ewiley posted:

Hey mid-range storage expert goons! I was wondering if I could get a fact-check from you folks. I've been reading about reports of SAN failures and, well, we just had one :(

Dell/EMC AX150i, dual-SPs, populated with 750gb SATA drives, pretty simple setup (about 5 servers connected). Just allocated the last of my storage to extend our fileservers a few days ago. Suddenly during our normal backup (3am-ish) I get alerts that all of the servers attached to that particular SAN box have dropped their disks.

No pings from management (on either SP), no pings from any iSCSI port. yikes. A reboot of the SAN and re-flash of the FLARE on SPB (which had just kept rebooting itself) and we're back up and running.

So here's my question: Dell's EMC guy tells me that "its a best practice not to put any LUNS on the OS drives' disk pool", which is 4 of my disks (about 1/3 of my total capacity). Apparently since I allocated all the available space on the OS pool, it caused the SAN OS to run out of page space when the IOs went up during our backups.

So am I seriously not supposed to store anything on the ~2TB of OS pool disk just because the SAN OS needs it for a pagefile!? This seems insane to me and a horribly bad design. Anyone else have this experience or any insight into this?
You can store data on the OS LUN, but its best not to.

That's why you carve up a SAN. The 4 dedicated OS drives you buy need to be small and fast. 36GB 15K. It sounds like your storage needs pushed you to a AX4 but you cheaped out with a non-expandable AX150. (that's ok, but something to think about)

Also, you said 2TB? You have your 4 disk OS array without a hot spare? It should be raid 5 with a HS. This leaves you with a ~3TB LUN (depending on your RAID level) on your other drives running with 2 HS of their own. SANs don't fail alot, you just have to build them out right.

To clear that up:
12 drive total
4 x 750 RAID 5 (3 disks) with 1 HS
8 x 750 with 2 HS= 6 disks, RAID 10 gives 2.2TB, RAID 6 or 50 gives ~3TB.

EMC has more usable space than any other vendor as a product line whole (in the grand schema, but I think the AX150 shoots it's self in the foot). Its not bad design, its how they made the product. Every SAN vendors product has drawbacks and strengths, you need to find the right SAN that gives you what you need, has the things you can live without. There is no "silver bullet" SAN yet, because the needs of each place is different.
Many people look at me crazy when I say I like RAID 10 (RAID 1,0) but I like my databases to have that little bit of "oomph" when they r/w from my LUNs. Expensive, yes. Do I lose usable drive space, yes, but its what fits my environment.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Oct 3, 2008

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

ewiley posted:

Live and learn, fortunately we can work around this, it just sucks having all that unused space.

So true. I really wish someone could come along with a super flexible SAN design that would address everyone needs, even if it was a'la carte, and not corn you in some way or another.

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

H110Hawk posted:

"buy more spindles?"
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, I would say, but he cant with the AX150.

NetApp would make its own issues once the LUN is filled up though too (more so with WAFL), making the answer the same if he wanted to keep performance high. This is my point, every SAN has a drawback, and most of the time the answer is buy more space, expand to another shelf/DAE, etc.

This all depends on what your issue is of course.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Oct 3, 2008

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

paperchaseguy posted:

The clariion has a certain amount of space reserved for the OS on the first five disks.
5 or 4 disks? Your talking about the CX line.

The AX line can be 3 or 4 disks, depending on how many SP you have.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Oct 3, 2008

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

H110Hawk posted:

My main point is the AX150 seems like a pretty poorly designed solution if I have to burn 25% of my available spindles for what should be some paltry OS space consumption. What the heck are they storing on those disks?
That paltry OS is rather large depending on the SAN series you pick. The CX line referenced in the above post requires 62GB.
It may not be that the AX150 is poorly designed but rather that it was not the right SAN for the job. Its the cheapest/bottom of the line SAN by EMC (Dell only I think) so its no surprise that the design is not up to par with others. I can configure one for less than 10K. Do you think it would be the SAN to end all SANs?

CIO's and Storage Admins (Sys admins alike) all need to realize that this is more than just the design of the first shelf. When you look at a SAN you need to look at expansion (as well as so many other things) and if the EMCs use of the first few drives is unacceptable for you, look at another SAN, but if you plan to build on that first shelf, EMC will come out on top will the most overall USABLE storage per drive over any other SAN provider as of now.

It's not design "flaw", it's trade off.


To Add: Im not saying EMC is the best SAN out there, they just have been doing it longer and better than most in a overall aspect. They DO have drawbacks as well, case in point that someone already brought up was the that they don't move to block level access. Another is that the licenses don't transfer (nether do Netapps though)

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Oct 3, 2008

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

H110Hawk posted:

At this point I'm blaming bogons and the LHC.
Your Netapps are out to get you if you don't feed them more disks and power.

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

paperchaseguy posted:

Heh. :downs: I've installed hundreds of clariions but never an AX.

Most people that deal with SANs haven't (and never will) for obvious reasons, but I will say its not a bad SAN for a 5 user, small remote jungle satellite office.
No really in the right environment its fine, but you can really short yourself if you need additional functionality later.

H110Hawk posted:

some paltry core router.
What, was this your word of the day email?

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Oct 6, 2008

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

Ray_ posted:

Guys, I need a hand.

My first project upon getting hired at my week-old job is to deploy an Exchange server, migrating away from the expensive hosted Exchange we're currently using. Over the next few days, I discover that we actually need to deploy at least 3 new servers including the Exchange box. We're in a two-server environment with one of them needing to be retired (the whole network is a mess...the loving DC is running RRAS and is the NAT for the network. Yes, I am deploying a real firewall first and foremost.) I, of course, decided to move to a virtualized infrastructure. I will buy a single box to deploy VI3 on, do a P2V conversion on the retiring DC, and use it's hardware as a DR/dev box with ESXi.

That leaves me looking at storage, and that's where I need a hand.

I need a relatively low-cost iSCSI SAN solution with as much redundancy as possible. Dual active/active controllers, RAID6, dual PSUs, etc. A few vendors have been trying to push the following on me:

Fujitsu ETERNUS2000 model 200 with 12x 300GB SAS 15k drives and redundant everything for about $14k

Hitachi SMS with 2.4TB worth of 15k SAS drives and redundant everything for about $12k

Does anyone have any experience with either of these? Does anyone have any suggestions for something else with all the redundancy AND SAS drives for the same price or cheaper?

I know I can pickup a StorVault for pretty cheap, but as far as I know they are single-controller only.
You can get a basic, AX4-5i for that range too, and even a AX150 for a bit less, but read above and research on that yourself, it can screw you in the long run, but you sound small enough. 2 servers? I think your safe, but I dont know your needs 100% like you should.
Good idea on the VI3. Your on the right path.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Oct 6, 2008

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

H110Hawk posted:

Failover is kinda hokey last time I tested it, in that you couldn't just move all of your disks to a cold chassis and have it work instantly.
That's not failover you know...

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

H110Hawk posted:

Yeah, it is a bad habit of mine. At work we have a system for "failing over" hardware on to new hardware. It is not the same as what everyone else refers to as a high availability clustered failover. Sorry about that misuse of the term. I did mention no clustering/single controller. :)
Cool. As long as you know there are better ways. I would hate for you to think that is the only "failover" available out there. Good God I think I would shoot myself if it was.

Question: Why do you have it setup for cold replacements like that? Or are you referencing that you are using StorVault meaning there is no other kind of recovery other than cold replacements.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Oct 6, 2008

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

H110Hawk posted:

code:
tastesgreat> cf status
Cluster enabled, lessfilling is up.
I wish I could name our servers something witty like that.
I'm stuck with XX-FS1, XX-FS2 etc.

Catch 22
Dec 1, 2003
Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!
gently caress, I cant read.

Catch 22 fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Oct 7, 2008

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

optikalus posted:

~SAN~
You can get a EMC AX4-5i DP for under 20K with over 2.4TB (12x 300GB SAS 15K) of RAW usable storage. Its 19K right off the Dell site, CDW can come in under that as they can cut out the "installation" costs that Dell/EMC toss in. If you haggle with Dell they will remove it too putting you closer to 17K. If you have an account with Dell they will knock off more.

edit:If you go with EMC, make sure you buy from who EMC registers you with, as they can toss in a extra year of support for free!

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