SAN Update 2

Last Thursday was a busy and very productive day. I spent about 2 hours with Rick Bruder and Keith Kincer of EqualLogic, in the morning. We discussed our current and future needs, their technology, other technology and did some whiteboarding. They brought a PS100E and did a demo from power up to managing the unit. I must say that I am really impressed with the PS100E hardware and the ease of use, of the software. I came away mostly impressed by the overall package.

I spent about an hour on the phone with Mike Hanes and Bill Horton of Alacritech. Alacritech specializes in TCP Offload Engine (TOE) NIC and iSCSI adapters. It was made clear to me that, this is not an iSCSI HBA, which presents itself as an SCSI adapter to the system. These are pure TOE NICS and they say that they get much better performance than most internal NICs or HBAs. I am really looking at them because of their combination of performance and the ability to boot from their card. I would like most of my new servers to be diskless, so booting from the SAN is a must. The only downside is that there boot is PXE enabled and would require a PXE boot server, and that is another moving part that can fail. They've offered a 30 day live trial of one of their adapters, so when I get the SAN running, I'll take them up on the offer.

I also had a conference call with PC Mall and Left Hand. I had a few questions about their bid of two or three NSM160s. The three NSM160 solution was over budget and lacks a 3 year warranty, so it will not work. I had a concern about the two NSM160 solution only having 8 SATA spindles in the SAN and the quote wasn't clear on the warranty options. I found out during our conversation, the quoted SAN did not come with the a 3 year warranty but a 1 year warranty. I've done the math and adding the warranty will put the project over budget. Tony Lagera of Left Hand tried to address my performance question but I am sold not on 8 SATA spindles. Tony will be in Houston Wednesday, March 21 and will meet with me to discuss my concerns.

A note to SAN buyers, do your homework. I know that is one of those "Duh!" statements but be thorough in your research, before budgeting. When I budgeted this project a few months ago, I looked at iSCSI solutions, but I never fully grasped the available technologies. I was really set on an "old school" EMC, HP or IBM iSCSI solution. I've seen the Left Hand and EqualLogic solutions and either one, with their faults, is still light years ahead of, most of, the competition. This includes Fibre Channel.

Comments

[Jason Powell]

We opted to go without TOE cards and just use regular NICs to see if we really needed TOE/HBA cards.

Many months later we still see NO need for anything other than dual NICs plugged into the SAN network ... and we're running all servers in VM's on the SAN. We are not booting from SAN because I still can't see a really need to do so given the additional complexity it brings.

I'd say save your $ and try it without TOE cards :-)

[Beats by dr dre headphones]

Why would it take FOUR hours on the phone with Microsoft. Why does it always take so long???