Company needs a new SAN

[ciggwin]

We have an old EMC CLARiiON AX4 at the main office that is on it's way out. On this we run a 4-node Hyper-V cluster via EMC PowerPath + iSCSI.

In our datacenter we have a NetApp FAS2240-2 that has about 5 TB of space and 25% utilization at the moment. On this we run a 2-node Hyper-V cluster via iSCSI and 10GbE.

Now that I am more involved in the decision making (advanced in my position), I am getting to make recommendations for what we should be doing for future planning.

In the near future we will be moving. This adds a layer of complexity to the purchasing of new equipment now when we will be moving it a year from now. The business is 24/7 however we do 90% of our business during regular US work times. Anything after-hours is on-call type stuff.

The plan I have considered so far was to buy a new NetApp FAS2240-2 for the main office and migrate our infrastructure to it prior to the move. Then on move weekend take the NetApp and the Hyper-V nodes and move them to the new office. This way, the downtime is minimal.

Others have different thoughts. One thought is to buy two NetApps. One now (NetApp1) and one later just prior to the move which would be installed at the new office (NetApp2). Production would be migrated to NetApp1 as I have described above. NetApp2 would be purchased so that we have "new" storage in the new office, most likely connected to one or two new Hyper-V nodes. Basically, another Hyper-V failover cluster.

My thoughts on this second option were very ... bad. I cannot think of a reason why this would be a wise decision for us due to cost. Even if we had infinity dollars in our budget, I do not consider this to be a good way to set up an infrastructure. It seems very segregated and would be difficult to manage. The only thing I can think of is that we would somehow use NetApp1 or NetApp2 for our VDI infrastructure that we plan on rolling out in 1-2 years, and then use the other NetApp for production. However, I still question why we should buy NetApp2 in the first place.

Is this normal? The FAS2240-2 that we currently have in the datacenter cost us about $25k (it only has one controller, something that I am trying to purchase to fix that oversight) which is a very large purchase for our budget. Buying two more of them seems crazy to me.

It is my understanding that the FAS2240-2 can hold up to 518TB of data. We have less than 25 TB of total data company-wide. Would it not be best to buy one NetApp with all the "bells and whistles" for us to use for the next 5 years or however long we end up using it?

Does anyone else run two NetApps? One of the reasons to purchase two was to prevent against hardware failure. I said "That is why there should be two controllers" but I suppose the thought behind this is BOTH controllers fail at the same time and then we are down. So I am trying to find some failure rates on NetApp so I can provide this information. I would think if this was an issue NetApp would be sold with 3 or 4 controllers not just 2... again this seems like overkill. Spending money on disks would be more useful than spending money on controllers.

We are growing at a fast rate in terms of employee count. I would estimate our data growth at 5 TB each year. We do not delete anything due to different regulatory requirements.

Please comment and recommend, so I can learn. Thank you [H]! If I have forgotten any critical info for having this discussion please let me know so I can provide more.

 

[ciggwin]

And as a followup... should I even be looking at a SAN? I don't know much about it but there seems to be a shift towards JBOD in recent years. Keep in mind this is still for production data running a multi-million dollar company.

 

[G4VEL]

Call your NetApp rep and tell them you want to buy a second controller for your existing 2240 single head (goes inside existing chassis) and you want to buy another shelf for your system. The 2240 supports 24 drives internally and 5 external shelves of 24. What kind of drives do you have in your 2240 now?

NetApp's fiscal year end is the 18th of this month and the discounts they will give you right now won't be this good until this time next year. Whatever price they give you, tell them you want another 10% off. Sales reps want to make their number and won't let a sale get away right at the end.

You should probably have a talk with whoever makes IT purchasing decisions about how important data and it's availability is to the company. $25k is chump change (seriously, I spent more on cables last year in a pretty small shop) for the hardware holding the crown jewels of the enterprise. No data, no company. If the company is doing well and growing, spending another $25-50k to keep the gravy train on the tracks is a no brainer...but hey, I didn't go to business school.

 

[ciggwin]

In our current FAS2240-2 we have 12x900 10k SAS disks. Are these standard, or are these "low-to-mid grade"?

I would love to get a good deal on a NetApp before the end of their fiscal year but I don't think this is enough time especially since I am not the one who signs off on it.

 

[G4VEL]

Those are the finest 10k SAS drives money can buy. They are mid-range in performance given the existence of SSDs, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more durable performant 10k RPM drive.

Anyway, the FAS2240 can support 24 drives internal without adding external shelves. All you need is to buy the 12 loose drives and install them, along with the other controller, to gain high availability storage and double your existing capacity. For expansion you can add up to 5 additional 24 drive shelves.

Full disclosure time, I work for a NetApp reseller.

 

[kdh]

that ax4 is definitely long in the tooth..

look into either a emc vnx5300.. I replaced an ax4 about a 18months ago with a 5300. I set it up, setup my diskgroups, provisioned my space, and then walked away.. think I had one drive swapped on it from that point. If you plan to do VDI with it, you can dedicate an SSD storage pool to mitigate your boot storms.

jbods in the production environment a chumpy.. good luck supporting them. more so in vdi.