@Dashrender said in RAID 10, 20 Disks, How Many Hot Spares:

So is it done? Does Matt understand and agree to the point that Scott was making?

Yes I believe so.

TL;DR attempt #1 #2 #3 #4 (counting edits)

RAID10 does not need hot spares

If you have spare slots you'd be better served by a larger array with more IOPS

The corner case (the one raised by the op's question?) is would hot spares reduce the risk of array failure. The answer is 100% absolutely yes it will reduce the risk of failure.

The disagreement (I think..?) was if that's necessary. We agreed that it isn't necessary to have any hot spares for RAID10 unless there's mitigating factors (examples: remote COLO with horrific access issues, extremely risk averse use case).

@DustinB3403 said in CP - Dell vs HP server quotes:

I've received two quotes for new server hardware - one from our local reseller and one directly from Dell. As far as I can tell, the two quotes are identical spec-wise but the local reseller is almost $12k more expensive. Here are the two quotes:

Quote from Dell:
2x Dell PowerEdge R430 servers $6,665.60

2x Xeon E5-2630 v3 CPUs 2x 32 GB RDIMM Diskless configuration
1x Dell SCv2020 iSCSI SAN $10,303.26 14x Dell 1.2 TB SAS 12GB, 10k, 2.5" HD
1x Dell N2048 gigabit switch $1,693.49

TOTAL: $18,662.35

HP Quote from local reseller:
2x HP ProLiant DL360 servers $7,266.00

2x Xeon E5-2630 v3 CPUs 64 GB RAM (unknown configuration) Diskless configuration
1x HP MSA 2040 SAN $20,932.00 14x HP MSA 1.2 TB 10K SAS 2.5in drives includes $5,850 in labor so actual price
is only $15,082
1x Cisco Catalyst 2960-X gigabit switch $2,320.00

TOTAL: $30,518.00

Difference: $11,855.65

Is there any reason why I should choose the HP solution over the Dell solution? I will be running vSphere 6 on these servers. I'm not familiar with managing either server line so either way I'll be learning new management tools. When it comes to support I think I trust my local reseller more than Dell but $12k extra is hard to stomach just for that.

[Edit: CP Code M.]

Unless that OP is restricted to 1U hosts, I would go with the quote from Xbyte for Dell 730xd with same specs as in quotes is
0_1477764464719_upload-e7876862-aaf2-4c7d-9461-089a8141fab5

Multiply by 2, add Starwind's vSAN and a couple 10Gb NICs and he's done. Especially if only 2 hosts. Same(ish) price, way more reliability, better performance all around. I'd post that reco on SW but would likely get banned lol.

The one thing not mentioned is if there are other hosts connecting to the SAN.