storage systems

[ejenner]

Hi everybody.

Not sure if this is allowed or not... but I wondered what people would recommend for primary production network storage. i.e. what are you using for your SAN.

We're looking to renew as we've had our HPE 3PAR system for more than 5 years.

Anything anybody particularly recommends?

p.s. it could be Veeam related as we'd be using our Veeam system to back it up.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi EJ!

Fine question, but I don't think it's results will be as efficient when you see the answers. I mean some guys will say: "we love and recommend Vendor A", some guys will say "we love and recommend Vendor B". After all, if you ask 400.000 Veeam users, the spread will be pretty much aligned with market share of SAN vendors on our planet.
If you have a look at Gartner's Magic Quadrant for General Purpose Disk Arrays, you will see most common storage vendors there, and your current one, HPE, is surely is in a Leaders quadrant. If you are happy with 3PAR for last 5+ years, just contact HPE and ask for an upgraded version of it - newest 3PAR models scale to 20PT and 3M IOPS. That should cover you for a while

Hope that helps!

[ejenner]

I like the response from people saying they've had a good experience with the one they use. It bypasses the marketing department...

The problem with renewing our 3PAR like-for-like is the price has changed since the last time. 3PAR is a lot more than we require now.

We've considered Nimble (which is a step down from 3PAR) but it's still very expensive and it wouldn't be right to go ahead without seeing what alternatives are available.

[nitramd]

EJ,

Have you considered products from Pure Storage?

[ejenner]

I'm open minded. What do they do?

[nitramd]

Briefly with a focus on 2 specific products:

Pure is known for their FlashArray X which is comprised of 100% NVMe flash - used as primary storage for VMs.

What intrigues me is their FlashArray IIC product. It's an all flash Tier 2 array. It has NFS capability and should have SMB at some point. A colleague and I are contemplating phasing out mechanical disk drives in our environment - long term - and we believe that the FlashArray IIC might allow us to do this.

I would suggest reading reviews of Pure here: https://www.itcentralstation.com/produc ... ay-reviews

[ITP-Stan]

I don't know the requirements but for Small to Medium Sized Business the HPE MSA series are a great product.
https://www.hpe.com/be/en/storage/msa-s ... orage.html

I've heard good things about Dell Compellent too, but no first hand experience.

[MPev]

I just went through the same thing, our SAN was coming up on EOL / EOS and I looked at replacing it from the same vendor, replacing it from another vendor, or switching to vSAN.

We ended up staying with our current vendor, Hitachi, because it was the easiest to implement and on par with the other SAN vendor for cost. The old unit has been rock solid. 2 disk replacements and a code upgrade all complete with 0 downtime. Hitachi called about the disk replacements before we knew anything was wrong, and the disks didn't fail, they were preemptively replaced.

[ammaross]

As a user of Compellent, I can say it's a decent system. The goal of any SAN should be to just work and not be a noticeable bottleneck. Pretty much any all-flash array you get should satisfy your needs (presumably, as you haven't mentioned your needs beyond that 3PAR is too much).

[ejenner]

Briefly with a focus on 2 specific products:

Pure is known for their FlashArray X which is comprised of 100% NVMe flash - used as primary storage for VMs.

What intrigues me is their FlashArray IIC product. It's an all flash Tier 2 array. It has NFS capability and should have SMB at some point. A colleague and I are contemplating phasing out mechanical disk drives in our environment - long term - and we believe that the FlashArray IIC might allow us to do this.

I would suggest reading reviews of Pure here: https://www.itcentralstation.com/produc ... ay-reviews

emailed them from their website but got no response.

[skrause]

If you are already an HPE customer and you don't need some of the more advanced features of the 3PAR, I would take a look at the Nimble arrays. (Even if you aren't an HPE customer, I would recommend them to almost anyone).

I have had nothing but great experiences with Nimble arrays (we purchased our first ones right before the merger) and even after the HPE merger their tech support is still the best I have ever dealt with in any hardware vendor bar none.

[nitramd]

emailed them from their website but got no response.

That's disappointing. Have you considered phoning them - UK contact info below:
Pure Storage

Media: pr@purestorage.com

EMEA HQ & UK Office
3 Lotus Park
The Causeway
Staines-upon-Thames
Surrey
TW18 3AG
Support: 0800 088 5234
Sales: +44 20 3870 2633
Front Desk: +44 1784 614090


London City Sales Office
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London
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Sales:+44 20 3870 2633