Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD
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Taking the study done here but now moving from three to four nodes to demonstrate the change in the pricing as we break away from VMware's sweet spot of three nodes and move to a more flexible pricing model and to compare the scale up of the SAN vs. the scale out of the hyperconvergence. I'll not repeat the background information here, we are using the same hardware but adjusting for the additional fourth node in each cluster.
Moving into the new model we now have an additional ~14TB of storage in the cluster which means we must adjust our SAN capacity as well to match. VMware ESXi has to move from Essentials Plus to Standard licensing because of the change of scale. So this example is more indicative of larger and more flexible installations.
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First the Scale cluster. This will be a four node, HC3 H1150D configuration with 2x Intel Xen E5-2620v4 per node, 128GB per node, 12TB of NL-SAS and 1.9TB of SSD on each node. Each node lists at $19,139.
Acquisition Cost: $76,556
Five Year Support: $34,450Total Lifespan Tost: $111,006
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For VMware we will use the Dell R430 with 128GB per node, the same CPUs as above. Each node, just for the hardware, comes out to a list of $8,173 but with a real world discount bringing it down, at this time, to just $5,430 per node.
In addition to hardware, we need to license VMware vSphere Standard which is $10,544 for the entire cluster ($1,318 per processor.) So this is $21,720 for the servers, total.
Acquisition Cost: $32,264
Dell Support Cost: $7,168 ($1,792 per node)
VMware vSphere Support Cost: $10,944 ($342 per proc for each additional year after the first)Total Pre-Storage Cost: $50,376
SAN Storage Costs:
Acquisition Cost: $73,271 EMC VNXe 3200 Hybrid 41TB
Support Cost*: $54,953
Total Cost: $178,600
*Unlike the product pricing, support cost are not listed on the EMC site and must be estimated. A very conservative number is 15% per year when purchased up front or as high as 30% when purchased later. That's percentage of purchase price, per year. So here we are estimating five years, at a low 15%, purchased up front. The real support cost could easily be double what we have here.
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A cost difference of $67,594 is pretty significant for any SMB. Considering all of the negatives that come with the inverted pyramid approach, this is a staggering cost to have to bear to do it reasonably well. And this before we consider the large expected installation costs and ongoing support costs.
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Wow, what is amazing is that the cost of the EMC SAN, comes out alone to $17,000 more than the entire Scale solution! That's crazy. And that's not even a comparable product. It's expected to be less performance, less flexibility and less reliable. We got super lucky in this comparison that EMC's two example SAN units for their entry level map exactly to the two Scale clusters that we want to compare. We could not have asked for closer examples.
So even before we consider one penny of the cost of the servers, of licensing, setup, labor, maintenance, the Scale solution has already won on features and on price.
Also worth noting, the hyperconverged approach is a 4U solution, rather than a 10U.
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I was not expecting the cost difference to be so large. That's an unbelievably different cost range!
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@scottalanmiller said in Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD:
I was not expecting the cost difference to be so large. That's an unbelievably different cost range!
And it gets even bigger if you actually build the 4-Node VMware + SAN to not be an IPOD.
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@dafyre said in Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD:
@scottalanmiller said in Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD:
I was not expecting the cost difference to be so large. That's an unbelievably different cost range!
And it gets even bigger if you actually build the 4-Node VMware + SAN to not be an IPOD.
If you add a second SAN? Yeah, then it's crazy.
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Scott will soon be adding vCenter - forgot the single pain of glass software for a system larger than the VMWare Essentials
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@Dashrender said in Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD:
Scott will soon be adding vCenter - forgot the single pain of glass software for a system larger than the VMWare Essentials
Yup, overlooked that since it was included at three nodes.
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Would you mind if I add HTBase's HyperTask to the comparison?
Four node system with 2x Intel Xen E5-2650v4 per node, 256GB per node, 6TB of SSD per node.
Total cost (including 4 nodes and 3 years support):
$71,600
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@htbase said in Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD:
Would you mind if I add HTBase's HyperTask to the comparison?
Four node system with 2x Intel Xen E5-2650v4 per node, 256GB per node, 6TB of SSD per node.
Total cost (including 4 nodes and 3 years support):
$71,600
Need the 5 year support so that it matches the timeframe. I don't recall, are these the same processors Scott listed in the other thread?
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@Dashrender Processors are better in our case compared to the original thread.
To add 2 additional years of support, you would just be adding $5K, bringing the total to $76,600
Still a good price when compared
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@Dashrender said in Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD:
@htbase said in Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD:
Would you mind if I add HTBase's HyperTask to the comparison?
Four node system with 2x Intel Xen E5-2650v4 per node, 256GB per node, 6TB of SSD per node.
Total cost (including 4 nodes and 3 years support):
$71,600
Need the 5 year support so that it matches the timeframe. I don't recall, are these the same processors Scott listed in the other thread?
No, he used slightly higher end procs, the 2650 instead of the 2620
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@htbase said in Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD:
@Dashrender Processors are better in our case compared to the original thread.
To add 2 additional years of support, you would just be adding $5K, bringing the total to $76,600
Still a good price when compared
So you have 6 TB SSD storage, what about the 32 TB of additional storage? really hoping to see an apples to apples comparison. granted, currently if you just added 32 TB of HDD, you'd be way ahead because you have 24 TB of SSD storage, vs the others having 8 TB of SSD storage.
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@htbase thanks for jumping in to the "mix".
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@Dashrender Yep, in that configuration we have 24 TB of SSD.
If we added an additional 32TB of HDD (given the fact you would already have 24TB of SSD), it would add around $13,000 to the total cost provided before
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@scottalanmiller :thumbsup_tone2:
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@htbase said in Cost Study: 4 Node Scale vs. 4 Node VMware IPOD:
@Dashrender Yep, in that configuration we have 24 TB of SSD.
If we added an additional 32TB of HDD (given the fact you would already have 24TB of SSD), it would add around $13,000 to the total cost provided before
So rolling that all together (though we have no idea what it looks like in configuration) we have
4 units (dual xeon 2650, 256 GB RAM, 6 TB SSD, 8 TB HDD, 5 yr warranty/support) = $89,600Is that right?
So we have better processors, double the RAM and of the 56 TB of storage 30% more of it is SSD. right?
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Scott didn't mention the RAID controller in his Dells, what kind of RAID are in your boxes? how about the warranty, what are the details?
