I spoke with our EqualLogic sales rep yesterday, and they are suggesting we go with a PS300E. It has 7,200 rpm drives. Not 10k. We always avoided 7,200 drives like the plague. But here is EqualLogic, one of the biggest players in the iSCSI industry, telling us we should put their 7,200 rpm drives in. Ok...
We had originally planned on buying a PS3900XV, which has 15k drives. But now it's between the PS3600X (10k drives) and one of the 7,200 rpm models. They are all the same box, but with different drive sizes. Right now it looks like the 7TB raw model (PS300E) is the one we should buy, but we might splurge and get something larger.
But back to the performance...7,200 rpm! I had to ask around, so I threw a post up on to the VMTN forums. And here's what I have so far:
- joergriether tested a PS300E and a PS3900XV, and says they were about the same...
- Yps has 90 VMs running on one PS400E, and has no trouble with it...
- christianZ pointed me over to the thread he had started for SAN comparison, and also suggested the PS3600X over the PS3900XV. Not sure if he meant over the PS300E also...
2 comments:
Not surprising given that EqualLogic is still using 6 year old controller technology in all their boxes. It must be running out of gas if they can't get significantly better performance out of their SAS box.
I would recommend taking a look at LeftHand Networks. They sell rock solid iSCSI SANs with SAS/SATA arrays built by HP and IBM. Not to mention a superior feature set and advanced HA that EqualLogic doesn't have.
Justin,
If you are looking at the 3600 you may want to consider one other option; going with a half-populated 3900. You will get the equivalent capacity; HOWEVER you will pay a performance penalty for only having 7 spindles to stripe. Equallogic will normally recommend fully loaded boxes to maximize performance since they are so easy to add onto later.
I've seen some other threads about equallogic pricing and we have no-hassle Self-Service Pricing on our website at www.federalappliance.com. Thanks for letting me plug that!
Daleu
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