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Hi,

Our current EMC VNXe3100 is ageing and is no longer meeting demand. I am currently trying to decide what to replace it with. A EMC VNXe 3200, a IBM Storwize V3700 or a HP MSA2040. All configured to allow for 12TB usable after raid 6. The IBM and HP with 12 x 1.2TB 10K SAS drives and the EMC with 25 x 900GB 10K SAS drives.

I have no preference for brand, I’ve used IBM, HP and EMC equipment in the past with no problems.

The HP is coming in at nearly double the price of the other two.

This isn’t something I do every day (once every 4-5 years), so would appreciate any advice you may have. Storage hardware is not something I generally keep up with.

All options are under budget however would I better off going for the IBM or EMC and slapping in some SSD’s to run our XenApp farm and SQL server?

Unfortunately given our rural location and poor internet connection anything to do with the cloud is off the table.

The current VNXe3100 will be moved to our DR site and setup to replicate VMs for fail-over.

Cheers

@HP

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No, you wouldn’t. SSD’s for a V3700 are stupidly expensive. Last time I looked at this, I was quoted £5k per SSD!

If you want SSD’s then seriously consider spending the money on server hardware and local SSD’s. They are much cheaper.

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Let’s back up and look at your needs. What factors are leading you to getting a SAN in the first place? What role is it fulfilling?

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Have you looked at Pure Storage? They dont nickel and dime you with license cost and options like the 5 do, a revolutionary way to think of storage.

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Hi Gary, just found some pricing for the SSD’s, so yes won’t be going down that path.

Hi Scott, we originally went to a SAN when we first virtualised. Mostly due to the our data storage needs (currently consuming around 6TB) and for host redundancy. Our XenApp farm also has high disk usage, (8 application servers with 100 odd users). So far I guess I was just thinking of replacing like for like, though I am open to other suggestions.

Hi Alex, I haven’t heard of Pure Storage before, will take a look. A lot will depend on their support in rural Australia.

I think I can remove the HP option though due to it’s price.

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Have a serious look at local disk and/or das shelves with SSD’s.

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Nimble Storage should be on your short list. It’s a hybrid array so performance will smoke the arrays you are currently looking at as long as it’s in cache, and cache misses usually aren’t too bad because so many reads are hitting cache. Writes are also never a problem unless you are maxing out the controller, which should be over 10,000 4K random write IOPS on even the smallest array they have.

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I am of the opinion that only the very smallest deployments would not include some SSD these days. I am upgrading 5 year old branch servers with SSD so that they can run just 2 VMs.

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And the smallest shouldn’t use SAN at all :slight_smile:

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If you have high disk usage then having a SAN in RAID 6 is the opposite of what you need. When you say “host redundancy” what does this mean. When you have a SAN all your data is in one place so if it goes you lose everything

Local disks in RAID 10 is faster, cheaper and a lot simpler…

If you have support issues then local disks make more sense. Just keep a spare in a box and no need to have any service contract!

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And lets not forget the write penalty that RAID6 creates.

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Okay, here’s a different take on your question whilst you are back to the drawing board. Are you sure that it’s time to rip and replace or are you being told that it’s time to start the cycle again? Consider if you will, an alternate angle which will mean that you will free yourself from this depressing cycle every few years and put the power into a storage software layer not rusting tin that resides beneath, whatever the badge on the front. I hope the movement towards Software Defined Storage has reached you in Rural Oz ((total aside…which part of Oz… I’m there in 9 weeks, 5 days and counting)). Basically we ask why you would want to rip out perfectly good equipment only to replace it with new, more expensive gear? I work for DataCore, who takes advantage of your existing assets, even extending the life of those investments. Using software we make it possible to reconcile differences between old and new tin, allowing you when to decide when is the best time to retire a storage asset, not have someone else push that decision on you.

We have offices in Melbourne and Sydney, so please check us out - www.datacore.com

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You haven’t said anything much about IOPS and host connectivity so do you mean you have 8 physical hosts connecting?

If an MSA is over budget you can pretty much forget about Nimble, Pure or any of the other vendors of that sort.

You also want to re-consider RAID6 and perhaps look at either RAID10 or something that does tiering/caching but that isn’t as expensive as the likes of Pure or Nimble.

I’d suggest look at HDS and 3PAR.

HDS are dull but deathly reliable, 3PAR is apparently very good kit, if you can get a timely quote :slight_smile:

@calvin-hpe

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I’ve never used 3Par but I have had them come in and present, I was VERY impressed. I liked the storage and would have loved to have had a play.

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No trolling just curious what exactly does Pure “revolutionary” in storage? Say to other AFA vendors like f.e. Violin?

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I’m not a pricing guy but the MSA coming in at double really doesn’t make sense. I was just in New Zealand where IBM V3700 used to be the market leader but the country team fixed the pricing issue and it’s now number 1 (and the V3700 is like number 5). Who are you working with on pricing? And agree that 3PAR is the top of the line.

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The only thing really unique I’ve seen them argue is.

  1. Forever flash (sales promise being made by a startup always has me skeptical, especially when previous startups who had similar things have worked around them or abandoned them in one way or another).
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Did we lose the OP?

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I’m in the same boat as Stubbern, I’m scheduled to replace our 10 TB HP SAN next year, and my pricing came in at double than the same-sized Nimble, and a EMC that’s three-times the size.

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But that’s hardly unique… There are quite many AFA vendors around!

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