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Dilbert As FUCK
Sep 8, 2007

by Cowcaster
Pillbug

Nukelear v.2 posted:

An unpopulated MD3620i with dual controllers is ~9k and is 10GigE, vs 6k for an empty NX. MD also isn't drive locked so feel free to put whatever you want in it.

Though again, I'd get enough scratch together to do Equallogic at least.

What happens when the raid controller or the motherboard fails in NAS A? Or you need to patch CentOS/WS?

H700 is a pci-e card so, pop in a new card and watch it rebuild run of the backups that rely on NAS C for the time being, until A is back up.

Patching just svMotion stuff off and run the patches, reboot, svMotion stuff back on, move to next host.

I know it isn't super awesome, best SAN ever but it is still head over heels better than running everything DAS, with backups being snapshots.

Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 23:54 on May 23, 2012

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evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

We got a Netapp 2240 quote for just about that exact config (dual controllers, 10GBE, 13 10ksas drives and 24 2tb sata) for $44k, and 3 v7000 quotes that were all at least double that.

Running your poo poo on 3 different devices just isn't very smart if the management/functionality isn't integrated. 3 equallogic devices would be another story.

Corvettefisher posted:

Patching just Vmotion stuff off and run the patches, reboot, sDRS stuff back on, move to next host.
vmotion and sDRS aren't related to the same thing.

You're not a dumb dude but please re-read your posts.

Nukelear v.2 posted:

MD also isn't drive locked so feel free to put whatever you want in it.
Really? Because if so I'm going to put together the ballerest of baller test environment array.

evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 20:59 on May 23, 2012

Nukelear v.2
Jun 25, 2004
My optional title text
^^^
According to two storage folks I've talked to at Dell. I'm waiting for an excuse to get one and load it up with cheap ssd's.


Corvettefisher posted:

H700 is a pci-e card so, pop in a new card and watch it rebuild run of the backups that rely on NAS C for the time being, until A is back up.

Patching just Vmotion stuff off and run the patches, reboot, sDRS stuff back on, move to next host.

I know it isn't super awesome, best SAN ever but it is still head over heels better than running everything DAS, with backups being snapshots.

So going to backup really sounds like a good plan, you want that call at 3am that you entire Web/SQL infrastructure is down? Can your cheap/slow tier actually handle running your production traffic at anything resembling your previous speeds? How well does vmware do when it's storage backend goes to hell? Your own first post in the VM thread is don't cheap out on storage.

For ~15k you can get a 2Gig cache DUAL CONTROLLER MD3620i with 2x MD1220 shelves, that's capacity for 66 2.5 inch drives. Or mix in a MD1200 and get some 2TB 3.5 inch drives. Splurge and buy the drives from Dell directly, prices on everything but SSD's aren't bad. Also, the whole thing can be covered by 4 hour on-site support.

Nukelear v.2 fucked around with this message at 21:39 on May 23, 2012

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


Nukelear v.2 posted:



For ~15k you can get a 2Gig cache DUAL CONTROLLER MD3620i with 2x MD1220 shelves, that's capacity for 66 2.5 inch drives. Or mix in a MD1200 and get some 2TB 3.5 inch drives. Splurge and buy the drives from Dell directly, prices on everything but SSD's aren't bad. Also, the whole thing can be covered by 4 hour on-site support.

Are you getting the pricing straight from Dell or after some back and forth? I ask because dual controller MD3620i start at $18k on their site and MD1220s are $3500 a piece. That comes out to $25k and not $15k

Dilbert As FUCK
Sep 8, 2007

by Cowcaster
Pillbug

Nukelear v.2 posted:

So going to backup really sounds like a good plan, you want that call at 3am that you entire Web/SQL infrastructure is down? Can your cheap/slow tier actually handle running your production traffic at anything resembling your previous speeds? How well does vmware do when it's storage backend goes to hell? Your own first post in the VM thread is don't cheap out on storage


For ~15k you can get a 2Gig cache DUAL CONTROLLER MD3620i with 2x MD1220 shelves, that's capacity for 66 2.5 inch drives. Or mix in a MD1200 and get some 2TB 3.5 inch drives. Splurge and buy the drives from Dell directly, prices on everything but SSD's aren't bad. Also, the whole thing can be covered by 4 hour on-site support.

I would say you are right if I had existing SAN/NAS to go off of, but here is my situation

Right now our SQL/Web/VDI infrastructure is best hosted on a server with DAS 8 1TB 7.2k SATA RAID 5 256MB write cache. WE HAVE NO CENTRAL STORAGE. It isn't too slow for our needs but definitely slower than it should be, people are starting to drop the line "why is everything so slow". VDI is all on DAS put randomly on hosts through the cluster, same with other servers, HA/FT/vmotion/sDRS/DRS is non exsistant even with out Enterpise Plus licensing. A host failure right now would be hell more difficult recovery, than dealing with some sql servers on a backup NAS.

No I am not trying to "cheap out" I don't have a huge budget to work with here. I am trying to get the infrastructure what it needs to get it somewhat better, more redundant than what it is at right now. I would love to spludge if I had the funds to do it, and go get some NetApp/EMC equipment but I don't have the funds for it.

The 2 MD1200 would be great to get, until I realize I have to address 8 hosts... So I need 16 SAS cables, and then 2x8port switches... and then 8 additional SAS cards...
I could go SAS => 2 hosts(which I would need some SAS cards for) then run VM iscsi servers, but that is adding a good amount of added layers that are needed to go through, just to get my data to where it needs to be. That would more than likely push my over 30k.

Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 23:57 on May 23, 2012

skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

bull3964 posted:

Are you getting the pricing straight from Dell or after some back and forth? I ask because dual controller MD3620i start at $18k on their site and MD1220s are $3500 a piece. That comes out to $25k and not $15k

No one pays list price. Discounts of 40% or more are common in enterprise IT gear. The publicly traded guys will almost give stuff away at end of quarters and fiscal year end to make their revenue numbers.

three
Aug 9, 2007

i fantasize about ndamukong suh licking my doodoo hole
You could do a lot more with 30k, but it seems you feel the need to justify it instead of putting that 30k to good use. It sounds like your company is pretty terribly ran so they won't know any better, either way.

three fucked around with this message at 00:45 on May 24, 2012

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

Corvettefisher posted:

The 2 MD1200 would be great to get, until I realize I have to address 8 hosts... So I need 16 SAS cables, and then 2x8port switches... and then 8 additional SAS cards...
I could go SAS => 2 hosts(which I would need some SAS cards for) then run VM iscsi servers, but that is adding a good amount of added layers that are needed to go through, just to get my data to where it needs to be. That would more than likely push my over 30k.
You plug the MD shelves in an MD controller pair then use your existing 10GBE infrastructure.

Nukelear v.2
Jun 25, 2004
My optional title text

bull3964 posted:

Are you getting the pricing straight from Dell or after some back and forth? I ask because dual controller MD3620i start at $18k on their site and MD1220s are $3500 a piece. That comes out to $25k and not $15k

Straight from Dell.com with a Mid-size business Premiere login, which is a good starting point for pricing and easily attainable by someone with 30k to spend if he calls in. As skippdogg said, nobody pays list and if you tell them you are shopping other storage vendors (say specific names/models) and try to hit them up near fiscal end of quarter, you can get even better pricing.


Corvettefisher, not to be a jerk but based on not knowing how sans expand with disk trays, it sounds like you may be out of your element here. 5-10 years ago, yes 30k would get you nothing in the san space, but now you have a plethora of SMB sized options that would fit your budget. The problem with your plan is that you aren't increasing the reliability of your design by moving from DAS to NAS, you are adding some massive single points of failure and saying how bad things are now but moving to another bad solution isn't a defense. Gather up your IOPS needs from ESXi and your capacity needs and call Dell tell them what you are trying to accomplish and what your budget constraints are. If you want, send me a PM and I'll give you the contact info for my storage guy there.

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





Put Dell / Equallogic / Compellent up again EMC and NetApp up against Nimble. The price will drop a lot.

Serfer
Mar 10, 2003

The piss tape is real



As if you needed another reason to not buy EMC, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDhx6ECNww4

the spyder
Feb 18, 2011

Serfer posted:

As if you needed another reason to not buy EMC, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDhx6ECNww4

I will never buy from EMC because of this tragedy of a failed marketing attempt. It's not even funny.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

the spyder posted:

I will never buy from EMC because of this tragedy of a failed marketing attempt. It's not even funny.

To be fair, it's an internal cheerleading video made for EMCWorld, not a real marketing campaign. Doesn't make it any less terrible, though.

madsushi
Apr 19, 2009

Baller.
#essereFerrari
I'm just sad that Vaughn Stewart was the gorilla. :(

Muslim Wookie
Jul 6, 2005
Sadly, this isn't the first storage related rap video. Or even the second. And if NetApp choose to respond in like, again, we can expect a 4th one soon...

Also, was it just me or did anyone else see all the different size racks and different depths all over the place there? Yuck.

three
Aug 9, 2007

i fantasize about ndamukong suh licking my doodoo hole
Chad Sakac owns, so that video owns by proxy.

Serfer
Mar 10, 2003

The piss tape is real



Speaking of EMC being terrible, I wasted three hours of my time working with yet another know-nothing EMC tech.

I knew things were going to go bad when he tried to cd and ls /dev/hda7. Then he mounted an iso loopback and after doing df, said the upgrade couldn't proceed because one of the drives was 100% full (care to guess which one?).

Dilbert As FUCK
Sep 8, 2007

by Cowcaster
Pillbug

Internet Explorer posted:

Put Dell / Equallogic / Compellent up again EMC and NetApp up against Nimble. The price will drop a lot.

Dell = Equal logic just FYI
http://venturebeat.com/2007/11/05/dell-buys-equallogic-for-14b-biggest-cash-purchase-of-private-tech-company/

Serfer posted:

Speaking of EMC being terrible, I wasted three hours of my time working with yet another know-nothing EMC tech.

I knew things were going to go bad when he tried to cd and ls /dev/hda7. Then he mounted an iso loopback and after doing df, said the upgrade couldn't proceed because one of the drives was 100% full (care to guess which one?).

One company I am working with has their eyes set on the VNXE3100, I am trying to push nettapp but they say a video from an EMC sales rep and instantly knew there are no other options!

Surprisingly this company wants to spend money on their IT infrastructure, unlike a it firm not wanting to spend money.

Moey
Oct 22, 2010

I LIKE TO MOVE IT

Serfer posted:

As if you needed another reason to not buy EMC, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDhx6ECNww4

I am pretty sure if I wore one of those shirts, after trying to explain it any of my friends, I would get smacked in the face.

Edit: I still kinda want one.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

I'm pretty sure that's why he linked Dell, Equallogic, and Compellent together, since both Equallogic and Compellent are owned by Dell.

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

So's Compellent, which is why he put the 3 brands next to one another.

E: fish :argh:

xarph
Jun 18, 2001


Never forget Mr. T shilling for HDS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW1S2tsxVHg

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





Corvettefisher posted:

Dell = Equal logic just FYI
http://venturebeat.com/2007/11/05/dell-buys-equallogic-for-14b-biggest-cash-purchase-of-private-tech-company/


One company I am working with has their eyes set on the VNXE3100, I am trying to push nettapp but they say a video from an EMC sales rep and instantly knew there are no other options!

Surprisingly this company wants to spend money on their IT infrastructure, unlike a it firm not wanting to spend money.

Like the others said, I I know that. If you are looking at the VNXe line you absolutely need to look at Equallogic.

Dilbert As FUCK
Sep 8, 2007

by Cowcaster
Pillbug

Internet Explorer posted:

Like the others said, I I know that. If you are looking at the VNXe line you absolutely need to look at Equallogic.

No I got you, didn't realize you knew that.

But yeah this customer is like EMC VNX 3100s!

Probably will get them an nice equal logic setup, ther are multisite but 20Mb fiber 5ms lines between them they want full replication and dedup.


Anyone have the how to become a dell partner guide? would appricaite it

YOLOsubmarine
Oct 19, 2004

When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

Corvettefisher posted:

No I got you, didn't realize you knew that.

But yeah this customer is like EMC VNX 3100s!

Probably will get them an nice equal logic setup, ther are multisite but 20Mb fiber 5ms lines between them they want full replication and dedup.


Anyone have the how to become a dell partner guide? would appricaite it

Not sure where the VNX to Equallogic transition is coming from. Going from a unified block/file scale up SAN to an iSCSI only scale out SAN doesn't make much sense to me. The VNX line is a direct response to NetApp and NetApp would be the obvious competitor.

Anyway, what is it that they like about the VNX gear?

Anyway, Equallogic doesn't do on-box dedupe so if that's a requirement they would need to look elsewhere. If they're content with iSCSI only then Nimble might be a good fit. They don't do dedupe but they do in-line compression and apparently see pretty good results.

Of course, I'd recommend NetApp because I think their offering is genuinely much better than the VNX gear, but I'm hardly impartial.

Dilbert As FUCK
Sep 8, 2007

by Cowcaster
Pillbug

NippleFloss posted:

Not sure where the VNX to Equallogic transition is coming from. Going from a unified block/file scale up SAN to an iSCSI only scale out SAN doesn't make much sense to me. The VNX line is a direct response to NetApp and NetApp would be the obvious competitor.

Anyway, what is it that they like about the VNX gear?

Anyway, Equallogic doesn't do on-box dedupe so if that's a requirement they would need to look elsewhere. If they're content with iSCSI only then Nimble might be a good fit. They don't do dedupe but they do in-line compression and apparently see pretty good results.

Of course, I'd recommend NetApp because I think their offering is genuinely much better than the VNX gear, but I'm hardly impartial.

If it is like what most sales reps do, $IT_manager went to lunch with $EMC_rep, and discussed what they have in the cheap end and the VNX 3100 came up.

The main requirement is replication between sites, dedupe is a nice bonus they would like but aren't pushing for it outside of a nice to have.

Depending on what my budget is will depend where I go, seeing how they listed the VNX 3100 my guess is they want to go on the cheaper end.

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

I don't think VNX does block dedup?

Dilbert As FUCK
Sep 8, 2007

by Cowcaster
Pillbug

evil_bunnY posted:

I don't think VNX does block dedup?

Correct file level dedupe
http://www.emc.com/storage/vnx/vnx-series.htm#!compare

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

And that's only if you get the NAS heads.

Dilbert As FUCK
Sep 8, 2007

by Cowcaster
Pillbug

evil_bunnY posted:

And that's only if you get the NAS heads.

oops I posted the higher end models
http://www.emc.com/storage/vnx/vnxe-series.htm#!compare
VNXE is actually the model name, but yeah, pretty sure I can get better with Equal logic or Netapp if I throw them up against EMCs offerings

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





The VNXe was what he was talking about, which doesn't have NAS functions and is very similar feature wise to an Equallogic box.

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

So as it turns out the major, major outage we had last week was caused by a double disk failure on a IBM SAN (disk failure, then second disk failure apparently compounded by some sort of software error). Only one disk group was affected, but because the controllers freaked, pretty much all central services were affected.

Apparently a world first, since IBM support had never seen anything like that before.

evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 12:36 on May 28, 2012

Vanilla
Feb 24, 2002

Hay guys what's going on in th

Internet Explorer posted:

The VNXe was what he was talking about, which doesn't have NAS functions and is very similar feature wise to an Equallogic box.

The VNXe is CIFS, NFS and iSCSI.

Muslim Wookie
Jul 6, 2005

evil_bunnY posted:

So as it turns out the major, major outage we had last week was caused by a double disk failure on a IBM SAN (disk failure, then second disk failure apparently compounded by some sort of software error). Only one disk group was affected, but because the controllers freaked, pretty much all central services were affected.

Apparently a world first, since IBM support had never seen anything like that before.

Was it an XIV?

Please tell me it was. Please.

Goon Matchmaker
Oct 23, 2003

I play too much EVE-Online
XIVs are ginormous pieces of poo poo. IBM always had a tech on site at least once a week for random problems we had. Coincidentally, the tech was stabbed in the parking lot after he pulled an all nighter trying to fix the SAN when it broke for the millionth time.

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

marketingman posted:

Was it an XIV?

Please tell me it was. Please.
Managers meeting tomorrow, I'll see if I can find out.

Goon Matchmaker posted:

Coincidentally, the tech was stabbed in the parking lot after he pulled an all nighter trying to fix the SAN when it broke for the millionth time.
I'm sure you had absolutely nothing to do with that.

evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 18:38 on May 28, 2012

Goon Matchmaker
Oct 23, 2003

I play too much EVE-Online

evil_bunnY posted:

Managers meeting tomorrow, I'll see if I can find out.

I'm sure you had absolutely nothing to do with that.

I can neither confirm nor deny my involvement.

Edit: What's really funny is that the business is in a fairly safe part of town. Low crime, police don't patrol it often cause the worst that ever happens is someone gets bothered by a bum. Somehow though this guy managed to get mugged and stabbed though. I guess it's some form of karma or something. I don't know. He did live though.

Goon Matchmaker fucked around with this message at 19:14 on May 28, 2012

feld
Feb 11, 2008

Out of nowhere its.....

Feldman

Goon Matchmaker posted:

Coincidentally, the tech was stabbed in the parking lot after he pulled an all nighter trying to fix the SAN when it broke for the millionth time.

Am I a bad person for laughing at this? :ohdear:

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

marketingman posted:

Was it an XIV?

Please tell me it was. Please.
It was v7K. Sorry :laugh:

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Pile Of Garbage
May 28, 2007



evil_bunnY posted:

It was v7K. Sorry :laugh:

Have you lodged the fault(s) with IBM yet? I'm interested to see how you get along as my support experience with V7000 hardware has been pretty poor.

The problem with getting support for the V7000 is that the department/team which handles it (Storage Central/zRTS) are one of those "don't call us, we'll call you" departments. All you can do is call the IBM support number, lodge a case with the National Contact Centre and pray that they got your details right and/or you get a callback.

Recently we experienced a "catastrophic failure" with a V7000 cluster that we deployed at a customers site (Thankfully it wasn't in production yet). Around the end of April I recieved an alert stating that a PSU in the control enclosure had failed so I dutifully logged it with the National Contact Centre and started the waiting game.

Then just over 30 minutes later the control enclosure started spewing out heaps of terrifying alerts ("The node is no longer a functional member of the cluster", "Enclosure electronics critical failure", etc.) and then went down hard and became completeley inaccessible.

When I got onsite the fans on the control enclosure were running at 100%, the enclosure indicator light on the control enclosure was off and all the HDDs in the control enclosure had the amber fault lights lit. I cold-booted everything and it magically came back up fine.

So basically in the space of 5 minutes the entire cluster went down hard.

The first thing I did was get back onto IBM which began a saga which lasted almost a month. The fault was escalated from level 2 to level 3 and then to product engineering/development in the UK. There were countless incidents of miscoummincation between all levels and we only managed to get a final word on the fault after tearing the service delivery manager a new one.

In the end we finally recieved word back from development (Via a level 3 engineer) who stated that the failure was caused by a soft error experienced on one of the i2c buses. The control enclosure responded to this error by attempting to perform a hard reset which failed resulting in both canisters going down. The expected fix for this is to be included in the v6.4 code release (Release data TBA). However development assured me that the "condition is extremely rare and very unlikely to occur again".

This experience with the Storage Central/zRTS team and development has left quite the sour taste in my mouth. I still love the V7000 and this issue would not deter me from recommending it to others (If they can afford it) however I do not look forward to dealing with IBM support for anything beyond a HDD failure with any V7000 hardware.

Oh and sorry about the :words:. I get carried away sometimes.

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