1

Hello Everyone,

We are considering VNXe3100 and HP StorageWorks x1600 for our Storage, Exchange and Virtualization needs. I saw a number of reviews on this new appliance, however I saw very few reviews by organizations that have already adopted VNXe series.
With EMC VNXe, you I have to purchase the software license (over $3,000) then if you want to be able to use an Antivirus Agent on the file storage, you have to purchase another license. If I intend to use more then 12 drives, I have to invest into another tray or a half-tray. So, at first this appliance looks good, however once you fully evaluate all of the costs, it doesn’t cost less then competitors.
If you are using VNXe3100, can you please share your thoughts and reviews here ? If you are using HP StorageWorks, can you also share some insights as to how you dedupe your data or whether you would consider switching to EMC VNXe series?

2 Spice ups
2

I haven’t played with VNXe yet, but my experience with EMC is they jack up the support costs massively in years 4 and 5 to the point that its cheaper to buy a new SAN. Know the total operating costs over the lifetime of a storage array before you buy.

As for Dedupe if your under 100TB its almost never worth it. Both of these systems use File level rather than block level, so unless your company is just really terrible at managing your documents and storage its not worth it. For the EMC Why buy magic pixie dust that MIGHT give you more storage, when you can spend a couple grand and get TB more storage and spindles?

One of my clients who uses a Netapp is getting 6% back on dedupe and he even has block level dedupe. If you manage your files properly your just paying a massive markup on disks for this feature that can reduce data recoverability, and increases read/write latency (SIS was removed from Exchange for this very reason).

If your running server 2008R2 as a NAS, you can use the file server resource manager to run duplicate file reports, and get an idea of how much space your users are wasting, and hunt down and filter out large duplicate files and do some quick clean up on the big space wasters. Dedupe is best used in backups, and at this point your not paying crazy licensing prices.

As for the HP, while I do work for a partner, and was a closed beta member of the MS storage Server 2008R2, I don’t feel its worth the markup.

Their iSCSI target management is a 6 year old product that is light years behind anyone else in management. Supposedly the NFS services don’t suck in 2k8R2, but I would like to do some benchmarking when I have the time to see if they are finally worth a damn. If your looking for a windows CIFS NAS however it is a solid platform that has had a ton of tweaks done to make CIFS performance fast. If anyone from Microsoft is listening, PLEASE LET US RUN THIS IN A VM. This OEM only licensing for 2k8R2 storage is killing this product.

The antivirus agent, as well as backup agents are yet another reason why proprietary NAS’s are a bad idea. I always either run Windows or Linux (Depending on CIFS, or NFS heavy environment) for this reason unless I fit into an exception case. Unless you just need absurd IOPS from a NAS (BlueARC), ACL’s for NTFS and NFS to coexist into folders (NetApp), or PetaByptes of tiny files to be easily accessed (isilon), or cheap scale out NAS (Scale Computing), just stick to a basic VM running a NAS on top of block level storage thats reliable and easy to manage.

3

Nice post. I am currently looking at the VNXe 3100 as well. Deduping was an interesting feature, but it sounds like it really won’t make that much difference.

We are deciding between the VNXe 3100 and a Netgear ReadyNAS 4200.

The price on the EMC is not that much more than the Netgear, and there seem to be a few more nice features on the EMC…

This is mainly going to be central storage for our Virtual environment.

I am not sure which way to go either…

4

well, then you also understand my dillema LOL

I do agree with John on VNXe, it is actually pricey. I would however add that, would the VNXe was already an established product, it would probably be easier to decide. I don’t want to be the early adopter working out the bugs… So, we are still considering…

5

CDW list pricing shows 1,416 dollars for ‘basic’ hardware support for years 4-5 on the VNXe3100, but they don’t make it clear on the quote whether that’s per year, or covers both years… and while they also don’t make this clear on the quote, I’m sure there’s probably a separate fee for software support!

Shared storage is the biggest cluster f*ck I’ve ever seen in my life! I’m convinced at this point that there is NO good solution that’s not stupid expensive, and I wish I hadn’t already convinced my boss that server virtualization ‘with HA’ was a good idea. :wink:

6

Bwilling, it’s actually 100x cheaper that it used to be.

The VNXe and netgear are entirely different classes of products. VNXe supports fully redundant controllers, scales up to 96 drives. The netgear is a solution you will have to scale out.

7

Wow, 100x! I only thought this stuff was stupid expensive already. LOL

Just to clarify, I’m not specifically picking on the VNXe3100 when I’m bitching about pricing, it’s much more of a general rant. The VNXe3100 is still on my short list, as is Scale’s S1 cluster. And while I don’t think either product is ‘cheap’, they do represent some sort of value proposition in the crazy expensive world of shared storage.

8

bwilling, to compare apples to oranges, makes sure that e3100 has a second controller.

A 3 node scale out system that can take a catastrophic failure of any chassis is MUCH different from a E3100 with a single controller and single point of failure (plus things like non-disruptive upgrades are impossible at that point).

As for expensive, what is your companies, uptime, data, ease of manageability (your time, and reduced risk of not deleting things worth.) Even big boy fancy Tier 1 SANs full of SAS are at worst like $25 a gigabyte. If you can’t find 2 and a half cents worth of value in your data your wanting to put on a SAN, it either doesn’t belong in a SAN, or its mostly worthless and you should start deleting stuff.

9

So we agree that the cost is high. i also think that basic warranty on HW and SW is not what it should be, therefore we also quoted enhanced warranty…
However what would you like to get if cost wasn’t an issue? VNXe is appears to be very easy to use.

10

Alexander6920 wrote:

So we agree that the cost is high. i also think that basic warranty on HW and SW is not what it should be, therefore we also quoted enhanced warranty…
However what would you like to get if cost wasn’t an issue? VNXe is appears to be very easy to use.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t worked with a VNXe yet (I have used unisphere/flare etc from EMC though). Out of the Storage Vendor’s I’ve worked with (Netapp, Hitatchi, Sun/Oracle, Fujitsu, Onstor, LSI, Brocade, McData, Dell, Datacore, HP(MSA, Left Hand, EVA) I’d have to say that Scale has the fastest, easiest interface. They just don’t clutter it up. Remember, its actually normal to separate out your NAS from your block storage, and leveraging this separation can save you a ton of money and headaches.

Cost is completely no object for a NAS, something like a BlueArc. realistically I want the most reliable block storage behind my NAS, Hitatchi Data Systems. I’ve worked with them a ton and never had any issues or data loss. For a smaller business their AMS line supports full VAAI and is rock solid. For higher end and storage virtualization their VSP is ahead of the pack. They make a NAS blade, but honestly unless you have some crazy NFS needs, I always just run my NAS in a Windows server Virtual Machine. You don’t pay ridiculous taxes for things like antivirus, have access to the new awesome file server resource reporting in 2008R2 and can use CSV,HA, or FT if you really need it. HDS’s code testing is insane (I’ve been told the OS shares code with the bullet train division) and if you need service or a drive dies, you have an actual Hitatchi badged employee magically appear.

I had some buddies working for Virginia, and while they don’t know anything about storage. They curse the name EMC… Virginia's IT outage doesn't pass management sniff test | ZDNET

  • Disclaimer I work for a partner of about 1/3 the products in this post.
11

Sightly off topic but I found a list of what EMC products run what OS’s. Looks like EMC for VMXe is running flare and dart on some kind of hypervisor.

  • Clarion CX3 – 2 blade servers running XP 64-bit embedded Operating System as well as FLARE Operating Environment.
  • Clarion CX4 – 2 blade servers running Windows Server 2008 64-bit embedded Operating System as well as FLARE Operating Environment.
  • VG2 – Linux Operating System but specific codebase to VG2.
  • Recoverpoint -2 servers (dell) running another version of Linux
  • Data Domain – Rack of servers running Linux Operating System but specific codebase to Data Domain appliance.
  • Avamar – Rack of servers running Linux Operating System but specific codebase to Avamar appliance.
  • VPLEX – Linux Operating System but specific codebase to VPLEX.
  • Rainfinity – Linux Operating System but specific codebase to Rainfinity.
  • Celerra – uses DART Operating Environment for the data movers, and redhat for the control station. (Celerra needs a Clariion at the bottom).
  • VNX – Hardware appliance running Virtual instances of two EMC Operating Environments**, FLARE and DART.**
1 Spice up
12

Alexander6920 wrote:

So we agree that the cost is high. i also think that basic warranty on HW and SW is not what it should be, therefore we also quoted enhanced warranty…
However what would you like to get if cost wasn’t an issue? VNXe is appears to be very easy to use.

Ok, after some soul searching, there is my ultimate NAS build :slight_smile:

HDS backed SAN providing FC dirrect access to a pair of HP X3000’s for Windows File Servers. If I needed NFS, or didn’t want to have to deal with the headache of managing two More windows server (and the “Joy” of Cluster Shared Volumes) I’d get a pair a duel controller Blue Arc Unit.

13

John773,

That is some very valuable input, I really appreciate it. I’m glad that I posted the comment on VNXe vs StorageWorks, yet, I think I should`ve been posting a comment on a general solution instead…… If I dice it down to what I have, can you please make a recommendation ?

Environment is 100% Windows and we have 100 Users.

File storage currently is 500-600GB, expected to increase 50 to 100% within 3 – 4 years.

Exchange 2003 Standard, DB is about 40GB currently. I plan to upgrade Exchange to 2010 Standard and provide larger size mailboxes. Upper management sees at least 1GB/month in mail, so at a minimum 20 users x 1gb a month for just the top guys. I’d like to be able to either increase the mailbox size in the Exchange environment and also archive their mailboxes while users still access it centrally. Currently all mail is archived to local PSTs.

We have a couple of VMs. I will be running 5 – 6 virtual servers, so I am looking at 2 x HP DL380 G7 boxes, they will provide ample power and ability to add more VMs if needed later. Depending on whether I virtualize Exchange or not, I may need to get another server. Considering Microsoft Hyper-V, since license for Hyper-V is already included with Windows 2008 server license.VmWare would be nice, however I’m worried that it won’t get approved due to additional cost.

For now we are looking into getting One storage appliance, however 3 years from now we will probably be considering it depending on how requirements change. I also plan to dump my Overland LoaderXpress Tape LTO2 appliance and backup to disc (different volume on the NAS/SAN). I then plan to also transfer all of the data to Iron Mountain or similar vendor. I no longer see the point of carrying tapes off site when you can store up to date recent copies without taking one tape from the office…

Based on the above, what would you recommend ? Would be nice to find something under 15K, that`s why I was loking at VNXe in the first place…

Also, I need to say that I’m the only one in IT department right now, so, the easier the solution the better….

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your input.

14

Also, I probably should say that 15K that I mentioned above are for storage appliance only, obviously the cost of DL380 boxes will not be included in it… Dedupe would be nice as even with 5 - 10% reduction, I still can see some savings in off-site data backup. Not sure if hoping for as close to a fully redundant One unit appliance is probable, so at some point I expect to add a lower cost NAS…

15

Dedupe for backups should be done at the block level and by your backup software (like veeam). Doing it at the file system level it will re-expand on transmit. Dedupe over the wire likewise sometimes works but is Hella over priced.

16

I spoke to BlueArc this morning, unfortunately their entry level solution is out of my price range. BlueArc solution starts at approximately 50K, but the options included with their units are nice :slight_smile: Perhaps a few years from now we will be considering them again…

17

For those that maybe considering BlueArc, I should probably mention that the response from their Sales team was almost instantaneous… Literally, two minutes later I received a call from BlueArc.

18

To answer original post, the VNXe/VNX is a scaleable SAN solution very different than the X1600. in order to expand the X1600 for CIFS file shares you would have one choice, to add an external DAS like the D2600. This would slow you system down considerably and would have to managed as a separate traditioanal RAID volume by using a P410 or equivalent RAID card. DAS also imposes additional security risks as you cannot zone the DAS devise. The VNXe/VNX are removed from the LAN and operate in their own SAN box. An additional tray of storage 12/24 bays is reatively inexpensive and can be expanded to 120 drives. For a VMware envirnoment VNX series is a smart move. For just creating a file share for students or staff the X1400 or x1600 is a good way to go. Microsoft Windows Storage Server R2 also has SIS. Price wise A VNXe3100 with TWO controllers and 12 600GB 15K drives with Unisphere base s/w is about $12K.