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date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:28:13 -0700,
group: microsoft.public.exchange.setup
back
Re: SAN solutions
Thank you both. It really helps. I know it's not a simple 1-2-3 thing. That's
why I would like to talk to peers. Thanks again.
"infinitiguy" wrote:
> Mark is right, it was a big question, but I've asked some big questions
> before too.. They just spark big discussions :)
>
> To be honest, the NetApp is great, but is very expensive. We got ours at a
> steal, otherwise we would've gone with Equallogic, which was really more in
> our price range, although that was a few years ago and NetApp now has some
> more reasonable SAN's for sale.
>
>
> "Mark Arnold [MVP]" wrote in message
> news:2q0q74lqc2vludgv9g5b69ucrdllrk20uk@4ax.com...
> > On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:28:13 -0700, rocky
> > wrote:
> >
> >>For those who use iSCSI SAN for Exchange 2007 storage, what vendors and
> >>products are you using? Could you share your experience a little bit? I
> >>have
> >>no exposure to SAN technology and would like to poll the community. Thanks
> >>a
> >>lot in advance.
> >
> > That's just a huge question and is practically unanswerable in its
> > current form.
> >
> > If you want the cream of the crop with all the fantastic software then
> > NetApp is your man. (interest declared at this point)
> > Otherwise you have Equallogic, Compellent, 3Par, Pilar and the list
> > just goes on and on.
> > You need to decide how many users you are going to serve and what kind
> > of service they need in terms of resilience and recoverability.
> > Has your organisation already got a SAN, any SAN? If it has, is it
> > multiprotocol (iSCSI and FC) or not?
> > There's no point polling the community as everyone who uses one will
> > have sob stories about theirs or will give glowing testimony.
> >
> > Take the vendors I've mentioned. Go do some research on their software
> > (at the end of the day spinning disk is nothing more than spinning
> > disk) and how they manage their storage. Draw up a list of what you
> > like the look of and then call in a reseller to talk you through
> > choices. The reseller you call in may well be biased to one platform;
> > that's normal and fine. Contact several vendors direct and they will
> > put you onto a local reseller. You can narrow it down to a particular
> > product and that will drive your reseller choice.
>
date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:48:05 -0700
author: rocky
Re: SAN solutions
There are a wide range of NetApp choices; all the way from Storevault to the
FAS 6XXX systems. (Ok Mark, up front I may just be a wee bit biased :-o)
You may also want to take a look at ESRP results for the various vendors.
It's not a competative performance thing, but a look at what the vendor
considers a real world deployment complete with testing results. I think
that says a lot about the vendors philosophy and approach to storage. For
Netapp, see
http://www.netapp.com/us/solutions/solution-partners/global-alliance/ms-esrp-fas3000.html.
NetApp does have a few thing going for them:
1. they're the iSCSI market leader, and have been for years.
2. Data Ontap (the virtualization layer), is write optimized; there is no
write penalty. With no write penalty, NetApp requires fewer spindles (and
rack space, cooling, power, etc..) than anyone. You get data protection
like RAID 76 with write performance like RAID 0.
3. NetApp hardware snapshots don't degrade performance the way Copy on
Write (COW) snapshots do. You can have scores of them in place (upt to 255
per volume) with a negligiable performance hit (3-5%) vs. just one or two
on COW before performance tanks.
4. The entire product line shares the same codebase, Data Ontap. There's
great consistency across all the NetApp products.
Ouch, I just realized how sales droidish that sounded. I'm not a sales
person, I lead a group of Consultants implementing MS alpplications on the
Netapp storage platform. Let's be fair. Absolutely check out all the
competing products as well. Check with multiple vendors and resellers.
Collect data on your environment, and make sure your proposed design meets
the performance recommendations of "Optimizing Storage for Exchange Server
2003" and/or the output of the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Role Storage
calculator, Make sure you account for backups, mobile devices, etc.. Be
realistic; overly rosy assumptions are a sure path to poor performance.
Use peaks, not averages. If you design to the average, you will perform
poorly 50% of the time. Research, research, research; it pays to do your
homework.
John
"infinitiguy" wrote in message
news:48E3A317-CB71-47BF-8E6A-5AC346AFA104@microsoft.com...
> we're using iSCSI Qlogic HBA's (4052c's I believe..) over cisco gigabit
> switches, to a NetApp FAS3020C filer.
>
> This is both for exch 2k3 and 2k7. So far things have been great with no
> issues. We're running about 350 users on Exchange 2k3 with no problems.
>
> "rocky" wrote in message
> news:4345A8E8-B513-4C85-8C94-CEBA2518EFA2@microsoft.com...
>> For those who use iSCSI SAN for Exchange 2007 storage, what vendors and
>> products are you using? Could you share your experience a little bit? I
>> have
>> no exposure to SAN technology and would like to poll the community.
>> Thanks a
>> lot in advance.
>
date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:27:49 -0700
author: John Fullbright fjohn@donotspamnetappdotcom
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