matthew patton wrote:
It might help people to understand how ridiculous they
sound going on and on
about buying a premium storage appliance without any
storage.
Since I started this, let me explain to those who can't begin to understand why I proposed
something so "stupid". At work (branch of a federal gov't big-5 Department) I need 40TB
but have next to nothing in budget. (For some reason all you damn citizens think you're entitled to
keep most of your paychecks to yourself instead living off what I decide to give you in foodstamps
and rent-controled housing.) Therefore, I can't afford let alone justify the preposterous premium
demanded by "enterprise" EMC/Sun/IBM/NetApp. I can really use dedup, (integrity would be
nice), and reasonable rack and power footprint since I'm out of that too.
Frankly, that's your budget problem, and has nothing to do with
Sun/IBM/HP/etc. Management needs to understand the actual cost (as
decided by the open market) for a given service. They should be told NO
if they demand something unreasonable, and educated as to the current
market price tradeoffs of different solutions.
I can't exactly march into my boss' office and propose that we build my own
at-home special which is 16 WD RE2/3 drives $(60) in a $70 case, $100 power
supply, four 4-in-3 modules ($30) and a Chenbro SAS expander ($250) now can I...
Aside: I find it laughable for anyone to claim a J4500 is "premium" anything.
IBM DS800, EMC Symetrix, NetApp FAS5xxx, sure. But a glorified JBOD enclosure? Put down
the damn cool-aid!
Premium has nothing to do with absolute cost or size. It's about a
superior product, at whatever price point is being discussed.
The cheapest solution out there that isn't a Supermicro-like server chassis, is DAS
in the form of HP or Dell MD-series which top out at 15 or 16 3" drives. I can
only chain 3 units per SAS port off a HBA in either case.
Enter the J4500, 48 drives in 4U, what looks to be solid engineering, and redundancy in
all the right places. An empty chassis at $3000 is totally justifiable. Maybe as high as
$4000. In comparison a naked Dell MD1000 is $2000. If you do the subtraction from SUN's
claimed "breakthru" pricing of $1/GB, the chassis cost works out to $4000. I
can live with that.
You just fell into the trap of component pricing. You're buying a
package, not parts. You can't just disassemble the package and declare
"that part costs X". Solutions are more than the sum of their mechanical
parts.
Now look up the price for 24TB and it's 28 freaking thousand! I can buy 24TB
worth of good SATA drives for $5000 all day long and twice on Sunday.
(http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1531954)
I can buy Dell trays from DELL themselves let alone a bevy of 3rd parties for
as low as $12 each. SUN's are like $25 on the aftermarket and much harder to
come by.
So, does my question make sense now? My only play is Dell at this time. I was TRYING to
see if the SUN route could be made possible since it would be the better solution. But I
guess I'm not "enterprisy" enough, ie with so much more money than brains for
the likes of SUN to give 2 (@Rts. Dell and HP *WANT* my business by pricing things where
I can reasonably get to them. A fully-qualified 500GB SATA drive from DELL is $300, so a
3x multiplier. Still quite a bit more than I think is warranted, but SUN wants 5x?
Nothing SUN makes is so much better than DELL/HP, indeed they are essentially
indistinguishable that they can get away with pretending to be EMC. Is it any wonder they
failed?
See below. Don't directly compare List price with Actual price.
Spare me the bit about how there is so much expensive and complex engineering
invested in something as stupid straight-forward as the J4500 or in qualifying
drive firmware. I've worked on qualifying SUN, IBM, and other storage products
(firmware, hardware, OS drivers) some of which were of our own designs that the
big names simply slapped their label on. They outsource this stuff to a certain
company just west of Chicago on route 355 (among others). I know what I was
paid. We had 4 guys in that lab and as a overhead/GB we were no bigger a pimple
on a gnat's hind end. There is no mysterious voodoo in storage enclosure design
that requires an army of highly trained PhD's months to figure out
So why are there so many problems with consumer-grade drives in
3rd-party chassis? Obviously, the Name Brand folks are doing some sort
of value-add. You are paying for a service you want: reliability,
consistency, and support. Can you provide the same level of these by
assembling it yourself? Are you sure? If you don't care about these
things, then roll-it-yourself. But make sure Management understands that
they are getting a lower level of quality for their $.
Frankly, I've spent a fair amount of time talking to HUGE storage users
(Google, various US Gov't National Labs), and the only way for
commodity-level assemblies to equal Brand-Names in the above terms is
via /massive/ numbers, and custom-written/configured software.
For instance, my Lab friends have found good cost-savings using consumer
kit when the number of drives is at least a couple thousand. They snort
at roll-your-own jobs for installations of under 1,000 drives.
----------
First off, go talk to your purchasing rep. The 24TB J4500 *LISTS* for
for $28k. I'm sure it's at least 20% less on a GSA schedule. Get an
actual price before worrying about everything else.
Secondly, do the math right. You'd need at least (3) MD1000 to get the
same capacity as a J4500. Plus probably at least one extra SAS
controller that you wouldn't need with the J4500.
I just did a rough estimate, doing an apple-to-apples comparison, and
the Dell MD1000 with 15 500GB drives runs $8k (after warranty and the
correct SAS controllers). The equivalent J4500 runs $30k, list.
So, after GSA discounts, you should be paying $20-24k for the Dells, and
$25k or so for the J4500. Check your ACTUAL GSA pricing.
That all said, they're not el-cheapo. But it's a guarantied solution -
which means that you DON'T have to include your (sysadmin) time costs to
testing/troubleshooting/assembly/whatever. I don't know about your
place, but I'd consider sysadmin time worth a (very bare) minimum of
$100/hr. And, don't think you can't blow a full week of downtime trying
to figure some problem out. How much is downtime worth to you?
-----
Bottom line here: if someone comes along and provides the same level of
service for a better price, the market will flock to them. Or if the
market decides the current level of service is unnecessary, it will move
to vendors providing the sufficient level of service at the new price
point. But for now, there is no indication that the current
pricing/service level models aren't correct. You may /want/ and /think/
that a BMW 528i should cost $30k (I mean, it's not really any different
than an Accord, right?), but the market has said no, it's $45k. Sorry,
the market is correct.
--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop: usca22-123
Phone: x17195
Santa Clara, CA
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