SAN/NAS for virtualization - Hardware vs. Software?

[hutchingsp]

Wondered where you stand on SAN/NAS on whether you prefer hardware over software.

Let's say you need a 5TB NAS/SAN.

You can go out and you can buy any number of hardware units that range from a $1000 Synology/ReadyNAS up to $50k worth of 3PAR and so on.

Or you can take the view that a SAN/NAS runs software, so why not run that software on a commodity servers?
Servers are cheap, servers are redundant, and generally you'll be able to buy a server with redundancy equivalent to what a cheap SAN/NAS will provide, and run high end SAN/NAS software on it for way less than you'd spend on a high end hardware SAN, IYSWIM.

You can also do things like SSD caching on the RAID controllers quite cheaply vs. the sort of cost (hardware and software) that the big players will charge for that sort of thing, though it's not as granular of course.

I'm not talking about whiteboxing and running "Some Linux + NFS" - I'm on about storage software with end to end enterprise grade support.

You can probably tell which side of the fence I sit on here - I can't help but think that storage as software is on the rise and it makes more sense to spend $10k on software that can be replaced if needs change vs. $100k on hardware that does the same thing but you've got it for 5 years come what may...

It's a given that it's not for everyone there will always be situations where hardware is best either for performance or those last few 9's of availability.

Which side do you sit on?

 

[patrickdk]

I'm not sure you are even comparing the same things.

A synology/readynas I would compare to whiteboxing it with linux.

But you sound like you want to compare on the higher level.

Like comparing an EMC/Netapp/3par to software solutions like them.

Normally the differences is on who you blame/pay.
Do you want to outsource your san department to emc/netapp/hp to manage and handle all your issues, and they even send people to you to do disk swaps and all other required mantance.

Or do you want to handle this with your own payed staff, and then if something fails, you will have to deal with it yourself.

All storage units I have seen for awhile now, have all been software. The larger players are all using normal whitebox servers for most of their stuff lately. The violin is the only thing I have seen lately that isn't generic, and is has hardware parts that do something that a normal whitebox doesn't.

 

[DigitalDaz]

For me its build it yourself all the way.

The options to do it too are many depending on your requirements and how available it needs to be.

Personally, I'm liking ZFS lots and if a single box is enough with near time replication then you can build a box using Openindiana+Napp-It quite easily.

No need for expensive RAID controllers just chuck in a cheap LSI HBA or two and a couple of decent SSD for cache and ZIL along with a few spinners, half decent CPU, ECC RAM and you should have all you need.

 

[brutalizer]

But EMC/NetApp/Oracle already do this. They use cheap servers and run their special software ontop.
See here
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/22/vmworld_hol_sakac/
"But, the fact that we use all "off the shelf" component parts mean that all three of us (EMC, NetApp, Nexenta – heck everyone) are driven by the same market forces (both on the cost side and customer budget side)."

Nexenta is a OpenSolaris running ZFS distro:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/20/nexenta_vmworld_2011/

Also, there are several other storage vendors doing the same. For instance Tegile who have rewritten ZFS dedup and got really good performance from dedup:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/01/tegile_zebi/

So, the old dinosaurs suffer:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/04/netapp_vulnerable/

So, basically, these Enterprise servers is just using normal server hardware and run their special software ontop. So, get yourself server hardware, and run Solaris + ZFS ontop with ZIL and L2ARC and SAS disks with loads of RAM and UPS, and you are almost there. Not quite, but almost. Normal Solaris does not have all the fancy software, but it has some parts.