SAN for home use
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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.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@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.)
ROFLOL - awww.. the 'it's not my fault/problem' game .. ok I gotcha.
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@Dashrender said:
ROFLOL - awww.. the 'it's not my fault/problem' game .. ok I gotcha.
You can't laugh about it until you've seen the massive scale. You'd need to hire lots of storage admins otherwise and it would end up costing about the same.
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@coliver said:
It's all about liability. Comparing where it sits with an SAM-SD vs where it sits with a proprietary system.
Politics. As I often say, the sign of a good company is caring about results, the sign of an unhealthy one is being willing to fail more often as long as it is someone else's fault.
Same thing with SLAs. Often they encourage more downtime, but there is someone officially to blame.
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@Jason said:
You can't laugh about it until you've seen the massive scale. You'd need to hire lots of storage admins otherwise and it would end up costing about the same.
Not storage admins, just normal system admins. In theory it just becomes more of the same OSes that you are already managing.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Jason said:
You can't laugh about it until you've seen the massive scale. You'd need to hire lots of storage admins otherwise and it would end up costing about the same.
Not storage admins, just normal system admins. In theory it just becomes more of the same OSes that you are already managing.
And as non specialized system admins, they themselves should cost less than a specialized EMC person, right?
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@Dashrender said:
And as non specialized system admins, they themselves should cost less than a specialized EMC person, right?
Depends. I've never seen an enterprise shop with enterprise system admins that were not more expensive than the storage guys. Close, but systems is the top payer. I've known many $200K and higher systems people. No storage people at $200K. But lots over $150K.
Storage people tend to be very focused, very limited and only manage a few systems that requite little attention. Systems people can scale to hundreds or thousands of critical systems and do a large array of tasks so even if the systems aren't super complex, they can be easily made "more dense" and get their value up.
So payroll, systems people cost more per person. Storage people cost more per system.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Depends. I've never seen an enterprise shop with enterprise system admins that were not more expensive than the storage guys. Close, but systems is the top payer. I've known many $200K and higher systems people. No storage people at $200K. But lots over $150K.
Cost more but can do more. I'm not saying what my pay is, but my bonus is more than my whole salary at my previous employer.
