What toys (SAN) do I buy?
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Greetings all.
Been a while since I have been here.
I have been given the task of buying a SAN.
Need some reccomendations. I am going through all the "normals" like Dell, HP, IBM etc.
I am looking for growth capability. I am starting with around 150GB required but am expected to grow to over a TB within a year and continue along that rate.
I am looking at mid range up. I would rather spend the extra now than have a paper weight or mp3 server in a years time.
Any suggestions?
Cheers,
Crispin
Cheers,CrispinI can't die, there are too many people who still have to meet me!It's not a bug, SQL just misunderstood me!
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Heja, nice to see you back here
What about EMC?
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Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
Actually interesting. I know that EMC is perceived as the father of SAN but....
At my previous company we had the DB (5TB) on an EMC SAN. It performed well.
We then ended up moving it off EMC and onto a Hitachi SAN for two reasons.
1) Cost: Cost / GB was quite a bit cheaper (Can't remember the exact differance)
2) Speed: Doing a test before and after the move ON THE EXACT SAME DATA with cold cache both times, single users etc, the Hitachi performed ±30% faster. Tests were Deletes, Updates, Large Joins etc.
So far, I have looked at Dell and find them to be ok. Problem is call them. I could not understand the salesman. They all in India. When I ased "Can it be scaled" he said yes. When I said "So scaling not possible" he also said yes.
HP Looks promising now. HP: Hopefully perform
Crispin
Cheers,CrispinI can't die, there are too many people who still have to meet me!It's not a bug, SQL just misunderstood me!
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So far, I have looked at Dell and find them to be ok. Problem is call them. I could not understand the salesman. They all in India. When I ased "Can it be scaled" he said yes. When I said "So scaling not possible" he also said yes.
Now, isn't it fun to have outsourcing? You had a look here? http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/default.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=gen&~ck=bt
Btw, you really shouldn't talk to a salesman, but rather a technician. The likelihood that the latter knows what he's talking about is higher by order of magnitude.
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Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
IT WAS A TECHNICIAN!
The salesman said "We do not stock PDA by that name" she then passed me onto the technician. oh well......
Cheers,CrispinI can't die, there are too many people who still have to meet me!It's not a bug, SQL just misunderstood me!
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IT WAS A TECHNICIAN!
Sorry about that! In that case using punch-cards might be the better alternative
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Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
Problem with that would be the backing up? Photocopy them?
Actually, off site backups would be easy. I could just fax them to you.
ok - Seems like Dell it is. They have a nice bundle for £10k. Which includes 5 disks (Up to 14), extra HBA,
fibre switch etc.
Cheers,CrispinI can't die, there are too many people who still have to meet me!It's not a bug, SQL just misunderstood me!
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I could just fax them to you.
Well, since on our side of the fax presumably still paper comes out, go ahead
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Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
I have 4 SANS for a total of 42 TB on IBM that I like alot! Lost a couple of drives, but no major outages...knock on wood
A Couple of years ago, I suffered through 2 MTI SANS that crashed monthly...I think they now just resell EMC instead of making their own.
Michelle -
Just make sure you can lose a disk shelf and keep running.
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ok - Seems like Dell it is. They have a nice bundle for £10k. Which includes 5 disks (Up to 14), extra HBA, fibre switch etc.
Just so you know DEll is selling EMC equipement
My advice is: should you have the ability to go for Hitachi, DO IT.
HTH
* Noel -
I've been part of 2 separate SAN purchases at different companies.
Went with the HP (Compaq at the time) MSA 1000 at the first place. It was loads cheaper than the Dell/EMC bid and gave us what we needed. It's good for a starter SAN; you can have a simple 2-port switch in it with a few disks to begin, then expand the internal switch and add another one later for growth and redundancy.
At the second place, we wound up getting a couple IP-SAN units from Left Hand Networks (http://www.lefthandnetworks.com) that were really cool. Really scalable stuff; all the units worked together to a up to like 3x redundant. You could loose a few drives or a whole rack unit without problems.
You could also over-provision the space, as drive space wasn't physically used until necessary. So if you had 1TB of space, you could set up, say, 4 containers at 500GB each, as long as the combined data stored in those containers was less than 1TB. There were lots of alarms for watching all that stuff.
Basically, all the units linked to appear as a single storage container. If you added another unit later, it would just become part of the overall space that was available through the interface. Real easy to grow containers that way... add another unit with a TB of drives in it, then just expand your containers. Containers were not limited to a single unit or SCSI channel.
It's the only IP SAN I've looked at, I don't know how they stand up to other folks, but after all the research I did earlier before buying the MSA 1000, I thought the IP stuff was loads easier to manage and had more usable features.
-Eddie
Eddie Wuerch
MCM: SQL
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