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External Storage Array Recommendations

A

aug1516

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 25, 2000
Messages
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I need to find a high performance, external, raid capable storage array, that utilizes either Fiber, SCSI, or SAS 15k drives. This storage array will only be connected to one server and any HBA card required can be purchased. The array needs only to be capable of a maximum size of 2TB or so. Performance is probably one of the most important aspects we will be considering. To give you some idea of what I am looking for:

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/...ster/index.html
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/...1000/index.html
http://www.infortrend.com/main/2_product/u12u-g4020.asp
http://www.infortrend.com/main/2_product/u16u-g4020.asp

Price needs to be sub $25k with drives, hopefully less than that. Does anyone have any recommendations for our needs? I am really trying to figure out if Fiber Channel will give us any kind of performance benefit in this specific scenario. We will not have multiple servers connected to it, we do not need long distance runs, and the 15 drive limit of each SCSI channel would not be a problem. With those Fiber channel benefits gone would there really be any kind of performance difference? One more question, does anyone think we would get better performance if we went with a standard external multi-drive drive enclosure and used a high-end raid card in the host to control the arrays instead?
 
I would personally go with a good quality multi drive enclosure. Probably an U320 capable 14 drive rackmount and use a decent U320 RAID controller. That way you get the fault tolerance of a drive failure and usually a power supply failure as well as most good quality external array cages have the ability for dual power supplies.

You should be able to get a cage like that for under 4K and load it up with 14 146GB drives and add a good quailty RAID controller and still be close to 10K on cost.
 
That's what I am looking at right now only we may go with a drive enclosure that has the controller built in rather than using a SCSI raid card in the actual server. My main concern was if there is a performance benefit to be found by going with Fiber Channel in this specific scenario.
 
From what I have seen there is not much of a performance gain if any going with FCAL drives versus SCA drives. At the hospital I worked at I managed 2 EMC SAN's one used FCAL drives the other SCA. Both seemed to give around the same performance levels although both were much higher end solutions and both connected to the servers via fibre HBA's through brocade silkworm switches. I guess it could be that since both were essentially connecting via the same type interface to the servers that might have been a performance limit. I do know that one time when we have 30 free slots I created a RAID 0 array on the SAN and setup a server to boot directly from it - I loaded Win 2003 on the server for giggles. That is the fastest running windows box I have seen yet. The server was a Proliant DL380G3 with dual xeon 3.2's and 8gb of ram. I guess 30 15K U320 drives reading and writing simultaneously through a 512mb caching controller over a fibre optic cable had something to do with it though. :p Those infortrend units you linked look perfect for the job although I have no clue as the price of those. I was thinking on the lines of just a high end U320 cage plus a good high end $500 to $1000 RAID controller and 14 146GB drives.
 
I would highly recomend you stay away from infrotrend. I work in the industry and they are piss poor in many area's though there performance is decent. Firmware design, host connectivity and support are all shitty.


I would recomend a nStor 4900 system. Its fibre to fibre and has excellent track record of reliability.

http://www.nstor.com/default.asp?bdy=/product/fibre/4900_ov.asp
 
Thanks for the info everyone, very helpful. I will certainly look at the nStor boxes, they look nice so far. One of our vendors is recommending an IBM DS4300 or something like that but I just don't see how Fiber channel would possibly be useful for this situation considering it will just be das to one server.
 
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