Possible SMB iSCSI SAN hardware solution

[DavidB403]

We are looking at the UltraStor RS8 IP-4 by Enhance Technology. Please take a look.

http://www.enhance-tech.com/products/ultrastor/RS8_ip-4.html

My main question for this discussion is… Why are these not everywhere? They seem like the perfect ticket with a price tag under $5000 CAD. Quad 1Gb ports, management port, redundant PS, Snapshots, RAID 5 or 6 with Hot spares. It uses common HDDs and they can even do SAS drives if needed. VMWare has Certified the RS16 IP-4 for 3.5 too, so I assume the 8 bay should work just find in vSphere 4. Am I missing something? They even have a ‘how-to’ for connecting the SAN to ESX hosts. Check out the attached pdf.

Seems too good to be true. Do any of you know something I don’t know? What am I overlooking? These aren't talked about anywhere.

Alternatively, we will look at a MD3000i from Dell for double the price at least.

FYI, we are initially going to have 2 ESX host servers connected to it to acheive VM-HA with the Essential Plus vSphere 4 licensing.

I welcome all of your comments.

[jasonlitka]

My thoughts on this vs. the MD3000i.

1. 8 disks in 2U doesn't look too good when you can get (15) or (16) 3.5" in 3U or (24) 2.5" disks in 2U.

2. A single RAID controller vs dual is a point of failure.

3. Doesn't say SAS anywhere in the specs, just SATA, so that's questionable

4. Only says 2 Gig-E ports on the specs, rather than 4 as in the description, so that's questionable as well.

5. Support contract?

I'm willing to bet that #'s 3 & 4 are just typos from when they updated the product, but #'s 1, 2, and 5 are deal breakers for me. I need to cram in as many spindles per RU as I can, multiple RAID controllers means higher availability, and when it does break, I need need someone here immediately with spare parts (or a complete replacement unit if necessary), not some random guy on the phone from India.

Jason Litka

[DavidB403]

I had followed up with them to answer some questions only.

They say it can be configured to run SAS drives if desired.

There are x2 dual port GbE cards - 4 ports total.

Service contract is 3 years hardware, first year loaner if needed and the sales rep mentioned something about the unit shipping with a cold spare HDD and Power Supply in 'spares box'.

Tech support

Monday ~ Friday Pacific Standard Time8:30am to 12:00pm1:00pm to 5:30pm ... That's a lot of off hours. Only one RAID controller, that must be the catch. Upgradeable firmware in flash ROM

MD3000i HA model looks like the ticket to achive a better level of redundancy. Backup controller and PS. 24/7 Support, Dell techs availalbe to come on-site if needed.

[AndreTheGiant]

They say it can be configured to run SAS drives if desired.

As a DAS system? In this can you have to compare the price to MD3000 and not MD3000i.

There are x2 dual port GbE cards - 4 ports total.

Also MD3000i

... That's a lot of off hours.

Not good.

From this two product I know only MD3000i and I can say that could be a good choice: you can use 15k disks for good performance or SATA for a lot of space, it can be expanded with MD1000 module, multipath works fine and is simple to set-up, Jumbo Frame are supported (must be enabled also on storage side).

Andre

[jasonlitka]

From this two product I know only MD3000i and I can say that could be a good choice: you can use 15k disks for good performance or SATA for a lot of space, it can be expanded with MD1000 module, multipath works fine and is simple to set-up, Jumbo Frame are supported (must be enabled also on storage side).

Andre

That's a setup like I use. MD3000i with (15) 300GB 15K SAS in RAID 10 (1 hot spare, 1 cold spare) and a MD1000 with (15) 1TB 7.2K Near-Line SAS in RAID 6 (two hot spares, one cold spare).

Jason Litka

http://www.jasonlitka.com

[DavidB403]

Thanks for the insight.

As it looks now, I'll be going for a MD3000i with six 1TB NLSAS drives + one hot spare, RAID 10 and redundant PS and Controller.

Our storage size requirements are quite low right now, but this setup can scale up easily, and as mentioned, I can always add a MD1000 once I fill the entire array.

Good stuff.

[jasonlitka]

Thanks for the insight.

As it looks now, I'll be going for a MD3000i with six 1TB NLSAS drives + one hot spare, RAID 10 and redundant PS and Controller.

Our storage size requirements are quite low right now, but this setup can scale up easily, and as mentioned, I can always add a MD1000 once I fill the entire array.

Good stuff.

You can actually add (2) MD1000 racks.

Jason Litka

http://www.jasonlitka.com

[golddiggie]

What kind of IOPs are you getting under that configuration? I'm curious since I'll be looking for an iSCSI storage solution soon (purchasing within a few months I hope). If you select to only have the MD3000i populated with a few drives, does it come ready for you to install more at will? I'm thinking of getting it with the minimum drives so that I can purchase the other drives through vendors where I get better pricing. I'm looking at SAS drives for it, not going to use SATA since I want something I can both depend upon, and not worry about any potential issues with SATA drives. Plus, most of the SAS drives I've seen have higher MTBF numbers when compared to SATA drives. Since this will be running 24x7, that's rather important.

VCP4

[Chris0937]

Hi,

Our product is Enhance-tech RS16-IP4, we are not selling Dell MD3000i.

The RS16-IP4 can reach up to 380MB/sec by MPIO feature implemented.

The RS16-IP4 support SAS drives and even you can mix them (SAS, SATA MIX).

You also can extend your existing RAID by adding new drives later or mix the

RAID levels.

Please feel free to ask questions,

Regards,

Chris Wu

VCP4 Engineer | Enhance Technology, Inc.

Website: http://www.enhance-tech.com

Email: [e-mail]

Skype: support.enhance

World Headquarter: USA

Branch: Taiwan | Germany | China

[slickshoes]

I STRONGLY recommend not going with anything by Enhance Tech. We thought the same as you and had a massive failure off hours. Even on hours their support is attrocious. Both Dell and VMware pointed their fingers at Enhance Tech and Enhance Tech support was were absolutely useless. Their support is a joke and their customer service even worse. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. Perhaps for a lab environment you don't care about, but I would NEVER put something by them in production or recommend any of you do.

This is the post explaining my issues with the "SAN". I lost 9 Windows VM's at the same time..

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/225759?tstart=0

[J1mbo]

Write performance of the "entry level" systems can also be pretty poor from the metrics that I've seen. I'd also like to understand how iSCSI devices without BBWC in them perform with ESX(i).

[Chris0937]

Hi,

If you face this the OS corrupted, you might want to take a look the following link.

http://www.virtualizationteam.com/virtualization-vmware/vmware-vi3-virtualization-vmware/vmware-esx-how-to-recover-your-vmfs-partition-table.html

It will teach you how to recover the vmfs partition table.

By the way, did you use LACP for 4 links?

Also, you might want to call Enhance Tech for the latest firmware with RS8-IP4.

Thank you,

[Chris0937]

Hi

This is Chris from Enhance-tech,

Please email to us: [e-mail]

or call us 1(562)7773488#2 ,

Thank you,

Chris

VCP4 Engineer | Enhance Technology, Inc.

Website: http://www.enhance-tech.com

Email: [e-mail]

Skype: support.enhance

World Headquarter: USA

Branch: Taiwan | Germany | China