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Pantology posted:Step-by-step guides to most of the things you'd want to do: Thank you, that's awesome, exactly what I was looking for. FISHMANPET posted:They were even nice enough to include something to cute out and stick in the spine of your half inch 3 ring binder so you can identify what it is you just wasted 160 pages on easily. The main reason we want the SAN is so we can stop needing to print all our technical documents.
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Aug 26, 2011 04:26
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quackquackquack posted:The main reason we want the SAN is so we can stop needing to print all our technical documents.
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Aug 26, 2011 04:32
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This might have kind of gotten lost on the last page: I was recently given an MD3000 with 15 Barracuda ES 500GB 7200 RPM drives. It has a pair of single-port SAS blades and a single 1Gb iSCSI blade. Along with the enclosure, my friend also gave me an LSI MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP and a SAS3442E. I guess I want to see if it's worth my time to learn on this old hardware in a home environment. I should mention some large aggregate storage at work would be beneficial, but this has sat idle for at least a year, so I'm not too gung-ho about using it for business data, even as a temporary backup location. Also, basically all my work servers are PCI-X, there's just no easy way to shoehorn it into the setup at work. Could I use this for learning?
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Aug 26, 2011 04:55
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Oh. I see, you want DOCUMENTATION. All that is behind Powerlink. I'm looking at VNX System Operations, 114 pages of mind numbing goodness. This is just one of what look to be ~180 horse-choking PDFs.
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Aug 26, 2011 04:56
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adorai posted:Not sure how a SAN changes that. I personally wouldn't print anything, regardless of the storage medium. Haha, it was sarcasm. As long as it is decently written, I can't think of why I wouldn't want more documentation rather than less. complex posted:Oh. I see, you want DOCUMENTATION. All that is behind Powerlink. I'm looking at VNX System Operations, 114 pages of mind numbing goodness. This is just one of what look to be ~180 horse-choking PDFs. Thanks. I signed up for Powerlink, and now I can see all 180 items under the "documentation" heading for VNX. You can tell I don't have enough to do at work that this makes me excited.
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Aug 26, 2011 06:14
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FISHMANPET posted:They were even nice enough to include something to cute out and stick in the spine of your half inch 3 ring binder so you can identify what it is you just wasted 160 pages on easily.
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Aug 26, 2011 13:59
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Oddhair posted:This might have kind of gotten lost on the last page: Short answer: yes. You won't get to play with replication, but you can play with LUN masking, iSCSI, and the rest. I wouldn't call 15x500 MB drives "large aggregate storage". You're going to get (with a reasonable configuration) maybe 3TB usable space out of that (RAID 1+0 with a few hot spares), and if this is the largest storage you've got, don't rely on it at work. PCI-X SAS cards are pretty easy to find. If it were me, I'd set it up at home with Nexenta/OpenSolaris/FreeNAS/whatever and play with SAN poo poo there. Also, you don't have any blades. HBAs are not blades.
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Aug 26, 2011 15:19
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evol262 posted:Short answer: yes. I kind of figured they weren't blades, that's just what my friend called them. He used to be in the storage business, so he has lots of older SAS hardware. I guess in the context of the MD3000 they're also the RAID controllers. It requires two controllers, according to the documentation, and I haven't seen yet that it will support one of each variety, so I might not get to use the iSCSI controller at all. I might simply use the SAS HBA in my home server to add ports, and I already ordered a breakout cable for the internal connector. I still haven't fired it up, I have a feeling my roomie won't like the noise no matter where I put it, and the external cables I have for SAS are 2 meters tops. Edit: I did find some PCI-X SAS HBAs, but the bandwidth is low enough on PCI-X to make the PCI-e riser cage for the DL380 G4 look like an attractive option, even at roughly twice the cost. That's the server that would need to transfer to and from the storage, and it has no PCI cards in it currently, but I'm very hesitant to use this at work at all. VVV This document says it requires both to function, but I can't imagine a point to the thing crashing if it doesn't have multiple controllers, kind of defeats the purpose of redundancy. I might just play with it this evening, the goonmate will be out. Edit2: Turns out the drives are all SAS, not SATA, so that's something, I guess. Will that make the storage a bit faster, everything else being equal? Oddhair fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Aug 27, 2011 |
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Aug 26, 2011 17:47
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PCI-X 133Mhz has ~1GB/s, which should be more than fast enough. It doesn't care about "one of each variety", from what I recall. Dumb SAS HBAs are fine. I don't think you even need two controllers plugged in unless you want multipath (each controller head should provide a separate path). Configure it through smcli as a lot of RAID0 drives, use Microsoft's iSCSI initiator, OpenSolaris, or whatever you fancy.
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Aug 26, 2011 19:05
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Oddhair posted:VVV This document says it requires both to function, but I can't imagine a point to the thing crashing if it doesn't have multiple controllers, kind of defeats the purpose of redundancy. I might just play with it this evening, the goonmate will be out. You can run with one controller, but you need to put it into simplex mode, there's an SMCLI command to do it. You'll also need to reflash the nvram with the single controller version. Switching from iSCSI to SAS will probably require a full syswipe, so not something you want to do just for the sake of it.
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Aug 29, 2011 11:32
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So does anyone have any feedback on the VNX line yet? While I have been pretty happy with our Equallogic SANs, I think the new VNX SANs are more where we need to be. Their scalability seems more more granular and I think you can do a lot more tweaking to get the performance that you need. We are specifically looking at the 5300 with unified storage.
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Sep 7, 2011 21:47
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Before we moved to Compellent we used Hitachi AMS arrays. I'm trying to use one of them for some temporary d2d backup storage and the HSNM2 management software seems to completely suck. We're talking minutes to open an individual window, such as editing a host group or adding a LUN. It's ridiculous. Wondering if anyone else has these units and has seen this problem, or hasn't? We've tried installing it on several boxes and it's currently on an 8-core server with a gigabit connection to the array -- no change. The crappy management software was one of the big reasons we didn't even consider Hitachi storage this time around.
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Sep 8, 2011 03:27
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Internet Explorer posted:So does anyone have any feedback on the VNX line yet? While I have been pretty happy with our Equallogic SANs, I think the new VNX SANs are more where we need to be. Their scalability seems more more granular and I think you can do a lot more tweaking to get the performance that you need. We are specifically looking at the 5300 with unified storage. http://henriwithani.wordpress.com/ has a good ongoing series reviewing a VNXe 3300. Unisphere is the same at on the bigger VNX.
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Sep 8, 2011 03:39
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KS posted:The crappy management software was one of the big reasons we didn't even consider Hitachi storage this time around. Do they still use that awful UI that they created like 10 years ago?
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Sep 8, 2011 08:04
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complex posted:http://henriwithani.wordpress.com/ has a good ongoing series reviewing a VNXe 3300. Unisphere is the same at on the bigger VNX. Thank you. Going to be doing some serious reading over the next few weeks.
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Sep 8, 2011 12:17
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hackedaccount posted:Do they still use that awful UI that they created like 10 years ago? Yes. For bonus points, the enterprise line has a flash interface now. That then can launch the old java interface in the right circumstances. Guess what I've spent the last month or so setting up?
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Sep 8, 2011 13:38
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complex posted:http://henriwithani.wordpress.com/ has a good ongoing series reviewing a VNXe 3300. Unisphere is the same at on the bigger VNX. WTF. It would not let him do a software update because the VNX had a run-time greater than 41 days. They made him power cycle his array to do a software update. Any idea why that would be?
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Sep 8, 2011 17:11
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Nukelear v.2 posted:WTF. It would not let him do a software update because the VNX had a run-time greater than 41 days. They made him power cycle his array to do a software update. Any idea why that would be? clean up memory leaks is my guess
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Sep 8, 2011 19:04
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I had a real WTF when reading that as well. I am trying to get more info from our sales guys, as they have been claiming that you can do a software update while the unit is on and in production with I/O traffic. Will post what I find.
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Sep 8, 2011 19:46
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So remember the VNXe range and the VNX are quite different so that blog wont be entirely valid for the VNX. Anyway, with regards to software upgrades it's not a power down of the array but an in-turn reboot of the storage processors. This is necessary for some larger software updates. SP A reboots and SP B takes over. SP A comes back online and then SP B has the patch applied and SP A takes over until B is back. I/O continues and the array stays online.
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Sep 8, 2011 20:25
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So I guess the bottom line is does EMC support doing software updates on a SAN in production while I/O traffic is still flowing to it?
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Sep 8, 2011 20:28
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Internet Explorer posted:So I guess the bottom line is does EMC support doing software updates on a SAN in production while I/O traffic is still flowing to it? Absolutely, non-disruptive upgrades are a key selling point of most vendors. Naturally you want to pick a time where traffic is relatively low (10pm rather than 10am) but it's very very rare if an array needs to be fully cycled off to apply a software update. If this were the case then something has gone wrong.
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Sep 8, 2011 20:35
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Spiffy. Thank you for the heads up. Still waiting back from my sales guy. :3
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Sep 8, 2011 20:54
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for the second time in two years, NetApp has told us that we have to completely power down our HA pair to clear an error. Thanks alot assholes.
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Sep 9, 2011 02:46
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adorai posted:for the second time in two years, NetApp has told us that we have to completely power down our HA pair to clear an error. Just curious; what error was it?
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Sep 9, 2011 05:00
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Is there any resale value in a Dell MD3000 (bare, or with 15 176G 10K SAS drives inside)? I inherited this from a company buyout, and it's honestly more a hassle than it's worth in our environment. I checked ebay and there appears to tons of them not selling at $2500 or higher.
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Sep 9, 2011 16:28
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I have a potentially decent deal on a Dell MD1200 DAS array, the only catch is that it doesn't come with drives. Looking at Dell's site, 2TB drives are $500+ as compared to Seagate 2TB Enterprise drives which are <$300. From a bit of reading, it seems that Dell has special firmware they put on the drives they sell, but I'm not sure if this is important or not. Will non-Dell drives work in an MD1200 or will I need to buy the drives from Dell at their inflated price?
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Sep 9, 2011 20:03
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Vanilla posted:Absolutely, non-disruptive upgrades are a key selling point of most vendors. This is exactly what the sales engineer that I spoke to today said. That the VNXe and VNX lines are very different, more-so than they put on. So I don't know about the VNXe, but on the VNX it is supported to do a firmware update on a production SAN, but stick to best practices and do it off-hours. The number he gave me was that he experienced a 95% rate upgrading firmwares in the year or so he's been with EMC. Vanilla, thank you very much for your posts in this thread. They have all been helpful. Still not sure if we are going to go with another Equallogic SAN or replace it all with EMC SANs, but I am fairly excited about the possibilities with the VNX 5300.
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Sep 9, 2011 20:38
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1000101 posted:Just curious; what error was it?
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Sep 9, 2011 22:35
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Just want to chime in and suggest to anyone looking at purchasing a new SAN to look at Compellent (now owned by Dell). We bought a Compellent with 156 disks back in July and I've been so happy with it. Coming from an EMC CX3-40 there isn't a drat thing I miss about EMC or NaviSphere. Dell is so hungry to sell Compellent that you can pick one up for an incredible price too.
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Sep 9, 2011 22:58
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Crackbone posted:Is there any resale value in a Dell MD3000 (bare, or with 15 176G 10K SAS drives inside)? I inherited this from a company buyout, and it's honestly more a hassle than it's worth in our environment. I checked ebay and there appears to tons of them not selling at $2500 or higher. If you feel like disposing of it. I could really use it for a SQL server we're planning on standing up 
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Sep 10, 2011 00:23
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mnwarren posted:I have a potentially decent deal on a Dell MD1200 DAS array, the only catch is that it doesn't come with drives. Looking at Dell's site, 2TB drives are $500+ as compared to Seagate 2TB Enterprise drives which are <$300. You have to buy the Dell drives unfortunately.
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Sep 10, 2011 02:39
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amishpurple posted:Just want to chime in and suggest to anyone looking at purchasing a new SAN to look at Compellent (now owned by Dell). We bought a Compellent with 156 disks back in July and I've been so happy with it. Coming from an EMC CX3-40 there isn't a drat thing I miss about EMC or NaviSphere. Dell is so hungry to sell Compellent that you can pick one up for an incredible price too. Navisphere is pretty much dead, a free upgrade to Flare x would have put you on Unisphere which is like a bajillion times better (edit: then again not sure if the CX3 could have gone there) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mACVdai9YwE Do Compellent have the new 64 bit code out yet out of interest? Vanilla fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Sep 11, 2011 |
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Sep 11, 2011 00:49
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Has anyone had experience with the Compellent range and the LiveMotion for VMware? It seems to have a really shiny label on the box (so to speak), but does it work well? I'm looking for something to be able to be replicated behind VMware, and then figure out which array it should actually be talking to, if that requires a software layer in VMware, I don't think that is an issue, but it is a case of finding something that works.
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Sep 12, 2011 05:41
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ZombieReagan posted:I just finished up a 3 month POC on a VNX7500, and I'm pushing the paperwork through right now to buy it. I have to say the #1 thing that I liked about the VNX line is the fact you can either have large aggregate pools to carve up disks from for general use - AND - still be able to dig and and make dedicated RAID groups and tune those for more picky applications. Thank you for this feedback. I am getting more and more excited about our upgrade. I am responsible for all of our virtualization and a lot of our user environment, and I am getting sick of repeating myself that our current SAN infrastructure is the bottleneck. Will be so nice to be able to say "hey, it's the SAN, I need 10K for a DAE and 2 SSDs," instead of "yeah so we are maxing our performance on our SAN so we should start looking at buying a new unit... yeah that is going to be a minimum of 50k."
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Sep 12, 2011 14:04
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Just FYI I highly, highly recommend some FAST Cache in general, make sure it's part of your selection as it's great.
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Sep 12, 2011 14:23
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Seeing the Unisphere video made me realize how bad I have it; are there any good management tools for NetApp? We're still on 7.3.3 unfortunately, since our 2020 won't run 8.x code.
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Sep 12, 2011 14:28
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Vanilla posted:Just FYI I highly, highly recommend some FAST Cache in general, make sure it's part of your selection as it's great. Right now we are running 2 old Equallogic units with a total of 28 7.2K SATA disks. We are looking at a VNX 5300 with 30 15K SAS, so it is going to be a significant upgrade either way. We are going to purchase the unit with the FAST upgrade so that we can easily add SSDs or SATA as we need it. We are just close to the limit of what we can spend, and while I know I can get the price down quite a bit I would rather save it for now and add the SSDs in the future. I have a feeling you guys are going to be coming out with new SSD drives fairly soon.
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Sep 12, 2011 14:45
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Mierdaan posted:Seeing the Unisphere video made me realize how bad I have it; are there any good management tools for NetApp? We're still on 7.3.3 unfortunately, since our 2020 won't run 8.x code. I like NetApp's System Manager, their 2.0 product (in open beta) is actually pretty sharp.
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Sep 12, 2011 16:18
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madsushi posted:I like NetApp's System Manager, their 2.0 product (in open beta) is actually pretty sharp. Oh; I tried that in 1.1 and it was terrible, I'll give it another shot!
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Sep 12, 2011 16:41
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