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You should talk to Equallogic (Dell), HP and EMC (don't buy EMC), if only to further drive the price down on what you actually want (first rule of negociation, never ever tell a vendor/supplier you want their stuff).
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Mar 27, 2012 01:56
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The only reason we didn't go with Nimble nearly two years ago is because you couldn't expand at all once you ran out of space. Do they even have disk shelves yet?
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Mar 27, 2012 02:04
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evil_bunnY posted:You should talk to Equallogic (Dell) and EMC (don't buy EMC), if only to further drive the price down on what you actually want (first rule of negociation, never ever tell a vendor/supplier you want their stuff). I'll definitely do that and I can get an HP quote pretty easily, even though I don't want their equipment. I should finally have some hard numbers tomorrow and that gives me a starting point. I told the companies that I view Nimble and NetApp as equivalent options and since Nimble is starting off aggressive, then I am using them to drive the NetApp price down. I'll see where it goes, but I have some target numbers in my head that I want to hit and hopefully the rivalry between NetApp and Nimble will work in my favor. It seems like the Nimble reps really hate NetApp and they don't want to lose any business to them. Aniki fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 02:04
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ghostinmyshell posted:The only reason we didn't go with Nimble nearly two years ago is because you couldn't expand at all once you ran out of space. Do they even have disk shelves yet? As far as I know they don't. That's not really a problem for the amount of storage we need and forsee needing though.
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Mar 27, 2012 02:05
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So this isn't the first time I've heard people spruiking 10,000 snapshots and denigrating 255 snapshots and here's how I generally respond. I don't like that they have a 255 limit, and while I've got some ideas as to why it's 255, the reasons doesn't seem insurmountable and I have a feeling that number is set to increase sooner than later. Having said that, looking at the purposes of SnapShots - I can take 12 snapshots a day for 14 days, 30 daily snapshots for a month, a full years worth of weekly snapshots, and still have slots free for on demand as required snapshots. That's a pretty comprehensive strategy just by itself, and below the 255 limit. So to say 10,000 snapshots is a bit exxagerated. It's top notch that they have a higher limit than 255 but when you actually sit down and work out the math, 255 isn't all that limited.
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Mar 27, 2012 03:21
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marketingman posted:255 isn't all that limited.
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Mar 27, 2012 03:30
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adorai posted:Sure it is. A lot of our servers have an M: drive, which is just a lun connected that is used for mountpoints and random file storage. I'd like to snapshot this M: drive every day, and never have to delete a snapshot. But I can only do that for 8-9 months. And there is no real reason that the filesystem shouldn't support it, other than someone decided to use one type of integer in the code rather than a larger one. And it's not a big enough deal to matter when it comes to purchasing, but it causes me a bit of frustration from time to time, and that does count for something. 255 sucks, but with SnapVault, you can just vault it to another volume on the same (or a different) filer and now you have what you want.
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Mar 27, 2012 04:31
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DDN is attacking in the midrange: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/03/26/ddn_sfa10k_m/
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Mar 27, 2012 05:37
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marketingman posted:So this isn't the first time I've heard people spruiking 10,000 snapshots and denigrating 255 snapshots and here's how I generally respond. We currently have 0 snapshotting ability, so 255 or 10,000 is a huge improvement over what we can currently do. I don't really see us having a need to take snapshots every 5 minutes, so 255 per volume should still be more than adequate for our needs. If we ever do run into a limitation where we need more snap shots, then I will definitely look into SnapVault.
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Mar 27, 2012 08:54
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Hi folks. I'm looking to get a bit of advice on a small SAN setup for a non-profit. I'm going to be replacing a small blade sql array with vmware and I need a new SAN. Here are some of my musts: ISCSI 1GB or greater 1500 IOPS or greater 12TB usable with RAID 50 Hot Spare No replication or snapshots Dual controllers Nothing major or special, however price and reliability is a factor. Whatever devices and vendors you can point me at would be appreciated.
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Mar 27, 2012 16:44
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I really enjoyed working on Equallogic boxes if you are at that level. They have several that would work for you, plus you would get snapshots and replication as they come with their units. Not an additional cost.
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Mar 27, 2012 17:00
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XMalaclypseX posted:Hi folks. I'm looking to get a bit of advice on a small SAN setup for a non-profit. We have a pair of Dell Equallogic PS4000X boxes and are very happy with them. They just introduced the PS4110 series that bumps the interface form 2x 1Gbps ISCSI to 2x 10Gps ISCI. The 12TB capacity is going to be a stickler though you can't get anything like that until you step up into the PS6510 range and that's going to run you 60-75K. Nebulis01 fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 17:19
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Nebulis01 posted:We have a pair of Dell Equallogic PS4000X boxes and are very happy with them. They just introduced the PS4110 series that bumps the interface form 2x 1Gbps ISCSI to 2x 10Gps ISCI. The 12TB capacity is going to be a stickler though you can't get anything like that until you step up into the PS6510 range and that's going to run you 60-75K. You can spec a 4110E with up to 36TB raw, 12 x 3TB NL-SAS. Which will you run you in the 20-25k neighborhood. 10GE switch infrastructure however...
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Mar 27, 2012 17:31
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Nukelear v.2 posted:You can spec a 4110E with up to 36TB raw, 12 x 3TB NL-SAS. Which will you run you in the 20-25k neighborhood. 10GE switch infrastructure however... I'd forgotten they offered a 3.5" variant, good call! and yea the 10GE switches and cards 
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Mar 27, 2012 17:40
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Nukelear v.2 posted:You can spec a 4110E with up to 36TB raw, 12 x 3TB NL-SAS. Which will you run you in the 20-25k neighborhood. 10GE switch infrastructure however... I was looking at that but unfortunately the IOPS are about half of what I need. I'm fine with 1GB if its a price point. We currently have an MD3000i and and MD1000i that are pulling about 1500 IOPS and I need to at least match that with some room for expansion. XMalaclypseX fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 17:55
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You should really look at what your iops are hitting. You don't need 20TB of fast storage if 80% of the ops hit only 20% of the data.Nebulis01 posted:I'd forgotten they offered a 3.5" variant, good call! and yea the 10GE switches and cards evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 18:11
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XMalaclypseX posted:I was looking at that but unfortunately the IOPS are about half of what I need. I'm fine with 1GB if its a price point. Yea, you'd take a pretty big drop in spindle count. So yes, you'd probably need two if you don't think you could mostly live inside cache. There are new MD series that you could use as well, the two biggest reasons to go EQL would be for better long term scalability (size/performance) and VAAI features. I'm assuming you're moving away from the MD's because they don't scale all that well. Being able to snapshot SQL is also very nice. I was really close to doing this exact thing. But for CYA reasons, I ended up doing the 6110XS SSD/10K Hybrid chassis. VVV Nukelear v.2 fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 18:28
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If you don't need fancy features and smooth scaling the 10gbe MD's are kinda cool because you can just stuff them full of flash for the price of a spindle-based SAN. I'd love to see how many SSDs it takes to hit a controller processing bottleneck.
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Mar 27, 2012 18:40
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adorai posted:Sure it is. A lot of our servers have an M: drive, which is just a lun connected that is used for mountpoints and random file storage. I'd like to snapshot this M: drive every day, and never have to delete a snapshot. But I can only do that for 8-9 months. And there is no real reason that the filesystem shouldn't support it, other than someone decided to use one type of integer in the code rather than a larger one. And it's not a big enough deal to matter when it comes to purchasing, but it causes me a bit of frustration from time to time, and that does count for something. Snapshot storage efficiency being what it is there's no reason not to change daily snapshots to hourly snapshots or even twice daily snapshots if you are not feeling froggy. Unless your changerate is through the ceiling. Our ability to retain snaps has come a long way, at this point a limit of 255 without intervening software is pretty silly.
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Mar 27, 2012 18:52
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Aniki posted:I talked to Nimble today. Their SAN is very interesting, though I'm not sure how much some of their performance and compression features are going to matter for our situation. I do like the ability to take 10,000+ snapshots and I like that when you update the controllers it will automatically take a controller off line apply the updates, then bring it back and repeat the process for the other controller. Their management software seems decent, it looks like they do all or most of the same things that NetApp does, albeit in what seemed to be a slightly clunkier way. As for cost, I think they said the street price for the 220 is $40k and they were very adament about being willing to do what it takes beat NetApp's price. They also offered to send out a SAN for us to try for 10 days, which we may do. CDW resells nimble now too so make sure you bark up the tree from that angle as well. If you buy a Nimble let me list you as a referrer so I can get a free Ipad 
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Mar 27, 2012 18:54
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Rhymenoserous posted:CDW resells nimble now too so make sure you bark up the tree from that angle as well. I'll definitely try that angle and if we do decide to purchase from Nimble, then I'll post about it here and just remind me to list you as the referrer.
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Mar 27, 2012 19:24
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szlevi posted:DDN is attacking in the midrange: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/03/26/ddn_sfa10k_m/
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Mar 27, 2012 22:31
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Misogynist posted:I will never, ever buy DDN anything ever again. The Veeam episodes were too funny.
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Mar 28, 2012 03:01
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Rhymenoserous posted:Snapshot storage efficiency being what it is there's no reason not to change daily snapshots to hourly snapshots or even twice daily snapshots if you are not feeling froggy. Unless your changerate is through the ceiling. Our ability to retain snaps has come a long way, at this point a limit of 255 without intervening software is pretty silly. Snapshots are free, but the management overhead from snapshot growth isn't. When a user says "I lost a file about a month ago, can you recover it from a snapshot" if you don't have a tool that provides a searchable catalog of which changes are contained in which snapshots (and this isn't a common thing) then you're going to spend a lot of time digging through the hundreds of hourly snapshots around that time-frame. That is time that often isn't worth spending. Most organizations have policies that dictate that hourly or daily backups are short term not just because it saves storage but because it allows you to put a hard limit on how much time you're going to have to spend looking through backups for the appropriate data. That is important because often users do not know quite when they lost data and having a very limited set to look through means that you don't spend 2 days going through hundreds of snapshots attempting to find the exact right version of someone's funny cat picture. That's not to say that the 255 snapshot limit isn't dumb. It's goofy in a modern filesystem, but in *almost* every case where you think you need more than that you are probably fooling yourself or making your life harder. XMalaclypseX posted:needs stuff This is a pet peeve of mine, but when you put an IOPs requirement you should really state the block size that you are using for the operations and the type mix of random/sequential and read/write you expect. As an example, a 8k random read may turn into two 4k random reads on WAFL so your read IOPs requirement could be as much as twice as high from the controller perspective. On the other hand a bunch of 4k random writes might turn into one single 64k chain write when actually written out to disk. YOLOsubmarine fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 03:11
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We're migrating one array to another, and we have to keep hundreds of volumes snapmirrored while we do it. This is why the 255 snapshot limit sucks. We also can't keep close to 255 volumes snapmirrored at once, because every now and then a volume takes too long to replicate, and you get multiple snapshots running concurrently. Right now I'd kill for 10k snapshots.quote:Snapshots are free, but the management overhead from snapshot growth isn't. When a user says "I lost a file about a month ago, can you recover it from a snapshot" if you don't have a tool that provides a searchable catalog of which changes are contained in which snapshots (and this isn't a common thing) then you're going to spend a lot of time digging through the hundreds of hourly snapshots around that time-frame. This isn't exactly true, at least for Netapp. LUNs aren't searchable, but you can simply do a file search through any CIFS or NFS mounted volume's snapshot folder. Nomex fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 05:38
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Nomex posted:We're migrating one array to another, and we have to keep hundreds of volumes snapmirrored while we do it. This is why the 255 snapshot limit sucks. We also can't keep close to 255 volumes snapmirrored at once, because every now and then a volume takes too long to replicate, and you get multiple snapshots running concurrently. Right now I'd kill for 10k snapshots. The 255 limit is per volume. A snapmirror relationship only requires at most two active snapshots at a time for volume snapmirror. QSM can take more but you wouldn't generally use that for migrations. Regarding filesystem search, you could certainly use it to find a copy of the file in a snapshot, but that is the easy part. Finding the right version of that file from hundreds is the tricky part. If its a file that changes infrequently then it's easy, but then it would also have been caught by a less granular snap schedule. If its a file that changes often and you don't have an exact time to restore from then you have to do a lot of looking. Well defined retention policies limit the need to do that. I once had to restore 30 different versions of a file trying to find the right version for a user who had a vague idea that they needed something from between three and four months ago. Our retention policy did not provide an out because we had the data and each restore took an hour or so. It was a huge waste of time because the data wasn't even particularly important, but I still had to meet the request because our policy required it.
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Mar 28, 2012 06:11
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That is one thing I really do like about our VNX. It ties in to Previous Versions in Windows and it makes restoring files easy. You still have to look at the file, like you said, but restoring it takes 2 seconds.
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Mar 28, 2012 13:08
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Internet Explorer posted:That is one thing I really do like about our VNX. It ties in to Previous Versions in Windows and it makes restoring files easy. You still have to look at the file, like you said, but restoring it takes 2 seconds.
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Mar 28, 2012 14:00
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For people more familiar with pricing of SAN storage is $34k a good price for a NetApp 2240, w/ 12 2TB HDs, 2 controller cards, and 10GB Ethernet? That's basically the same price that Nimble mentioned for the CS220/CS220G. If I remember correctly, the useable space ends up being 15-16TB w/ NetApp running RAID DP and the useable space for Nimble would be 8TB. With the type of data that would be taking up the bulk of our storage needs (recorded calls), I don't think we would see significant gains from Nimble's compression. We were anticipating needing about 8-10TB of storage for VMs, shares, and archiving calls, so it probably wouldn't be bad for us to err on the side of having more storage. I'm still waiting on some other parts of the quote, since I am trying to bundle some other equipment we need to help drive the overall cost down. That being said, I'll probably still go back to Nimble and see what they can do about driving the price down. I can probably work out a similar bundle either way, since CDW sells both NetApp and Nimble.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:45
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Aniki posted:For people more familiar with pricing of SAN storage is $34k a good price for a NetApp 2240, w/ 12 2TB HDs, 2 controller cards, and 10GB Ethernet? I can look at the quote I got, but it came with more disk, and I don't remember the hardware being itemized. E: €22k with 24x2TB, 2 controllers but no 10GBE evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 19:47
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evil_bunnY posted:Depends on the licenses, I think The licensing included ): SW,OnCommand Insight Balance,2240A,-C SW,Data ONTAP Essentials,2240A,-P SW,CIFS,-C SW,FCP,-C SW,iSCSI,-C SW,NFS,-C SW,NetApp OnCommand core I know they mentioned that Insight Balance, which is used for creating fast backups of VMs was being thrown in at no additional charge. Edit2: Are you using your SAN for just storage and file sharing or are you using it to run VMs? Aniki fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 19:54
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evil_bunnY posted:Depends on the licenses, I think How long ago did you get that quote (i.e. was it pre or post Thailand flooding)? 22,000 GBP works out to around $35,000 USD, so if that's the case, then I may have room to drive the pricing down further.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:58
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We paid just a little more than that for our 2240-4 with 48T (24x2) fully licensed.
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Mar 28, 2012 20:11
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optikalus posted:We paid just a little more than that for our 2240-4 with 48T (24x2) fully licensed. How long ago did your purchase your SAN? It looks like I'll need to get them to drop their price quite a bit if you guys got twice the storage for the same price.
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Mar 28, 2012 20:28
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Aniki posted:How long ago did you get that quote (i.e. was it pre or post Thailand flooding)? 22,000 GBP works out to around $35,000 USD, so if that's the case, then I may have room to drive the pricing down further. E: and it's euros not pounds. evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 20:37
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Aniki posted:For people more familiar with pricing of SAN storage is $34k a good price for a NetApp 2240, w/ 12 2TB HDs, 2 controller cards, and 10GB Ethernet? That's basically the same price that Nimble mentioned for the CS220/CS220G. If I remember correctly, the useable space ends up being 15-16TB w/ NetApp running RAID DP and the useable space for Nimble would be 8TB. With the type of data that would be taking up the bulk of our storage needs (recorded calls), I don't think we would see significant gains from Nimble's compression. We were anticipating needing about 8-10TB of storage for VMs, shares, and archiving calls, so it probably wouldn't be bad for us to err on the side of having more storage. Is this a HA-pair? I'd have some real concerns about deploying an HA pair with only 12 drives as RAID-DP will take up 2 of those disks for each controller for parity and if you want at least one hot spare then you're going to lose another data disk. That takes your actual number of data disks down to 7 data disks. Rightsized 2T disks are around 1.7TB and you lose an additional 10% due to WAFL overhead so you're really looking at around 10TB usable and on a less than ideal active/passive configuration. If you plan to purchased within the next few weeks you should be able to catch them at the end of a fiscal quarter, which is usually when the good discounts come. I would request that they, at minimum, provide a configuration that will give you 10 data drives for around 16TB of actual usable space. If this is not an HA-pair then you can disregard this (though you definitely shouldn't be paying that much for a single controller system). Also, Insight Balance is actually a monitoring tool that provides end to end monitoring in virtual environments and helps identify resource contention issues, e.g. One VM is heavily taxing the storage backend and causing issues for other VMs on the same datastore. It's a pretty neat tool, but it doensn't have anything to do with backup. Snapshot based VM backup would be covered by an SMVI license, which they should include, along with FlexClone license since that enables some neat features. Really they should just include the Complete bundle so you can use all of the SnapManager products that you might want. YOLOsubmarine fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 21:24
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NippleFloss posted:Is this a HA-pair? I'd have some real concerns about deploying an HA pair with only 12 drives as RAID-DP will take up 2 of those disks for each controller for parity and if you want at least one hot spare then you're going to lose another data disk. That takes your actual number of data disks down to 7 data disks. It is a dual controller configuration, which is something that were insistent on. From my notes from that meeting, they stated that the drive would have 15-16TB of useable storage. That accounts for RAID DP, but probably not overhead. As for Insight Balance, it looks like the CDW rep was wrong on explaining that. I'll talk to the NetApp engineer and have him explain what the different software packages included int he quote are. I'll also push them on the SMVI and FlexClone licenses, since I don't see those listed in the quote, but I know that they recently simplified there quotes so those may not be listed, but could still be included. The licenses included in the quote are: OnCommand Insight Balance Data ONTAP Essentials CIFS FCP iSCSI NFS NetApp OnCommand Core Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it. Aniki fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 22:13
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Aniki posted:How long ago did your purchase your SAN? It looks like I'll need to get them to drop their price quite a bit if you guys got twice the storage for the same price. It was ordered about a month or so ago.
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Mar 28, 2012 22:34
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optikalus posted:It was ordered about a month or so ago. Ok. That was for both hardware and software, right? I'll definitely need to push them hard on the price then.
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Mar 28, 2012 22:35
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Aniki posted:It is a dual controller configuration, which is something that were insistent on. From my notes from that meeting, they stated that the drive would have 15-16TB of useable storage. That accounts for RAID DP, but probably not overhead. I hate to say it, but their usable space calculations are misleading. You start with 12 disks. In an active/active configuration you must have at minimum two raid groups, as each controller requires it's own aggregate. With raid-DP each raid group uses two parity disks, so that knocks your 12 disks down to 8. Best practices are to leave at least one hot spare available on each controller, which would drop you down to six data disks. But even assuming you don't do that and use all 8 drives as data disks you still don't get 16T. For a couple of reasons a 2T disk does not actually provide 2T of storage. Radek does a good job of explaining in this thread:https://communities.netapp.com/thread/8509. Basically block checksums + disk geometry differences require that disks are "rightsized" to a smaller value than the size stated by a disk manufacturer. In the case of a 2T sata disk you get around 1.7T. See this output from one of my filers: 29.22: NETAPP X306_HJUPI02TSSM NA02 1695.4GB (3907029168 512B/sect) That is a 2T disk. So at best you get 8*1.7T, or 13.6T, of which WAFL reserve takes a fixed 10% off the top. That leaves you around 12T, with no spares on either controller. If you are being sold 16T of usable storage you should ask them to explain exactly how they are getting that number given right-sizing, raid-dp penalty, and WAFL reserve. I've dealt with a lot unhappy people who thought they were getting more storage than they really were because the sales team did a poor job of selling real, usable capacity. It certainly does NetApp no favors to disappoint new customers that way.
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Mar 28, 2012 22:38
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