Geekzone: technology news, blogs, forums
Guest
Welcome Guest.
You haven't logged in yet. If you don't have an account you can register now.


rabsoft

20 posts

Geek


#151698 2-Sep-2014 12:52
Send private message

I have done a bit of a search but I guess this is one of the types of questions that there is no right answer but everyone has an opinion and all the information I have found is either old or not well related to the NZ market

What I am wanting is recommendations on what is a good well performing NAS/SAN to be used as shared disk for 3 HP DL385g8 ESX servers (at this stage 40-50 hosts altogether)

Also what connectivity between SAN/NAS and servers

Thanks for your help

Create new topic
lxsw20
3552 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

  #1120461 2-Sep-2014 13:25
Send private message

We use an IBM V7000 with 8Gb FC to our 5 DL380's with a mix of SSD/SAS and NL SAS disk. 

Hosting about 80 VMs with ESX.

If you wanted something slightly smaller than that maybe look at the V3700 or V5000.

SANs are not cheap btw....and make sure you have a good support contract for the life of the product. 





Inphinity
2780 posts

Uber Geek


  #1120464 2-Sep-2014 13:28
Send private message

What is your budget? What are your IO requirements? What storage capacity do you require? 

I'd look for something like the IBM DS3500 Express, or Dell/HP-equivalent, and use 8Gbps FC for your interface.

lchiu7
6476 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

  #1120844 2-Sep-2014 21:41
Send private message

You could look at the EMC range which I have been doing.

You  could probably make do with this series

https://store.emc.com/us/Product-Family/EMC-VNXe-Products/EMC-VNXe3200-Hybrid-Storage/p/VNE-VNXe3200-Hybrid-Storage

Start with GBE and if that is not fast enough, then I guess you would have to upgrade the servers to support FC or 10GBE. But they are expensive as you might expect.

Bit hard without knowing your space requirements, performance expectations etc.

Otherwise if you are on a lower budget then this Seagate might do the job.

http://www.seagate.com/external-hard-drives/network-storage/business/business-storage-4-bay-rackmount-nas/#specs

This is VMware ready.

Of if reliability is very important then this model Seagate

http://www.seagate.com/external-hard-drives/network-storage/business/business-storage-8-bay-rackmount-nas/

has dual redundant power supplies which should add to the reliability





Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD.  https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd  PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.




wasabi2k
2096 posts

Uber Geek


  #1120868 2-Sep-2014 22:24
Send private message

Some idea of budget would be good.

HP 3PAR is incredible kit - and with appropriate licensing is super duper amazing - they are adding inline dedupe shortly. Load it up with SSDs (which are almost cheaper than spinning) and everything flies. 7200 series are sufficient for most workloads (we've got 8 ESX hosts and 6 SQL clusters running off 2).

8GB Fibre Channel HBAs, two fabrics,

And do you mean 40-50 HOSTS or guests? 50 hosts is a lot.

Zeon
3916 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

  #1120871 2-Sep-2014 22:27
Send private message

TBH the whole SAN concept is dieing these days. You just need to follow the tech publications and new features coming out of the virtualization providers e.g. VSAN and Hyper-V running on SMB 3.0.

Up until now I have done DIY SAN route, using LSI MegaRAID controllers with Supermicro chassis (JBOD 2.5" and 3.5" units). These then run Windows with Starwind to mount storage onto ESXi over iSCSI. Can do over 20,000 IOPs on pure SSD arrays and 2,000 IOPS on SATA 7200RPM RAID 10 arrays with cachecade. Probably spend about 5k on a SAN that can take 50 disks, has 3TB worth of 20,000 IOPs storage and 20TB worth of 2,000 IOPs storage and is pretty damn reliable.... run about 4 of these types of setups.

If I were to start these days I would seriously consider VSAN.

Looking at switching to Hyper-V after using VMware for like 8 years due to the licensing costs and broad guest support now. Perhaps just connect up to a similar config as above but cut out the Starwind.






Speedtest 2019-10-14


wasabi2k
2096 posts

Uber Geek


  #1120919 3-Sep-2014 05:54
Send private message

Zeon: TBH the whole SAN concept is dieing these days. You just need to follow the tech publications and new features coming out of the virtualization providers e.g. VSAN and Hyper-V running on SMB 3.0.

Up until now I have done DIY SAN route, using LSI MegaRAID controllers with Supermicro chassis (JBOD 2.5" and 3.5" units). These then run Windows with Starwind to mount storage onto ESXi over iSCSI. Can do over 20,000 IOPs on pure SSD arrays and 2,000 IOPS on SATA 7200RPM RAID 10 arrays with cachecade. Probably spend about 5k on a SAN that can take 50 disks, has 3TB worth of 20,000 IOPs storage and 20TB worth of 2,000 IOPs storage and is pretty damn reliable.... run about 4 of these types of setups.

If I were to start these days I would seriously consider VSAN.

Looking at switching to Hyper-V after using VMware for like 8 years due to the licensing costs and broad guest support now. Perhaps just connect up to a similar config as above but cut out the Starwind.




Hi,
You are completely and utterly wrong.

While vSAN, HP Lefthand/VSA etc are really great in a lot of situations they cannot hold a candle to good, dedicated SAN hardware over Fibre Channel, particularly with SSD. 

The solution you describes sounds fine, for small and medium.

Anything large and it would be 1. Incredibly undersized and 2. Utterly unacceptable from a support standpoint. 

For perspective we use VSAs in our remote sites and have big ESX hosts with lots of disk presented out over iSCSI. We use the VSAs for storage level redundancy.

Our main site we have 4 3PARs, 2 for each environment split across DCs. We have a 30TB SSD Layer in each and around 70TB of FC, per SAN. We use AO to move hot blocks into SSD based on daily usage. We are all thin, with the exception of some core apps.

All of this on a 4 hour SLA for replacement.

So yeah, VSANs are cool and all, but spec to your situation and budget. 


lchiu7
6476 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

  #1120998 3-Sep-2014 09:30
Send private message

As been noted, it's hard to provide recommendations without knowing the size of the environment (50 hosts does seem like a lot), SLA's, type of user base etc.

But I myself would very rarely consider a roll-my-own solution if I were responsible for a company or enterprise. There is just too much that can go wrong and I want to be able to point the finger at one vendor.




Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD.  https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd  PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.


 
 
 

Shop now on AliExpress (affiliate link).
Markuchi
26 posts

Geek


  #1122989 6-Sep-2014 11:28
Send private message

"3 HP DL385g8 ESX servers (at this stage 40-50 hosts altogether)"
He is talking about 3 physical hosts with 50VMs

One site we run a couple IBM V3700s with 3 hosts using direct attached SAS cables. For a small amount of hosts it is fine.
Currently looking at purchasing EMC VNX or HP 3PAR using FC switches for a new DC that will have 8 Physical Hosts and a few other physical SQL servers.
Both EMC and HP are competitive with their pricing, IBM is expensive and the feature set not as good.

EMC and HP both have great integration of their backup appliances with Veeam which is a great cost effective combination.

Although it is very hard to say without knowing the type of environment. A couple Synology NAS units may even be good enough with the right backup strategy.


Create new topic





News and reviews »

Air New Zealand Starts AI adoption with OpenAI
Posted 24-Jul-2025 16:00


eero Pro 7 Review
Posted 23-Jul-2025 12:07


BeeStation Plus Review
Posted 21-Jul-2025 14:21


eero Unveils New Wi-Fi 7 Products in New Zealand
Posted 21-Jul-2025 00:01


WiZ Introduces HDMI Sync Box and other Light Devices
Posted 20-Jul-2025 17:32


RedShield Enhances DDoS and Bot Attack Protection
Posted 20-Jul-2025 17:26


Seagate Ships 30TB Drives
Posted 17-Jul-2025 11:24


Oclean AirPump A10 Water Flosser Review
Posted 13-Jul-2025 11:05


Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7: Raising the Bar for Smartphones
Posted 10-Jul-2025 02:01


Samsung Galaxy Z Flip7 Brings New Edge-To-Edge FlexWindow
Posted 10-Jul-2025 02:01


Epson Launches New AM-C550Z WorkForce Enterprise printer
Posted 9-Jul-2025 18:22


Samsung Releases Smart Monitor M9
Posted 9-Jul-2025 17:46


Nearly Half of Older Kiwis Still Write their Passwords on Paper
Posted 9-Jul-2025 08:42


D-Link 4G+ Cat6 Wi-Fi 6 DWR-933M Mobile Hotspot Review
Posted 1-Jul-2025 11:34


Oppo A5 Series Launches With New Levels of Durability
Posted 30-Jun-2025 10:15









Geekzone Live »

Try automatic live updates from Geekzone directly in your browser, without refreshing the page, with Geekzone Live now.



Are you subscribed to our RSS feed? You can download the latest headlines and summaries from our stories directly to your computer or smartphone by using a feed reader.