Looking to Buy a SAN
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@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
So - @ScottyBoy
Do you want assistance engineering a real solution for the business case? or
Do you just want a SAN because that's what someone at the company has already signed off on?Yeah, this is important. Because we can have a long (and hopefully super valuable) thread that breaks down how to look at business goals, find the needs, how to look at products and architecture, how to avoid predatory vendors, what technologies and designs will meet whatever the business goals are, etc. But if you are not in a position to leverage all of that, it might just be stressful and unwanted.
If you really just have to buy a SAN, then we should stop looking at the big picture, and figure out the "SAN needs" and go from just there.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@ScottyBoy said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
CDW (which we paid as a consultant, not using their sales department) recommended us to go with a Nimble SAN for the dedup and compression.
CDW are sales people, period. That's what they are. They are never your advisors. You can pay them, but that doesn't change that they are the vendor reps and are your "enemy".
Sadly, it is an ethical violation for them to take your money, but they will do so happily. But they are ALSO paid by the vendors to screw you, and do so, every time.
https://smbitjournal.com/2016/06/buyers-and-sellers-agents-in-it/
Yeah, sadly, I agree with Scott completely. The only way you can really trust consulting is the only thing they sell is consulting. The moment they sell firewalls, servers, software, etc, you can never be sure their recommendations in consulting aren't actually driven by the expectation of sales of the hardware they sell, and the back end money get get from those sales.
You can clearly see that CDW, Insight, etc are all driven by their sales when you get random sales calls based solely on the product on sale that month. They don't care what you need, just want to sell you what will put the most money in their pocket this month. -
@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
Yeah, sadly, I agree with Scott completely. The only way you can really trust consulting is the only thing they sell is consulting.
Only time you can CONSIDER trusting them. You still need to audit and verify that they are at least giving reasonable recommendations and taking time to at least try to discover needs, goals, benefits, etc. Even if they only sell consulting, they might easily be trying to just get paid to do nothing. But if they are getting paid to screw you, paying them to pay the people to screw you only guarantees that they are crooks and you'll never know to whom they are loyal, if anyone.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
if option 2 - frankly, almost anything your sales guy is pitching is likely going to function for a time, until it doesn't. Assuming you get three years out of it, you'll likely be off the hook for any issues that arise at the point.
And might work "fine" for a long time... but from day one will...
- Cost too much
- Be too slow
- Take extra work (that they'll convince you to hire them to do)
- Put YOU, not them, at risk
- Not be designed around the future needs that your business might face
Of course, all of these are true, but if the decision to purchase the 5 servers was above @ScottyBoy head, then it's likely that person will be to embarrassed to change at this point, forcing @ScottyBoy to only look at the path he walked in the door with. Now, there of course is always room for that assumption to be wrong, but until @ScottyBoy tells us which way he will go - there really is zero point in even talking anymore.
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@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
You can clearly see that CDW, Insight, etc are all driven by their sales when you get random sales calls based solely on the product on sale that month. They don't care what you need, just want to sell you what will put the most money in their pocket this month.
And it isn't that you can't work with them. I've used CDW, I'll use them again. I work with Insight every day. But never in an advisory capacity, he's my VAR. I use him to handle logistics, supply chain, etc. VARs are important, but also important to never let act as IT. They are "anti-IT".
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I'm amazed at five servers were purchased but without any thought for storage, was the sales guy afraid to push his luck I mean come on...
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@DustinB3403 said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
I'm amazed at five servers were purchased but without any thought for storage, was the sales guy afraid to push his luck I mean come on...
I wouldn't say that - they clearly thought about SAN, but not having picked the SAN already, so they would know what host adapters might be required, etc... that is definitely a crazy part.
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@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@DustinB3403 said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
I'm amazed at five servers were purchased but without any thought for storage, was the sales guy afraid to push his luck I mean come on...
I wouldn't say that - they clearly thought about SAN, but not having picked the SAN already, so they would know what host adapters might be required, etc... that is definitely a crazy part.
Each server has 8 10gb nics for the storage network. We have the switches for the storage network already.
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@ScottyBoy said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@DustinB3403 said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
I'm amazed at five servers were purchased but without any thought for storage, was the sales guy afraid to push his luck I mean come on...
I wouldn't say that - they clearly thought about SAN, but not having picked the SAN already, so they would know what host adapters might be required, etc... that is definitely a crazy part.
Each server has 8 10gb nics for the storage network. We have the switches for the storage network already.
So someone decided on the storage technology as well (iSCSI?) before deciding on the SANs? This, too, begs the question... how did they know that they wanted that networking technology (and which one is it) without having known the exact model of SAN that would work best beforehand?
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@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@DustinB3403 said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
I'm amazed at five servers were purchased but without any thought for storage, was the sales guy afraid to push his luck I mean come on...
I wouldn't say that - they clearly thought about SAN, but not having picked the SAN already, so they would know what host adapters might be required, etc... that is definitely a crazy part.
Right, normally you'd expect FibreChannel for a big, dedicated SAN setup, for example, but you'd not necessarily want to commit to it. But you have to know both your vendor and your model, and a ton of other factors, before you can get even the HBAs.
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@ScottyBoy said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
The HPE engineer we talked said that's not really the case with them anymore, and they are designed much better these days to handle fault issues.
Aside from that we already have bought 5 new hosts (1U hosts with just SD cards for VMware)
Never, EVER listen to a salesman. Their job is to tell.you lies and take your money.
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We're doing FCoE, not Iscsi for sure.
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@ScottyBoy said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
We're doing FCoE, not Iscsi for sure.
Then why so many 10 GigE ports?
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@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
So - @ScottyBoy
Do you want assistance engineering a real solution for the business case? or
Do you just want a SAN because that's what someone at the company has already signed off on?If option 1 - please tell us the goals of this project,
if option 2 - frankly, almost anything your sales guy is pitching is likely going to function for a time, until it doesn't. Assuming you get three years out of it, you'll likely be off the hook for any issues that arise at the point.How about it? which option would you like help with?
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@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@ScottyBoy said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
We're doing FCoE, not Iscsi for sure.
Then why so many 10 GigE ports?
FCoE uses the same ports as iSCSI. It's just not as fast as the newer iSCSI like Starwind is doing.
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@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
So - @ScottyBoy
Do you want assistance engineering a real solution for the business case? or
Do you just want a SAN because that's what someone at the company has already signed off on?If option 1 - please tell us the goals of this project,
if option 2 - frankly, almost anything your sales guy is pitching is likely going to function for a time, until it doesn't. Assuming you get three years out of it, you'll likely be off the hook for any issues that arise at the point.How about it? which option would you like help with?
We're happy to do either, we just need to understand how much we should "help". It can easily go either way. If we guess, we are guaranteed to get it wrong
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@ScottyBoy said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
We're doing FCoE, not Iscsi for sure.
Then why so many 10 GigE ports?
FCoE uses the same ports as iSCSI. It's just not as fast as the newer iSCSI like Starwind is doing.
oh - my bad.. I read it wrong.
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@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@Dashrender said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
@ScottyBoy said in Looking to Buy a SAN:
We're doing FCoE, not Iscsi for sure.
Then why so many 10 GigE ports?
FCoE uses the same ports as iSCSI. It's just not as fast as the newer iSCSI like Starwind is doing.
oh - my bad.. I read it wrong.
iSER is the fast iSCSI, if I remember. Insanely fast without needing the FC infrastructure.
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Yeah, just checked, it iSER. It puts iSCSI directly over RDMA so it's crazy fast and straight through the RAM channel. You can do it on Infiniband so that it is faster than FC or Ethernet can do.
https://www.snia.org/sites/default/files/ESF/FCoE-vs-iSCSI-vs-iSER-Final.pdf
iSER was presented at MangoCon 2018. Max gave a good talk on it.
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I've recognized an IPOD and witnessed it play out.
In the end the business decided it made more financial sense to put 200 VMs in Azure.
