ZFS Based Storage for Medium VMWare Workload
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@dafyre said:
Curiosity got the better of me, so I went to xByte to see... You can build a nice SAM-SD based on a Dell R720 from xBytes for around 10k ... But that included 256GB of ram and 8 x 1.2 TB SAS drives (they don't have any larger drives listed on their web site)... and 3 Year Warranty... (I have a PDF (https://beta.wellston.biz/xByte SAM-SD.pdf) of how I configured it if everybody wants to see)...
Yup, using xByte and the PowerEdge R720xd (did you do the 720 or the 720xd?) you can get quite a monster of a server. We have a reference PowerEdge R720xd at the NTG Labs for this. Only 128GB of RAM, though
With the 720xd you can do 12x LFF drives plus two SSDs in CacheCade. Sure, you are going to spend a little more for that than what you quoted, but not tons more and that is a 50% leap in drive capacity and an insane leap in potential IOPS with the CacheCade included. -
@scottalanmiller said:
The cost of external storage for the compute nodes is a huge percentage of the cost of just replacing the whole thing, right? If you could spend $14K on an MSA for them, you should be able to spend around $16K, I'm guessing, to get a single node with more CPU and more RAM than you have between the two nodes currently while getting a storage system that is bigger and likely orders of magnitude faster.
HP DL360p Gen 8 with 2 Intel E5-2640 and 384GB ram cost us roughly $13k each -- this is without local drives. On our current large compute node I am only 20% utilized on CPU and 50% utilized on RAM (at peak). I am however, out of storage. Which I can add for as cheap as $5k with RED drives or $10k with Seagate SAS drives.
The $13k does not include VMWare licensing, which is obviously much debated if I even need it; however, send I am decommissioning 4 CPUs when we upgrade I still have available licenses.
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@donaldlandru said:
I agree we do lack true HA in the production side as there is a single weak link (one storage array), the solution here depends on our move to Office 365 as that would take most of the operations load off of the network and change the requirements completely.
Good deal. We use O365, it is mostly great.
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@donaldlandru said:
Which I can add for as cheap as $5k with RED drives or $10k with Seagate SAS drives.
WD makes RE and Red drives. Don't call them RED, it is hard to tell if you are meaning to say RE or Red. The Red Pro and SE drives fall between the Red and the RE drives in the lineup. Red and RE drives are not related. RE comes in SAS, Red is SATA only.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@donaldlandru said:
Ahh -- there is the detail I missed. Just re-read my post and that doesn't make this clear. Yes, the discussion was supposed to pertain to the non-production side. My apologies.
LOL, a rather sizeable detail
I think we've been focused almost entirely on the operations cluster in our discussion and/or putting the two together to assess needs as a whole - which is worth considering, is there actually a good reason that they are independent to this level?LOL -- it's all in the details is there a :sheepish: emoji??? Nope.
As to them being separate this why a design consideration outside of my control being hired in mid process. I believe the thought was to have a separate pane of glass. I would much rather have a three node cluster in this case holding both roles but what I have is what I have.
If I bring up the operations nodes only have 1CPU each and only 64GB of memory I just cringe and this goes a third direction.
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Used to have emojis, they broke.
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@scottalanmiller That was definitely the R720, not the XD... I get to go back and do it again in a little bit.
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@donaldlandru said:
If I bring up the operations nodes only have 1CPU each and only 64GB of memory I just cringe and this goes a third direction.
That makes them PERFECT for Scale to replace when you are ready to talk about those. Literally a drop in replacement. You can match example or double to two CPU and 128GB each with their stock systems. But that is for another thread.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller That was definitely the R720, not the XD... I get to go back and do it again in a little bit.
If going for the cheaper option, you drop to the R520 instead. Makes more sense for storage. We have three of those in the lab
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@scottalanmiller said:
@donaldlandru said:
Which I can add for as cheap as $5k with RED drives or $10k with Seagate SAS drives.
WD makes RE and Red drives. Don't call them RED, it is hard to tell if you are meaning to say RE or Red. The Red Pro and SE drives fall between the Red and the RE drives in the lineup. Red and RE drives are not related. RE comes in SAS, Red is SATA only.
It's all in a name. When I say REDs I am referring to WD Red 1TB NAS Hard Drive 2.5" WD10JFCX. When I say seagate I am referring to Seagate Savvio 10K.5 900 GB 10000 RPM SAS 6-Gb/S ST9900805SS
Edit: I don't always use WD NAS (RED) drives, but when I do I use the WDIDLE tool to fix that problem
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@scottalanmiller Holy cow... can I borrow $5k ??
For $10k he could build 2 x 16TB usable storage units and use StarWind to make them happy.
(https://beta.wellston.biz/xByte SAM-SD R520.pdf) -
@donaldlandru said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@donaldlandru said:
Which I can add for as cheap as $5k with RED drives or $10k with Seagate SAS drives.
WD makes RE and Red drives. Don't call them RED, it is hard to tell if you are meaning to say RE or Red. The Red Pro and SE drives fall between the Red and the RE drives in the lineup. Red and RE drives are not related. RE comes in SAS, Red is SATA only.
It's all in a name. When I say REDs I am referring to WD Red 1TB NAS Hard Drive 2.5" WD10JFCX. When I say seagate I am referring to Seagate Savvio 10K.5 900 GB 10000 RPM SAS 6-Gb/S ST9900805SS
Edit: I don't always use WD NAS (RED) drives, but when I do I use the WDIDLE tool to fix that problem
Boy those have gotten cheap!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236600
But they will be terrible slow. Those are 5400 RPM SATA drives.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller Holy cow... can I borrow $5k ??
For $10k he could build 2 x 16TB usable storage units and use StarWind to make them happy.
(https://beta.wellston.biz/xByte SAM-SD R520.pdf)Starwind or DRBD. Both are free.
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So which way should he look for his dev environment?
A new single host with tons of local disk and possibly ditch all three of the current dev boxes? or
A new single host with tons of local disk, and max the disk out on the newest (planning to keep) dev box, and manually split the load as possible? or
build a SAM-SD and connect the three current dev boxes to it?Any reason that all of these solutions couldn't be done with XByte purchased systems?
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@Dashrender said:
Any reason that all of these solutions couldn't be done with XByte purchased systems?
Only that he is an HP shop and they are Dell.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Any reason that all of these solutions couldn't be done with XByte purchased systems?
Only that he is an HP shop and they are Dell.
Is there an HP equivalent?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Any reason that all of these solutions couldn't be done with XByte purchased systems?
Only that he is an HP shop and they are Dell.
Is there an HP equivalent?
Nearly everything in their lineups has an equivalent that is close on the other side.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Any reason that all of these solutions couldn't be done with XByte purchased systems?
Only that he is an HP shop and they are Dell.
Is there an HP equivalent?
Nearly everything in their lineups has an equivalent that is close on the other side.
Well I was mainly meaning in the secondary market/refurbished area. I knew that HP and Dell have mostly equivalent server lineups.
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Oh, I see. ServerMonkey would be a place to start.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@donaldlandru said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@donaldlandru said:
Which I can add for as cheap as $5k with RED drives or $10k with Seagate SAS drives.
WD makes RE and Red drives. Don't call them RED, it is hard to tell if you are meaning to say RE or Red. The Red Pro and SE drives fall between the Red and the RE drives in the lineup. Red and RE drives are not related. RE comes in SAS, Red is SATA only.
It's all in a name. When I say REDs I am referring to WD Red 1TB NAS Hard Drive 2.5" WD10JFCX. When I say seagate I am referring to Seagate Savvio 10K.5 900 GB 10000 RPM SAS 6-Gb/S ST9900805SS
Edit: I don't always use WD NAS (RED) drives, but when I do I use the WDIDLE tool to fix that problem
Boy those have gotten cheap!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236600
But they will be terrible slow. Those are 5400 RPM SATA drives.
This is why I made my comment about not using the "RED" drives earlier, they don't have the PRO in 2.5" form factor; however, the savvios are twice the speed at 4x the price.
