SAN for home use
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@Jason said:
@coliver said:
@Jason said:
@coliver said:
Any reason not to just do a SAM-SD and run iSCSI through a *nix distribution? It seems like that would be less expensive.
Than buying a used san? Not really I have a but load of HDDs laying around. Used SANs without the NAS features come in around the $300 mark.
Hmm, I was thinking along the lines of a used HP or Supermicro server. You can get a 24-bay server for 150-200$.
I'd rather have something more enterpise grade like I'd be using at work.. granted it will be a lower end SAN. Those are more geared to the SMB.
HP and Supermicro are geared for SMBs? I find that hard to believe.
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@coliver said:
HP and Supermicro are geared for SMBs? I find that hard to believe.
Yes, the SAM-SD is meant for SMB's who shouldn't really be buying SANs and are most likely considering only buying a single SAN instead of multiple.
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@Jason said:
@coliver said:
HP and Supermicro are geared for SMBs? I find that hard to believe.
Yes, the SAM-SD is meant for SMB's who shouldn't really be buying SANs and are most likely considering only buying a single SAN instead of multiple.
That's mostly true, although the original was designed as a showcase to show that it could blow the top end ($500K) NetApp out of the water for the world's largest bank. So the original design was anything but SMB focused. It was to be the fastest, most practical way to feed data to a 10,000 node computer cluster. And it did indeed crush the NetApp.
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@Jason said:
I'd rather have something more enterpise grade like I'd be using at work.. granted it will be a lower end SAN. Those are more geared to the SMB.
I'd be surprised if you are going to find something "more enterprise grade" in that price range. At least that are new enough to do what you need, accept the drives you have or actually work. I've not shopped the used SAN market, used SANs are pretty close to worthless as it is the support that makes them valuable, but sub $300 seems surprising.
The big players to be looking for are EMC, HDS and HP 3PAR.
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@Jason said:
@coliver said:
HP and Supermicro are geared for SMBs? I find that hard to believe.
Yes, the SAM-SD is meant for SMB's who shouldn't really be buying SANs and are most likely considering only buying a single SAN instead of multiple.
It seems like it is designed for any market. It is built on top of enterprise hardware, with an enterprise operating system capable of doing storage IO at a massive scale.
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@scottalanmiller said:
And it did indeed crush the NetApp.
That does take much. A company we bought out has a butt load of the netapp fas2220, they all suck.
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NetApp has a few good features and is a neat idea, but their reality isn't very good. If you want to use them as large scale, low performance home directory servers, they are pretty good. Otherwise, stay away.
I've heard from the inside that anyone who is viable in the company has already quit and it is just a skeleton now of the people who can't find other work keeping the lights on. Their last software products were so bad that everyone has fled.
And that's straight from an executive at the company!
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@coliver said:
It seems like it is designed for any market. It is built on top of enterprise hardware, with an enterprise operating system capable of doing storage IO at a massive scale.
Definitely applies anywhere, the thing that it does not do is handle really massive scale like an EMC VMAX would do. Once you are into the world of 100% custom enterprise SAN (mainframe class) things start to change. But even the biggest companies don't need that for all of their workloads. There is nothing "not enterprise" about a SAM-SD in any way, but there are classes of EMC, HDS, 3PAR, etc. that it is not.
In the same vein that HP Proliant and Dell PowerEdge are commodity computers and not mini or mainframes.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
It seems like it is designed for any market. It is built on top of enterprise hardware, with an enterprise operating system capable of doing storage IO at a massive scale.
Definitely applies anywhere, the thing that it does not do is handle really massive scale like an EMC VMAX would do. Once you are into the world of 100% custom enterprise SAN (mainframe class) things start to change. But even the biggest companies don't need that for all of their workloads. There is nothing "not enterprise" about a SAM-SD in any way, but there are classes of EMC, HDS, 3PAR, etc. that it is not.
In the same vein that HP Proliant and Dell PowerEdge are commodity computers and not mini or mainframes.
Right, how would it compare to a Dell Compellant, or EMC VNX, It seems like that is the market where it would compete the best. Either way it isn't a big deal the price difference between that and a used SAN is minimal just thought it was interesting.
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@coliver said:
Right, how would it compare to a Dell Compellant
Dell Compellant is very low end with a high price tag I believe most of them are just windows servers. EMC VNX is somewhat better but it's all flash. the VNXe is low end as well.
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@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
It seems like it is designed for any market. It is built on top of enterprise hardware, with an enterprise operating system capable of doing storage IO at a massive scale.
Definitely applies anywhere, the thing that it does not do is handle really massive scale like an EMC VMAX would do. Once you are into the world of 100% custom enterprise SAN (mainframe class) things start to change. But even the biggest companies don't need that for all of their workloads. There is nothing "not enterprise" about a SAM-SD in any way, but there are classes of EMC, HDS, 3PAR, etc. that it is not.
In the same vein that HP Proliant and Dell PowerEdge are commodity computers and not mini or mainframes.
Right, how would it compare to a Dell Compellant, or EMC VNX, It seems like that is the market where it would compete the best. Either way it isn't a big deal the price difference between that and a used SAN is minimal just thought it was interesting.
I agree - Unless it's the the SANs specific software and interface that you want practice on, and you expect to use that experience in the future (or current job), it seems more practical in every regard to build and manage a SAM-SD. Plus you'll be ready to save you company a bundle when the time comes to replace/install a new one, unless you're that space that Scott specifically mentioned.
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@Dashrender said:
Plus you'll be ready to save you company a bundle when the time comes to replace/install a new one, unless you're that space that Scott specifically mentioned.
The SAM-SD is not something we'd be deploying here. I've deployed them before at smaller companies. We have a lot of scale here with our datacenter.
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@Jason said:
The SAM-SD is not something we'd be deploying here. I've deployed them before at smaller companies. We have a lot of scale here with our datacenter.
It was recommended by Sun (now Oracle) engineering for a 10K Proliant DL585 cluster, so 40,000 CPUs. It can be a pretty intensive system. If the Fortune 10 use them, there really aren't too small for anyone.
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
It seems like it is designed for any market. It is built on top of enterprise hardware, with an enterprise operating system capable of doing storage IO at a massive scale.
Definitely applies anywhere, the thing that it does not do is handle really massive scale like an EMC VMAX would do. Once you are into the world of 100% custom enterprise SAN (mainframe class) things start to change. But even the biggest companies don't need that for all of their workloads. There is nothing "not enterprise" about a SAM-SD in any way, but there are classes of EMC, HDS, 3PAR, etc. that it is not.
In the same vein that HP Proliant and Dell PowerEdge are commodity computers and not mini or mainframes.
Right, how would it compare to a Dell Compellant, or EMC VNX, It seems like that is the market where it would compete the best. Either way it isn't a big deal the price difference between that and a used SAN is minimal just thought it was interesting.
I agree - Unless it's the the SANs specific software and interface that you want practice on, and you expect to use that experience in the future (or current job), it seems more practical in every regard to build and manage a SAM-SD. Plus you'll be ready to save you company a bundle when the time comes to replace/install a new one, unless you're that space that Scott specifically mentioned.
He's in a Fortune 100, so they tend to focus on massive scale cost savings on enormous SAN and use the purchase to shift support resources to the vendor. Almost certainly they run on EMC, everyone in the Fortune 1000 does.
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LOL - hence I left in your caveat.
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@scottalanmiller said:
He's in a Fortune 100, so they tend to focus on massive scale cost savings on enormous SAN and use the purchase to shift support resources to the vendor. Almost certainly they run on EMC, everyone in the Fortune 1000 does.
Yep we have EMC, Having to support something like the SAM-SD at a large scale could suck if something went wrong. We also have Dell EQL SANs for some non-production stuff, but they are old, not warrantied, Dell likely gave them to us as the sent us lots of freebies often, including the printer in my office.
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@Jason said:
Yep we have EMC, Having to support something like the SAM-SD at a large scale could suck if something went wrong.
No different than anything else in IT. It is just normal servers. So if your IT department manages its own servers, this would be identical. Yes, it means you manage your own servers, but I know few enterprise IT departments that outsource even the server admins.
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@Jason said:
Yep we have EMC, Having to support something like the SAM-SD at a large scale could suck if something went wrong. We also have Dell EQL SANs for some non-production stuff, but they are old, not warrantied, Dell likely gave them to us as the sent us lots of freebies often, including the printer in my office.
I've never used a SAN personally - why would a SAM-SD at scale suck if something went wrong?
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@Dashrender said:
I've never used a SAN personally - why would a SAM-SD at scale suck if something went wrong?
It's just because in one case they our outsourcing their support (proprietary SAN, "just call EMC") and not the other (it's just a server, use internal IT sys admins.)
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@Dashrender said:
@Jason said:
Yep we have EMC, Having to support something like the SAM-SD at a large scale could suck if something went wrong. We also have Dell EQL SANs for some non-production stuff, but they are old, not warrantied, Dell likely gave them to us as the sent us lots of freebies often, including the printer in my office.
I've never used a SAN personally - why would a SAM-SD at scale suck if something went wrong?
It's all about liability. Comparing where it sits with an SAM-SD vs where it sits with a proprietary system.
