Looking for a cheaper/entry level SAN
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We're looking for an off the shelf entry level one we can buy. with around 24TB usable. Most of the data is not actively used anymore just needs to be there still for research purposes. The this was a setup we got when we bought out another company and have been renting the SAN. We just need to buy another so we can have our techs replace it and vMotion to it. It's not worth our time to fix the setup at this point.
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How entry level? And what connection technology?
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The most entry level SAN that I know, that doesn't fall into the "is this a joke" category like the infamous SC-101, is the Drobo B800i. It will do 8x 6TB drives which will be more than enough capacity for you (it does RAID 6.) You could get away with 6x 6TB or 8x 4TB. It only does SATA, so things like WD Red and WD Red Pro and WD RE are all just fine (we have RE4 in ours.) Very easy to use, all iSCSI on GigE.
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Both Synology and Netgear ReadyNAS have unified storage options that do iSCSI SAN in the same range as the Drobo. The Drobo is pure SAN, these are both unified so do NAS functions as well. They will work just fine, too.
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@scottalanmiller said:
How entry level? And what connection technology?
iSCSI with gigabit Ethernet.
Probably a Dell EQ or something. It has a couple of SQL servers running on it for Sharepoint and Dynamics AX but sees very little use. Not sure if something like this would run semi-okay on a Dell EqualLogic PS4100E that's really entry level haha
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If it's for archive data, this could work quite nicely for you
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EQL will work fine, although generally I would take Synology or ReadyNAS over that. EQL feels like it will be better but has so many issues and costs enough more that I would rarely want to invest in it by comparison.
However, xByte can get you a deal on EQL and that might make it cost effective enough to consider.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
If it's for archive data, this could work quite nicely for you
If you want to use that as a SAN you would want to layer @StarWind_Software on top of it to do the iSCSI presentation.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
If it's for archive data, this could work quite nicely for you
Don't think the SQL servers will be happy with that. The Business unit it's at doesn't have many newer computers either to run it on. It's not part of our datacenter as we keep this stuff seperated for legal reasons.
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@Jason said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
If it's for archive data, this could work quite nicely for you
Don't think the SQL servers will be happy with that. The Business unit it's at doesn't have many newer computers either to run it on. It's not part of our datacenter as we keep this stuff seperated for legal reasons.
Oh SQL, I thought it was dump the data into a pool and access occasionally.
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Drobo will be very slow for SQL Server, but will work fine. Synology/ReadyNAS would be better. EQL is okay. MSA is not my favourite, but would work.
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@scottalanmiller do any of those support SSD caching?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller do any of those support SSD caching?
No. The Drobo B1200i does SSD tiering. None of them do caching.
