Servers - HP vs Dell?
Posted by: Paul Hutchings on 14 November 2004
I'm struggling to find any forums that cover servers and storage and that sort of thing.
Long story short we have to change a bunch of kit at work including our main filserver.
Ideally we'd like a SAN solution but they cost a small fortune.
Assuming a SAN is out of the question, we're looking at direct-attached, and Dell (who we usually buy servers from) don't appear to offer much beyond external SCSI enclosures which offer about 2TB per cabinet, which I think we'll exceed.
This got me looking and I've seen HP do several SCSI attached, SATA disk storage arrays.
I've not used HP kit before, wondered if any IT types here have any thoughts on the general HP vs Dell issue?
cheers,
Paul
Long story short we have to change a bunch of kit at work including our main filserver.
Ideally we'd like a SAN solution but they cost a small fortune.
Assuming a SAN is out of the question, we're looking at direct-attached, and Dell (who we usually buy servers from) don't appear to offer much beyond external SCSI enclosures which offer about 2TB per cabinet, which I think we'll exceed.
This got me looking and I've seen HP do several SCSI attached, SATA disk storage arrays.
I've not used HP kit before, wondered if any IT types here have any thoughts on the general HP vs Dell issue?
cheers,
Paul
Posted on: 14 November 2004 by Misguided Fool
quote:
Originally posted by Paul Hutchings:
I'm struggling to find any forums that cover servers and storage and that sort of thing.
Long story short we have to change a bunch of kit at work including our main filserver.
Ideally we'd like a SAN solution but they cost a small fortune.
Assuming a SAN is out of the question, Dell (who we usually buy servers from) we're looking at direct-attached, and Dell don't appear to offer much beyond external SCSI enclosures which offer about 2TB per cabinet, which I think we'll exceed.
This got me looking and I've seen HP do several SCSI attached, SATA storage arrays.
I've not used HP kit before, wondered if any IT types here have any thoughts on the general HP vs Dell issue?
cheers,
Paul
Paul,
I work for a company who's main business is SAN and storage. You may be surprised at how reasonable a cost some SAN solutions can come in at. And now with the advent of iSCSI the cost can be reduced dramatically. We are manufacturer independent, but deal with both HP and DELL, along with a number of other manufacturers, so can give you impartial advice as to what would be best for your solution.
Email me on marks@xenon-uk.co.uk or PM me if you want any more information or help. I can then give you some advice or put you in touch with one of our sales people (I'm a storage design and implementation techy myself), and we can come and talk to you about your needs and hopefully come up with a solution.
Hope to speak to you soon.
Regards
Mark
Posted on: 14 November 2004 by Phil Barry
Also, SATA is fast in desktops, with one user accessing the HDDs, even if user is multi-tasking, but SCSI is faster when there are multiple users accessing the HDDs.
Regards.
Phil
Regards.
Phil
Posted on: 14 November 2004 by Top Cat
I run a Dell Poweredge 1750 (I think) 1U dual 3GHz Xeon with 15Krpm U320 SCSI drives (RAID mirroring) and a few Gb of RAM. It's a fine machine. Cheaper than the offerings from Compaq, and available on lease terms over two or three years. It arrived when it was meant to and it has been faultless since (five months). It runs hot so needs lots of fans (the figure 16 springs to mind) so really ought to be in a dedicated server facility if you have access to one.
Nothing more to add - a fine machine at non ridiculous prices.
John
Nothing more to add - a fine machine at non ridiculous prices.
John
Posted on: 15 November 2004 by Steve G
I'm running a couple of Dell servers including a pretty much maxed out Poweredge 1600. They've been good machines but customers of ours looking for a larger box to run Linux on where put off Dell in the end due to the same issues you've mentioned.
Above a certain point it actually worked out cheaper to go with Sun due to the costs of a SAN etc. for the top end Dell boxes.
Above a certain point it actually worked out cheaper to go with Sun due to the costs of a SAN etc. for the top end Dell boxes.
Posted on: 15 November 2004 by jlfrs
Mmmm, HPQ vs Dell. IMO Dell have the edge in terms of price but not in terms of service.
Seems to me though your main criteria is for storage so perhaps the server choice is not that important?
You mention SAN - why are you considering this?
SAN can be expensive because of the cost of connectivity but there are distinct advantages but it would be interesting to know why you're looking at it.
Another technology you could look at is a NAS box, perhaps using TOE's,(TCP Offload Engines), which act as "accelerators".
Cheers,
jon
Seems to me though your main criteria is for storage so perhaps the server choice is not that important?
You mention SAN - why are you considering this?
SAN can be expensive because of the cost of connectivity but there are distinct advantages but it would be interesting to know why you're looking at it.
Another technology you could look at is a NAS box, perhaps using TOE's,(TCP Offload Engines), which act as "accelerators".
Cheers,
jon
Posted on: 15 November 2004 by Paul Hutchings
Jon,
Basically we have quite a lot (20 something)of physical servers, some of which are, despite being only two or three years old, a throwback to the days of the "departmental server". Some are purely fileservers, some run licence managers and daemons for some fairly specialist software.
As and when these servers get replaced it's proving hard to work out what's sensible in terms of disk capacity, and short of external enclosures most racks are limited in how many drives they will hold etc..
A SAN was considered because of that, and also because one of the problems we are finding is that disk space is spread across lots of boxes and we often have no storage on one fileserver whilst another has tens of gigs free.
We thought a SAN might be a way of having all the storage on a SAN backend, and the server frontend could be a fairly basic box with the OS and a SAN card and not much else, we thought this would make for easier storage management/allocation and we also thought it would simplify backups, though this appears not to be the case as in reality each server can only see the LUNs allocated to it.
A NAS box is what we currently have, runs Windows 2000 storage server and has an external SCSI enclosure with around 700gb of usable drive space. I'm not averse to NAS devices, but we do need "proper" NTFS and "proper" Adtive Directory permissions which pretty much means Microsoft, and as we have the Server 2003 CALs already, it seems we can just go for regular Windows 2003 server.
Having thought about it and looked at the costs involved, I think what we really need is a shitload of storage in a main fileserver, but something that can "grow" rather than simply chucking it away and buying something bigger, and Dell don't appear to cover that middle ground, it's 2Tb SCSI box to SAN with little inbetween.
I've seen a "HP Modular Storage Array 20 Starter Kit" which is around two grand (with no drives) and is a SATA disk, SCSI attached enclosure, it also appears that it can be tagged onto a HP SAN controller if we do ever need that sort of thing.
In performance terms, goodness knows how you're supposed to measure these things, but we need lots of space because nobody ever seems to delete anything (another issue but don't get me started on that!!), rather than because huge files are always being shunted across the place.
cheers,
Paul
[This message was edited by Paul Hutchings on Mon 15 November 2004 at 18:57.]
Basically we have quite a lot (20 something)of physical servers, some of which are, despite being only two or three years old, a throwback to the days of the "departmental server". Some are purely fileservers, some run licence managers and daemons for some fairly specialist software.
As and when these servers get replaced it's proving hard to work out what's sensible in terms of disk capacity, and short of external enclosures most racks are limited in how many drives they will hold etc..
A SAN was considered because of that, and also because one of the problems we are finding is that disk space is spread across lots of boxes and we often have no storage on one fileserver whilst another has tens of gigs free.
We thought a SAN might be a way of having all the storage on a SAN backend, and the server frontend could be a fairly basic box with the OS and a SAN card and not much else, we thought this would make for easier storage management/allocation and we also thought it would simplify backups, though this appears not to be the case as in reality each server can only see the LUNs allocated to it.
A NAS box is what we currently have, runs Windows 2000 storage server and has an external SCSI enclosure with around 700gb of usable drive space. I'm not averse to NAS devices, but we do need "proper" NTFS and "proper" Adtive Directory permissions which pretty much means Microsoft, and as we have the Server 2003 CALs already, it seems we can just go for regular Windows 2003 server.
Having thought about it and looked at the costs involved, I think what we really need is a shitload of storage in a main fileserver, but something that can "grow" rather than simply chucking it away and buying something bigger, and Dell don't appear to cover that middle ground, it's 2Tb SCSI box to SAN with little inbetween.
I've seen a "HP Modular Storage Array 20 Starter Kit" which is around two grand (with no drives) and is a SATA disk, SCSI attached enclosure, it also appears that it can be tagged onto a HP SAN controller if we do ever need that sort of thing.
In performance terms, goodness knows how you're supposed to measure these things, but we need lots of space because nobody ever seems to delete anything (another issue but don't get me started on that!!), rather than because huge files are always being shunted across the place.
cheers,
Paul
[This message was edited by Paul Hutchings on Mon 15 November 2004 at 18:57.]
Posted on: 16 November 2004 by jlfrs
Paul - interesting feedback and it seems that you have the same dilemma as many other companies now struggling to cope with,(and manage), the amount of data generated in organisations, particularly now that EMail is a valid business medium.
SAN has become a "hot topic" because of two reasons really: it's the latest and greatest and also some server vendors only offer SAN as their de facto standard anyway.
As you say, you can but the disk array itself for SAN capability relatively cheaply,(mainly because disk drives are so cheap now). The connectivity though is another matter. Each p.c or server connected will need a SAN HBA,(host bus adapter). My guess is you have PCI expansion slots and if running something like Windows then the cheapest HBA out there is likely to cost you at least £450 + VAT. If you take an HP one you can at least triple that.
You'll need the SAN controller and I reckon that's in the region of £2000+ for a 3rd party product. God only knows what HP will charge for it but it won't be cheap!
What you'll have though is a lump of storage running at superbly fast speeds which is easy to manage and can be guarded. To do this last thing, you can bring in a Switch to add redundancy but this is another pricey option at a minimum £2000. Then there's the cabling. YOu can have copper but most people use Fibre because of the distance advantages.
One of the earlier contributers said rather helpfully he could assist with putting together something for you. It could be worth looking at a 3rd party solution but whatever is recommended, it is unlikely you'll be able to get past the cost of bringing your servers into a SAN.
Here's a curved ball to throw: what about some form of document management system?
It could be a way to migrate any data over, say, 3 months old onto optical disk or tape,(still online or accessable)which would free up your disk space. A lot of companies are now looking at these anyway because of the legislation coming in dictating the preservation and integrity of company data for a (given) period of time.
It might be something worth looking at and most vendors have offerings galore. You could also look at Kodak and Plasmon to name but two....
SAN has become a "hot topic" because of two reasons really: it's the latest and greatest and also some server vendors only offer SAN as their de facto standard anyway.
As you say, you can but the disk array itself for SAN capability relatively cheaply,(mainly because disk drives are so cheap now). The connectivity though is another matter. Each p.c or server connected will need a SAN HBA,(host bus adapter). My guess is you have PCI expansion slots and if running something like Windows then the cheapest HBA out there is likely to cost you at least £450 + VAT. If you take an HP one you can at least triple that.
You'll need the SAN controller and I reckon that's in the region of £2000+ for a 3rd party product. God only knows what HP will charge for it but it won't be cheap!
What you'll have though is a lump of storage running at superbly fast speeds which is easy to manage and can be guarded. To do this last thing, you can bring in a Switch to add redundancy but this is another pricey option at a minimum £2000. Then there's the cabling. YOu can have copper but most people use Fibre because of the distance advantages.
One of the earlier contributers said rather helpfully he could assist with putting together something for you. It could be worth looking at a 3rd party solution but whatever is recommended, it is unlikely you'll be able to get past the cost of bringing your servers into a SAN.
Here's a curved ball to throw: what about some form of document management system?
It could be a way to migrate any data over, say, 3 months old onto optical disk or tape,(still online or accessable)which would free up your disk space. A lot of companies are now looking at these anyway because of the legislation coming in dictating the preservation and integrity of company data for a (given) period of time.
It might be something worth looking at and most vendors have offerings galore. You could also look at Kodak and Plasmon to name but two....
Posted on: 16 November 2004 by Paul Hutchings
quote:
Originally posted by jlfrs:
Paul - interesting feedback and it seems that you have the same dilemma as many other companies now struggling to cope with,(and manage), the amount of data generated in organisations, particularly now that EMail is a valid business medium.
Actually email is fairly manageable as I can simply set mailbox limits if people (approx 600) start taking the piss - one or two do but so long as the "big picture" is OK it's not a problem.
quote:
You'll need the SAN controller and I reckon that's in the region of £2000+ for a 3rd party product. God only knows what HP will charge for it but it won't be cheap!
The HP one is, at a glance, and based on USA pricing around £5000 (MSA1500).
I was discussing it with my boss today, we both seem to be of the opinion that the HP MSA20 solution looks good as it's well priced (a 3Tb array would cost around £6k with 24x7x4 maintenence for everything except the server), appears more than suitable for the task at hand, plus we have the option to go the SAN route if we need to, though as we lease kit for three years the odds are this won't actually happen, but at least we wouldn't have to start from scratch which appears to be the Dell route from DAS to SAN.
Put it this way, if Dell made it we probably wouldn't be spending time looking elsewhere.
Personally what I'd like is a cheap way on Windows Server 2003 to be able to quota properly, i.e "this is the Sales Departments shared folder, I don't care who each file belongs to but don't let it grow above Xgb"
The inbuilt quota management is frankly crap - haven't yet found anything to do that that doesn't cost outrageous amounts of money!
cheers,
Paul