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amishpurple posted:Money. The enclosures are almost six years old and we were told by NetApp that we can either shell out a ridiculous amount of money for extended support/maint or forklift upgrade for a cool million. Beyond a new vendor our other option is just rolling with 3rd party maintenance on the hardware, which we are considering.
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Nov 1, 2012 23:15
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^^^^ With this guy. I would just spend enough to buy on site spares for everything and gently caress the maintenance fees. Vendors push that poo poo because its 85% pure profit. Working spares should be pretty cheap for kit that old.
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Nov 2, 2012 16:03
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skipdogg posted:^^^^ With this guy. I would just spend enough to buy on site spares for everything and gently caress the maintenance fees. Vendors push that poo poo because its 85% pure profit. Working spares should be pretty cheap for kit that old. Not sure I'd bet my job on an ebay spare... The last thing you want is an incompatible firmware bringing down the array for who knows how long while you feverishly type, search and call your way to a fix after 24+ hours of unscheduled downtime during the week. That profit is what keeps folks like me in a job and new products rolling out the door. No one ever got fired for letting a vendor do the work. CYA and all of that.
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Nov 3, 2012 07:06
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Amandyke posted:Not sure I'd bet my job on an ebay spare... The last thing you want is an incompatible firmware bringing down the array for who knows how long while you feverishly type, search and call your way to a fix after 24+ hours of unscheduled downtime during the week. That profit is what keeps folks like me in a job and new products rolling out the door. Wrong firmware is not the type of thing that happens with NetApp, though. We use a lot of refurb/3rd party NetApp gear and it's great. The cost of a spare shelf is cheaper than the cost of maintenance on the shelf.
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Nov 3, 2012 07:50
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madsushi posted:Wrong firmware is not the type of thing that happens with NetApp, though. Not sure about Netapp but EMC wouldn't maintain your array if you attached stuff from ebay, it would invalidate your warranty. Sure, a good chunk of that attitude is due to $$$ but a lot of it is down preventing mix and match configurations which could cause harm.... I have to agree with the poster above. You don't dictate the price of enterprise hardware, you buy and administer it for the company. Growth should be budgeted. If something went wrong with the ebay purchase and the shiny array the gun sights would be purely on the whoever came up with that idea. 'Well...I bought it on ebay' is a very uncomfortable conversation to have after an outage.
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Nov 3, 2012 11:32
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As an IT admin you wouldn't make that decision anyway, your director would, hopefully in compliance with a policy set up with the rest of your MT.
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Nov 3, 2012 12:13
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Vanilla posted:Not sure about Netapp but EMC wouldn't maintain your array if you attached stuff from ebay, it would invalidate your warranty. Sure, a good chunk of that attitude is due to $$$ but a lot of it is down preventing mix and match configurations which could cause harm.... This isn't a problem with NetApp. It's really not possible to "mix and match" in an improper way. Within the scope of FAS and V-series pretty much all shelves can connect to all controllers if you have the right adapters. All disks of the same size are interchangeable and if the firmware version is out of date then it will be upgraded when you plug it into the shelf. Same thing with shelf modules, power supplies, even system boards from the same controller type. It's basically impossible to attach the wrong gear to a NetApp filer. That's not to say that you shouldn't keep support on your gear, since without it you won't have access to NGS for bugs and software issues. But buying a shelf on e-bay to keep around for hot spare parts isn't going to cause any issues.
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Nov 3, 2012 20:16
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I'm looking for some recommendations for cheap but good storage (I know those two adjectives don't go together) for a small VMware setup. I'm doing some research, but I'm a bit lost as my previous experience with SAN/NAS has all been in the bigger 48+TB EMC/NetApp world, so I don't really know much about the cheaper end of things. I'm mostly looking for what brands/models are good and what to avoid so I'm not shooting myself in the foot as our needs grow. What I'm building is a small production VMware setup with shared iSCSI or NFS storage. I need minimum 2TB and will be running about 20 small VMs (generally 1-2 cores and 2GB of RAM.) But I would like to build in some room for growth, as I'm planning to upgrade some of the existing VMs and add a few new ones with some sorely needed services over the next year. However, this is a non-profit, so my budget is small. I've only got about $20k for the whole thing, so I need to go cheap, but I'm also trying to help bring the organization out of the IT dark ages and have a lot of support from my CTO in that respect, so there's wiggle room on the budget for a compelling story of how spending more now will save us more in the future. I probably don't need any fancy bells and whistles, just something that will give decent I/O to 20-30 VMs across 2-3 iSCSI/NFS hosts and can max out at around 10TB. My original plan was to get two hosts, but I'm thinking of cutting down to just one (I can easily run all the VMs in 12 cores and 64GB of RAM, I just wanted two hosts so that some minimal level of failover was an option) so I can put more money into storage and maybe spend a bit extra to get something that can be scaled up a bit later. The host servers I specced out at around $6k, so I could potentially put about $14k towards storage if I just do one host.
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Nov 6, 2012 02:43
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Section 9 posted:I'm looking for some recommendations for cheap but good storage (I know those two adjectives don't go together) for a small VMware setup. I'm doing some research, but I'm a bit lost as my previous experience with SAN/NAS has all been in the bigger 48+TB EMC/NetApp world, so I don't really know much about the cheaper end of things. I'm mostly looking for what brands/models are good and what to avoid so I'm not shooting myself in the foot as our needs grow.
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Nov 6, 2012 02:51
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I'm sort of in the same position and just picked up an HP P2000 for dick all cash due to the various offers going around. It's not going to set the world on fire but we have people who are comfortable with it so we're sticking with what they know for now.
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Nov 6, 2012 03:13
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Section 9 posted:Enterprise IT on a budget Do you know what kind of IOPS you need from the setup? Also is that $20k just for the storage, or for servers/storage/licensing? Do you have include switches as well for your storage network?
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Nov 6, 2012 20:27
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Moey posted:Do you know what kind of IOPS you need from the setup? Also is that $20k just for the storage, or for servers/storage/licensing? Do you have include switches as well for your storage network? I'm seconding all these questions: Because if it's 20k for everything you may as well just wave off now.
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Nov 6, 2012 22:23
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Read his post.quote:The host servers I specced out at around $6k, so I could potentially put about $14k towards storage if I just do one host. So it's $20k total.
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Nov 6, 2012 22:28
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You still need a pair of switches, and licenses.
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Nov 6, 2012 22:35
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Unless you can get a great deal on refurb gear I just don't see it happening.
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Nov 6, 2012 22:48
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VMware's site mentions non-profit pricing, although I can't find jack poo poo on what the actual discount is. One product to look at would be EMC's VNXe. It's probably still out of your price range, but not incredibly so. I really question the point of shared storage with only one vSphere host, too. Docjowles fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Nov 7, 2012 |
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Nov 6, 2012 22:56
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VMwares pricing is pretty decent from quotes I have done. Not too just about VNX discounts. Don't forget the VNXe's exist.
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Nov 7, 2012 00:38
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If $20K is your budget you might want to look into SAN-less shared storage, like vmware or starwind's products. Put the saved $$ into beefing up the hosts?
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Nov 7, 2012 12:52
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Corvettefisher posted:VMwares pricing is pretty decent from quotes I have done. Not too just about VNX discounts. Don't forget the VNXe's exist. Whoops my bad, I meant VNXe.
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Nov 7, 2012 18:25
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I am really looking forward to VMware making the VSA/etc awesome so that it is actually feasible for most environments. It's a long way away with all the limitations it has now, but I think it's the future. Getting rid of the SAN would be awesome.
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Nov 8, 2012 17:06
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three posted:I am really looking forward to VMware making the VSA/etc awesome so that it is actually feasible for most environments. It's a long way away with all the limitations it has now, but I think it's the future. Getting rid of the SAN would be awesome.
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Nov 8, 2012 17:15
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Misogynist posted:If it ever got too good, EMC would cripple it.
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Nov 8, 2012 17:23
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I am still trying to wrap my head around what Microsoft's strategy is with Server 2012 and SMB 3.0 and scale out file servers for applications. Everything starts out looking awesome. Storing SQL and Exchange databases on your file servers is a pretty neat option. Having your hyper-v stores on an SMB share is pretty awesome too. So you move from that to thinking high availability at the file server level and you start reading about scale-out file servers. At this point things start looking fantastic. Unified storage for my MS shop on an active-active file server cluster. Then it hits you... you still have to have shared storage for all this to work. So is Microsoft's strategy for all of this for me to build this out with the file server cluster acting as the filer and all the back-end storage still being done via 3rd party iscsi or fiberchannel kits? Or heck by shared SAS shelfs? And if that is the strategy why would I not just avoid the middle man and connect my hyper-v, sql and exchange application services directly to the iSCSI targets? I think I am missing something here.
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Nov 8, 2012 17:27
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three posted:I am really looking forward to VMware making the VSA/etc awesome so that it is actually feasible for most environments. It's a long way away with all the limitations it has now, but I think it's the future. Getting rid of the SAN would be awesome. It will never happen, there are a ton of reasons to go with a shared chunk of external storage outside of the capacity arguments that VSA are likely to solve. For a small business though I see VSA as a godsend.
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Nov 8, 2012 17:52
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Ha I forgot they started including it free in the kits, however if you don't buy the kits you are going to be spending 4-5G depending on your reseller, not including time to implement. Which is roughly half the price of what it would cost you buy you a VNXe 3150 or Netapp 2200 , or hell even a Dell MD 12x0, that will give you more storage, features, and flexibility.Syano posted:I am still trying to wrap my head around what Microsoft's strategy is with Server 2012 and SMB 3.0 and scale out file servers for applications. Everything starts out looking awesome. Storing SQL and Exchange databases on your file servers is a pretty neat option. Having your hyper-v stores on an SMB share is pretty awesome too. So you move from that to thinking high availability at the file server level and you start reading about scale-out file servers. At this point things start looking fantastic. Unified storage for my MS shop on an active-active file server cluster. Then it hits you... you still have to have shared storage for all this to work. Sounds like you drank a bit too much of the MS kool aid.
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Nov 8, 2012 18:00
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Corvettefisher posted:
Huh? How the crap do you get drinking MS kool aid out of me asking if someone can shed some light on the MS storage strategy for server 2012?
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Nov 8, 2012 18:03
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Oh I thought you were in the implementation process when it hit you, that shared storage was still required. My bad, misread.
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Nov 8, 2012 18:09
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evil_bunnY posted:See: current integrated backup. Has anyone used the new backup stuff in production? At my old job we used Data Recovery since it was free and our environment was small. Even so it would gently caress up every month or two and I'd have to nuke the backups and start from scratch  Not really an acceptable "retention" policy.I still don't really expect to get approval to renew our VMware support contracts and get up to 5.1, but backup software that isn't completely worthless would be a helpful selling point. I'm not asking for Backup Jesus here, just whether anyone's used it and seen it not consistently poo poo all over your data monthly. [e]: guess this is a better question for the VM thread but whatever
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Nov 8, 2012 18:10
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The Data Protection appliance? I have it sitting in a lab, might run a few tests if there is something particular you are looking for, and get back to you on it. I Have problems managing it through anything other than the web client for some reason...
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Nov 8, 2012 18:55
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Syano posted:Huh? How the crap do you get drinking MS kool aid out of me asking if someone can shed some light on the MS storage strategy for server 2012? I think Corvettefisher may have jumped the gun abit as you are asking a valid question. Still, I couldn't help grinning when I read "Having your hyper-v stores on an SMB share is pretty awesome too." According to this TechNet article I'm led to believe that they are recommending the Scale-Out File Server poo poo as an "in-place of" SAN-based shared storage as opposed to "as well as" . Then again, I could be wrong as their wording is a bit vague. Edit: disregard, that paragraph, I'm an idiot. One thing to note is that their new "feature" which makes this possible, namely SMB 3.0 "Multichannel", only works when all your servers/clients are running Windows 8/Server 2012 which sort of kills the deal. Also when I read "Scale-Out File Server" I think of IBM SONAS which really just shits all over Microsoft's idea (Although it costs the same as the GDP of Norway...)
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Nov 8, 2012 19:10
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Norway is actually rich as gently caress FYI (gas money money money). SONAS could still be close though.
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Nov 8, 2012 19:20
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cheese-cube posted:Also when I read "Scale-Out File Server" I think of IBM SONAS which really just shits all over Microsoft's idea (Although it costs the same as the GDP of Norway...) 
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Nov 8, 2012 19:24
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Rhymenoserous posted:It will never happen, there are a ton of reasons to go with a shared chunk of external storage outside of the capacity arguments that VSA are likely to solve. For a small business though I see VSA as a godsend. I disagree. SANs aren't used because people love them for virtualization, they're used because they're a requirement for HA/DRS/etc. Nutanix is already working in this space. It's just a matter of time. Corvettefisher posted:The Data Protection appliance? I have it sitting in a lab, might run a few tests if there is something particular you are looking for, and get back to you on it. I Have problems managing it through anything other than the web client for some reason... The Web Client is required to use it. It won't work (along with many other new features) with the standard client. It's a decent product; I haven't used it in production, but set it up in my lab. Lots of little "gotchas," but it's still a new product. It depends on how much VMware sinks into it. If they give it all the bells and whistles, they'll give a serious business blow to several partner companies (Veeam, PHD Virtual, and Quest to a lesser extent since it has a lot of other software and is owned by Dell now).
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Nov 8, 2012 19:39
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Hopefully this saves someone some time and frustration. I came in yesterday and one of the guys was complaining that SAN HQ had quit working. I could fire it up, but it kept saying that the EQLXPerf service wasn't started. If I told it to start the service, it would start, then immediately stop. It also logged an error message in the application log: SAN HQ, event 1023: There is already a listener on IP endpoint 0.0.0.0:8000. This could happen if there is another application already listening on this endpoint or if you have multiple service endpoints in your service host with the same IP endpoint but with incompatible binding configuration. <big rear end .NET framework exception snipped> They had installed Windows updates on the VM that was running SAN HQ the previous night, but I've never had issues with that before. I opened a ticket with support, spent all day sending the tech diagnostic reports and basically getting nowhere. Today I went back through and saw that they had installed the .NET framework 4.5 on that box as well. Since I was out of ideas, I uninstalled that, reinstalled the 4.0 framework, and everything started working again. I shot another email off to support to tell them about it, but I haven't heard anything back yet. So, if you're running SAN HQ, it's probably a good idea to skip the .NET 4.5 framework installation if it happens to show up in Windows update. I'll post again if I hear anything else back from them. UPDATE: Got a response back, said that they could reproduce the issue with the 4.5 framework. Then he told me that he was going to archive the case. OK...how about acknowledging that it's a bug, and giving me some kind of timeframe as far as when it might be fixed? It happened with both v2.2 and v2.5 of SAN HQ, and v2.5 is an early production release. Boogeyman fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Nov 8, 2012 |
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Nov 8, 2012 19:47
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Corvettefisher posted:The Data Protection appliance? I have it sitting in a lab, might run a few tests if there is something particular you are looking for, and get back to you on it. I Have problems managing it through anything other than the web client for some reason... Yeah, that one. I don't have a specific question, just soliciting opinions from anyone who has used it a little in-depth as to whether it's stable and reliable. I don't mind a few quirks; I used the abortion that is Tolis' BRU for years, anything would be an improvement! 
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Nov 8, 2012 19:57
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three posted:I disagree. SANs aren't used because people love them for virtualization, they're used because they're a requirement for HA/DRS/etc. Nutanix is already working in this space. It's just a matter of time. Do you really think an "All in one" virtualization box is really going to throw the world all a twitter? I'm kind of skeptical.
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Nov 8, 2012 20:09
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cheese-cube posted:
This is par for the course with Microsoft. That being said it starts to become a neat solution when you begin putting all the pieces together... that is until you address the shared storage for the cluster. I could see this as a wicked solution if you could take local storage of servers and throw it together akin to what the VSA does but if you still have to have iscsi or fiberchannel targets on the back end then I sort of don't see the point. Maybe this is just a natural progression of things... ie Microsoft puts out Server 2012 with SMB 3.0 support and the idea is that 3rd parties ala netapp/emc/etc pick up and implement SMB 3.0 support soon and thats their idea of the end to end solution.
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Nov 8, 2012 20:15
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Rhymenoserous posted:Do you really think an "All in one" virtualization box is really going to throw the world all a twitter? I'm kind of skeptical. What is the benefit of continuing the traditional SAN architecture? I would rather have a resilient scale-out infrastructure that uses cheaper technology. Scale-out SANs are already very popular (e.g. Equallogic), so let's go a step further and push that into the server, make it resilient and highly available, and ditch the behemoth SAN architecture. Solid-state drives becoming affordable and easily obtainable makes this idea easier, as well. Push everything into the software layer.
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Nov 8, 2012 20:32
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A product based on "virtualization bricks" that runs a dead-easy Isilon-like scale-out storage architecture and also hosts VMs would be loving incredible.
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Nov 8, 2012 20:51
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Syano posted:I am still trying to wrap my head around what Microsoft's strategy is with Server 2012 and SMB 3.0 and scale out file servers for applications. Everything starts out looking awesome. Storing SQL and Exchange databases on your file servers is a pretty neat option. Having your hyper-v stores on an SMB share is pretty awesome too. So you move from that to thinking high availability at the file server level and you start reading about scale-out file servers. At this point things start looking fantastic. Unified storage for my MS shop on an active-active file server cluster. Then it hits you... you still have to have shared storage for all this to work. The idea is that your shared storage will also support SMB 3.0. Not any different than running Oracle or VMWare over NFS to a filer today. Syano posted:Maybe this is just a natural progression of things... ie Microsoft puts out Server 2012 with SMB 3.0 support and the idea is that 3rd parties ala netapp/emc/etc pick up and implement SMB 3.0 support soon and thats their idea of the end to end solution. This is a given, and Netapp/EMC/SAMBA team etc have already committed to supporting at least some of the SMB 3.0 feature set. Maneki Neko fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Nov 8, 2012 |
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Nov 8, 2012 20:56
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