On Thu, 3 Jun 2010, Jefferson Cowart wrote: > We are currently looking at SAN/NAS options from Compellent, EMC (NS > Line), and NetApp (FAS3000 series). We'll be looking at a good size > chunk of CIFS/NFS file shares along with block level for VMware, > Exchange, SQL, Oracle, etc. I was hoping some of you have some > experience with one or more of these and would be willing to share your > thoughts.
Great question. The first thing I'm going to ask is whether you've considered at least VMWare and Oracle on NFS instead of block? Depending on your requirements, and which vendor you end up going with, you may be not only surprised how well it works, but very happy that you made the decision. Personally, I'm a big fan of NFS for VMWare and Oracle, especially if you have a good network infrastructure (10g helps) and if you go with a NetApp. While I'm a huge fan of Compellent for SAN (really, really cool product), you should be careful how much CIFS/NFS you plan to do with it. They're *just* introducing their integrated NAS offering, and it's based on ZFS. I wouldn't put ZFS in an enterprise datacenter yet -- I don't trust it enough, and I've heard one too many stories about unrecoverable filesystem errors (anecdotal, admittedly, and I'm still trying to get more details before I make any decisions). This isn't to say you couldn't put a gateway in front of the Compellent for NAS, but before you do that you should identify how much NAS vs. how much block you really need. Also, if you go with Exchange 2010, it's a game-changer for storage, since they've changed the I/O profile significantly from earlier versions, so it doesn't require nearly the horsepower it used to, but it does require a lot of space. There's no question in my mind that NetApp's NAS is about the best in the industry, but "best" is relative to what your needs are. It's expensive, but for random access primary storage and data protection for file service, Oracle and VMWare over NFS, I wouldn't choose anyone else. The Celerra (NS) products have always played second fiddle. However, that assumes that your primary use-case is NAS. NetApp does block storage, but it's, well, odd. The LUN is a container file inside of WAFL. You get most of the advanced functionality, but it's a bit clunkier to deal with things like dedupe, snapshots, etc. It's also a lot more expensive -- not only is NetApp charging a premium already, but you've got the WAFL filesystem taking up space, then a LUN container over it, and then the filesystem that the LUN is formatted in. It's a lot of overhead before you get to usable space. The EMC all-in-one is probably a better choice if you're looking for more block and a little NAS, since it's just a Clariion block storage device first and then it'll lay out the Celerra NAS stuff on top of the Clariion LUNs. If you insist (heh -- loaded word there) on sticking with block for VMWare, Oracle and even Exchange, then you may be happier with the all-in-one. Of course, if you could possibly swing a Compellent with a NetApp head for a NAS gateway, you'd get the best of all worlds. :) Feel free to ask any followups. My company has both a FAS 3000-series and a Compellent in our lab, and we used to have a Celerra. We do have an EMC all-in-one in the production datacenter, but it's not being used much right now and I haven't played with it hands-on. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll point out that I also used to work for NetApp, but only for a year. :) -Adam _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
