VSAN to SAN, looking for recommendations.

Posted by sysacc@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 22 comments

We finally got our VMware quote for out 6 servers and aprox 150TB of usable storage. Its not as high as expected but still way beyond what we projected. Since we have VSAN we are being quoted VVF and VCF, which is quite pricy. One option we want to explore is going back to a small SAN and go with Vsphere Standard. What would you guys recommend for a SAN these days? Thanks.

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22 Comments

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ArsenalITTwo@reddit

Pure Storage or HPE Alletra (Nimble)

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100lv@reddit

Dell announced a lot of new products after the merge like - PowerStore. HP is the master of rebranding - Alletra 6000 is succeeder of Primera and Primera is succeeder of 3PAR - but at the end - more or less same product with small forklift - newer CPU / more mem.

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ArsenalITTwo@reddit

9000 is Primera. 6000 is still Nimble.

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100lv@reddit

my mistake.

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sysacc@reddit (OP)

Thanks for the recommendations. Servers are currently HPE but are due to be replaced so we may purchase them with the storage and reduce the core count. I dont have those details yet. Just currious to see whats out there.

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cjcox4@reddit

Been awhile, but on the cheap, I used to recommend Nexsan. But it has been a long time, like back in the spinny disk days. IMHO, they did much better than Equalogic at the time (for example). I use a rule of 3s. So I'd get 3 E18s for example. Two gets you reliability, and 3 gets you flexibility. I'd force a mandatory replace stagger schedule for maximum reliability (so that all 3 have a different lifecycle over time). Personally, I'd ditch Vsphere altogether, but you may have dependencies outside of just running VMs. Obviously there are probably "better" and much much much more expensive storage providers out there, but almost all of them will lean towards "long term lock in".

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sysacc@reddit (OP)

Thanks for the suggestion and yes we have stuff that still only supports VMware Virtuallization so moving away is not possible, yet. Plus the pricing for Vsphere Standard is ok.

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Pvt-Snafu@reddit

VMware vsan is not the only option. ZFS, Ceph, and even Starwinds vsan can be used to make HA from the storage on your nodes. Make a POC to get something that may meet your needs.

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ArsenalITTwo@reddit

Vmware Standard at the moment is indeed cheap. I just got quotes the other day for Standard and VF.

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DerBootsMann@reddit

> IMHO, they did much better than Equalogic at the time (for example). everybody did better than equallogic !

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cjcox4@reddit

Probably. Except in terms of revenue.

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DerBootsMann@reddit

that’s right :( 1st mover advantage ..

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cjcox4@reddit

Wouldn't say that (exactly). I was using cheap fibre SAN before equallogic's initial platform. More pointing out Dell acquisition and their push out everywhere.

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DerBootsMann@reddit

yeah , dell channel helped for sure

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basicallybasshead@reddit

+1 for Starwinds VSAN. It's easy to migrate, you can reuse the storage, and you still have redundancy.

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Vivid_Mongoose_8964@reddit

\+1 for Starwind. I run a few clusters, pretty awesome.

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WhimsicalChuckler@reddit

We are running a couple of clusters on Vmware with Starwinds VSAN as shared storage, and it works perfectly. Also, the support team is great. That might be helpful: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resource-library/starwind-virtual-san-vsan-configuration-guide-for-vmware-vsphere-esxi-7-vsan-deployed-as-a-controller-virtual-machine-cvm-using-web-ui/.

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CodeWarrior30@reddit

Have you considered the Linux side of the world? You could always run Ceph (either hyper converged on each host or a dedicated 3 node cluster) and just connect to that Ceph cluster over iSCSI. It comes at the steep cost of free (+ hardware and support) and there are many operators that make deploying and managing it much simpler than it once was.

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ElevenNotes@reddit

Once you go vSAN ESA you can only go back to Ceph, anything else feels slow as a snail 😅🙈

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Old-IT-Fart22@reddit

I've been out of the hardware game for awhile but when calculating your true costs, don't forget the network stack. Example. If you are going iSCSI, 10 GB 12 port switch (qty 2 if you want "redundancy") 10 GB dual port cards for your servers ( qty 6 ) TwinAx cables ( for prod, I wouldn't skimp and get generics but I'm an old fart and it was not my money ) So that there could be $10-15K additional some might not consider.

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sysacc@reddit (OP)

The Network is already there and separated for VSAN. 2x25GB to each server.

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Old-IT-Fart22@reddit

Duh on me. That makes sense. A couple yrs ago our engineers came to me for pricing on a SAN they were about to submit and completely omitted network. If we didn't catch it, it would have been going back to mgmt for an additional 10% just to plug the damn thing in.