Really Confused Newbie Question

[jmd0252]

OK Boys and Girls,,, My company is going from an AS400, to 2 HP Dual Core AMD servers, using a 1T SAN. We will be using VMWare to virtualize the servers, and using MS SQL, across a WAN. This is our ERP software we are changing. So the other IT people and myself want to do this correctly, the first time. HP has priced the SAN, and now EMC wants to price the SAN. From what we know, Fiber Channel is more robust than Iscsi. But performance wise,, what would be a good choice. We have had the hardware priced by several different vendors,,and sometime there is a big price difference in the disk drive prices. That makes us wonder just what they are configuring. In the SAN world, who are the winners, and who are the loosers??

 

[Chacalinc]

the 3 big players:

* EMC
* Hitachi Data System (HDS)
* HP (with EVA and HDS's OEM)

I have worked with EMC and HDS, both are the best.

Chacal, Inc.

 

[comtec17]

A SAN is the connectivity between the host and target, thus Storage Area Network. The arrays connected to the Storage Area Network provides the disk.

Chacal hit it on the head with the 3 big players. Both EMC and HDS are very, very, good with HP far behind.

There are also some smaller players such as IBM or LSI/Engenio.

 

[p5wizard]

If there's only going to be 2 servers, I don't really see the need for SAN hardware in the middle.

Can't you just hook up both servers point-to-point to the storage server: 4 FC ports in the storage server, 2 FC ports in both servers? Unless of course there will be a need to expand to more servers in the future.

HTH,

p5wizard

 

[comtec17]

yes, but then you are not very scalable at that point. When connecting "point-to-point" you also introduce FCAL or Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop on the EMC side and straight Fibre Channel Point to Point with the Hitachi.

 

[Chacalinc]

Actually, there is no problem using FC-AL on both HDS and EMC (nothing to do inside them), the problem -as comptec pointed out- is the scalability, you will not have more ports in order to connect new servers. Now, there are very good starting packages (with very good prices) in the market where it includes 1 or 2 switches and some HBAs, as Qlogic and Emulex, with FC cables and everything that you need to *create* your 1st SAN.

Cheers.

Chacal, Inc.

 

[jmd0252]

Thanks for the response everyone. We priced HP and IBM, big difference in drive prices between those two, in the beginning, EMC has jumped in at the last minute, so we will see how their price compares.

 

[comtec17]

You should never go about purchasing a solution based soley on price. Compare features, the architecture of the array, scalable options, expandable options, speeds and feeds, etc..

 

[jmd0252]

Well the EMC low end Clarion was only 2,000.00 more than the HP solution,, and their managemnt piece looks better,, so I do believe we have a wiener..

 

[Chacalinc]

hmmm... EMC is an excellent choice. congratulations.

Chacal, Inc.

 

[comtec17]

The Clariion was definitly a good choice. You will like Navisphere Manager, and when they give you access to the powerlink website, you can actually download a Navispher simulator to help you practice your skills...