matthew patton
2010-Feb-09 18:55 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
> It might help people to understand how ridiculous they > sound going on and on > about buying a premium storage appliance without any > storage.Since I started this, let me explain to those who can''t begin to understand why I proposed something so "stupid". At work (branch of a federal gov''t big-5 Department) I need 40TB but have next to nothing in budget. (For some reason all you damn citizens think you''re entitled to keep most of your paychecks to yourself instead living off what I decide to give you in foodstamps and rent-controled housing.) Therefore, I can''t afford let alone justify the preposterous premium demanded by "enterprise" EMC/Sun/IBM/NetApp. I can really use dedup, (integrity would be nice), and reasonable rack and power footprint since I''m out of that too. I can''t exactly march into my boss'' office and propose that we build my own at-home special which is 16 WD RE2/3 drives $(60) in a $70 case, $100 power supply, four 4-in-3 modules ($30) and a Chenbro SAS expander ($250) now can I... Aside: I find it laughable for anyone to claim a J4500 is "premium" anything. IBM DS800, EMC Symetrix, NetApp FAS5xxx, sure. But a glorified JBOD enclosure? Put down the damn cool-aid! The cheapest solution out there that isn''t a Supermicro-like server chassis, is DAS in the form of HP or Dell MD-series which top out at 15 or 16 3" drives. I can only chain 3 units per SAS port off a HBA in either case. Enter the J4500, 48 drives in 4U, what looks to be solid engineering, and redundancy in all the right places. An empty chassis at $3000 is totally justifiable. Maybe as high as $4000. In comparison a naked Dell MD1000 is $2000. If you do the subtraction from SUN''s claimed "breakthru" pricing of $1/GB, the chassis cost works out to $4000. I can live with that. Now look up the price for 24TB and it''s 28 freaking thousand! I can buy 24TB worth of good SATA drives for $5000 all day long and twice on Sunday. (http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1531954) I can buy Dell trays from DELL themselves let alone a bevy of 3rd parties for as low as $12 each. SUN''s are like $25 on the aftermarket and much harder to come by. So, does my question make sense now? My only play is Dell at this time. I was TRYING to see if the SUN route could be made possible since it would be the better solution. But I guess I''m not "enterprisy" enough, ie with so much more money than brains for the likes of SUN to give 2 (@Rts. Dell and HP *WANT* my business by pricing things where I can reasonably get to them. A fully-qualified 500GB SATA drive from DELL is $300, so a 3x multiplier. Still quite a bit more than I think is warranted, but SUN wants 5x? Nothing SUN makes is so much better than DELL/HP, indeed they are essentially indistinguishable that they can get away with pretending to be EMC. Is it any wonder they failed? Spare me the bit about how there is so much expensive and complex engineering invested in something as stupid straight-forward as the J4500 or in qualifying drive firmware. I''ve worked on qualifying SUN, IBM, and other storage products (firmware, hardware, OS drivers) some of which were of our own designs that the big names simply slapped their label on. They outsource this stuff to a certain company just west of Chicago on route 355 (among others). I know what I was paid. We had 4 guys in that lab and as a overhead/GB we were no bigger a pimple on a gnat''s hind end. There is no mysterious voodoo in storage enclosure design that requires an army of highly trained PhD''s months to figure out.
Erik Trimble
2010-Feb-09 21:38 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
matthew patton wrote:>> It might help people to understand how ridiculous they >> sound going on and on >> about buying a premium storage appliance without any >> storage. >> > > Since I started this, let me explain to those who can''t begin to understand why I proposed something so "stupid". At work (branch of a federal gov''t big-5 Department) I need 40TB but have next to nothing in budget. (For some reason all you damn citizens think you''re entitled to keep most of your paychecks to yourself instead living off what I decide to give you in foodstamps and rent-controled housing.) Therefore, I can''t afford let alone justify the preposterous premium demanded by "enterprise" EMC/Sun/IBM/NetApp. I can really use dedup, (integrity would be nice), and reasonable rack and power footprint since I''m out of that too. >Frankly, that''s your budget problem, and has nothing to do with Sun/IBM/HP/etc. Management needs to understand the actual cost (as decided by the open market) for a given service. They should be told NO if they demand something unreasonable, and educated as to the current market price tradeoffs of different solutions.> I can''t exactly march into my boss'' office and propose that we build my own at-home special which is 16 WD RE2/3 drives $(60) in a $70 case, $100 power supply, four 4-in-3 modules ($30) and a Chenbro SAS expander ($250) now can I... > > Aside: I find it laughable for anyone to claim a J4500 is "premium" anything. IBM DS800, EMC Symetrix, NetApp FAS5xxx, sure. But a glorified JBOD enclosure? Put down the damn cool-aid! >Premium has nothing to do with absolute cost or size. It''s about a superior product, at whatever price point is being discussed.> The cheapest solution out there that isn''t a Supermicro-like server chassis, is DAS in the form of HP or Dell MD-series which top out at 15 or 16 3" drives. I can only chain 3 units per SAS port off a HBA in either case. > > Enter the J4500, 48 drives in 4U, what looks to be solid engineering, and redundancy in all the right places. An empty chassis at $3000 is totally justifiable. Maybe as high as $4000. In comparison a naked Dell MD1000 is $2000. If you do the subtraction from SUN''s claimed "breakthru" pricing of $1/GB, the chassis cost works out to $4000. I can live with that. >You just fell into the trap of component pricing. You''re buying a package, not parts. You can''t just disassemble the package and declare "that part costs X". Solutions are more than the sum of their mechanical parts.> Now look up the price for 24TB and it''s 28 freaking thousand! I can buy 24TB worth of good SATA drives for $5000 all day long and twice on Sunday. (http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1531954) > > I can buy Dell trays from DELL themselves let alone a bevy of 3rd parties for as low as $12 each. SUN''s are like $25 on the aftermarket and much harder to come by. > > So, does my question make sense now? My only play is Dell at this time. I was TRYING to see if the SUN route could be made possible since it would be the better solution. But I guess I''m not "enterprisy" enough, ie with so much more money than brains for the likes of SUN to give 2 (@Rts. Dell and HP *WANT* my business by pricing things where I can reasonably get to them. A fully-qualified 500GB SATA drive from DELL is $300, so a 3x multiplier. Still quite a bit more than I think is warranted, but SUN wants 5x? Nothing SUN makes is so much better than DELL/HP, indeed they are essentially indistinguishable that they can get away with pretending to be EMC. Is it any wonder they failed? >See below. Don''t directly compare List price with Actual price.> Spare me the bit about how there is so much expensive and complex engineering invested in something as stupid straight-forward as the J4500 or in qualifying drive firmware. I''ve worked on qualifying SUN, IBM, and other storage products (firmware, hardware, OS drivers) some of which were of our own designs that the big names simply slapped their label on. They outsource this stuff to a certain company just west of Chicago on route 355 (among others). I know what I was paid. We had 4 guys in that lab and as a overhead/GB we were no bigger a pimple on a gnat''s hind end. There is no mysterious voodoo in storage enclosure design that requires an army of highly trained PhD''s months to figure outSo why are there so many problems with consumer-grade drives in 3rd-party chassis? Obviously, the Name Brand folks are doing some sort of value-add. You are paying for a service you want: reliability, consistency, and support. Can you provide the same level of these by assembling it yourself? Are you sure? If you don''t care about these things, then roll-it-yourself. But make sure Management understands that they are getting a lower level of quality for their $. Frankly, I''ve spent a fair amount of time talking to HUGE storage users (Google, various US Gov''t National Labs), and the only way for commodity-level assemblies to equal Brand-Names in the above terms is via /massive/ numbers, and custom-written/configured software. For instance, my Lab friends have found good cost-savings using consumer kit when the number of drives is at least a couple thousand. They snort at roll-your-own jobs for installations of under 1,000 drives. ---------- First off, go talk to your purchasing rep. The 24TB J4500 *LISTS* for for $28k. I''m sure it''s at least 20% less on a GSA schedule. Get an actual price before worrying about everything else. Secondly, do the math right. You''d need at least (3) MD1000 to get the same capacity as a J4500. Plus probably at least one extra SAS controller that you wouldn''t need with the J4500. I just did a rough estimate, doing an apple-to-apples comparison, and the Dell MD1000 with 15 500GB drives runs $8k (after warranty and the correct SAS controllers). The equivalent J4500 runs $30k, list. So, after GSA discounts, you should be paying $20-24k for the Dells, and $25k or so for the J4500. Check your ACTUAL GSA pricing. That all said, they''re not el-cheapo. But it''s a guarantied solution - which means that you DON''T have to include your (sysadmin) time costs to testing/troubleshooting/assembly/whatever. I don''t know about your place, but I''d consider sysadmin time worth a (very bare) minimum of $100/hr. And, don''t think you can''t blow a full week of downtime trying to figure some problem out. How much is downtime worth to you? ----- Bottom line here: if someone comes along and provides the same level of service for a better price, the market will flock to them. Or if the market decides the current level of service is unnecessary, it will move to vendors providing the sufficient level of service at the new price point. But for now, there is no indication that the current pricing/service level models aren''t correct. You may /want/ and /think/ that a BMW 528i should cost $30k (I mean, it''s not really any different than an Accord, right?), but the market has said no, it''s $45k. Sorry, the market is correct. -- Erik Trimble Java System Support Mailstop: usca22-123 Phone: x17195 Santa Clara, CA
Wes Felter
2010-Feb-09 21:44 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
Have you considered Promise JBODs? They officially support bring-your-own-drives. Wes Felter
Daniel Bakken
2010-Feb-09 22:18 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Erik Trimble <Erik.Trimble at sun.com> wrote:> Bottom line here: if someone comes along and provides the same level of > service for a better price, the market will flock to them. ?Or if the market > decides the current level of service is unnecessary, it will move to vendors > providing the sufficient level of service at the new price point. ? But for > now, there is no indication that the current pricing/service level models > aren''t correct. ?You may /want/ and /think/ that a BMW 528i should cost $30k > (I mean, it''s not really any different than an Accord, right?), but the > market has said no, it''s $45k. ?Sorry, the market is correct.>From my perspective as an IT pro, Sun is selling BMW''s at $200k. It''sa great car, but a Mercedes is half the cost. Most hardware consumers have already flocked to the competition, which explains Sun''s staggering losses and the Oracle buyout. We can''t afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars extra for bragging rights over IBM, HP, or Dell shops. Daniel Bakken Systems Administrator Economic Modeling Specialists Inc Moscow, Idaho
Bob Friesenhahn
2010-Feb-10 00:14 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
On Tue, 9 Feb 2010, Daniel Bakken wrote:> > From my perspective as an IT pro, Sun is selling BMW''s at $200k. It''s > a great car, but a Mercedes is half the cost. Most hardware consumers > have already flocked to the competition, which explains Sun''s > staggering losses and the Oracle buyout. We can''t afford to pay tensI am glad to see that you are a pro. Sun''s staggering losses are due to the level of sales not being in line with the large number of product offerings combined with a dramatic two year down-turn in the economy that Sun management had not anticipated. Some of us (outside of Moscow) are keenly aware of the economic down-turn. There were also grave errors in judgement from certain people in Sun management. The only winner in the server-wars has been IBM. All the other big players have been losing. Even Dell has been losing. Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
Thomas Burgess
2010-Feb-10 00:55 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
> Since I started this, let me explain to those who can''t begin to understand > why I proposed something so "stupid". At work (branch of a federal gov''t > big-5 Department) I need 40TB but have next to nothing in budget. (For some > reason all you damn citizens think you''re entitled to keep most of your > paychecks to yourself instead living off what I decide to give you in > foodstamps and rent-controled housing.) Therefore, I can''t afford let alone > justify the preposterous premium demanded by "enterprise" > EMC/Sun/IBM/NetApp. I can really use dedup, (integrity would be nice), and > reasonable rack and power footprint since I''m out of that too. > > I don''t think anyone who has followed this thread had a problemunderstanding why you asked what you asked. The problem is that you won''t accept the answer. The fact that you need 40TB and have next to nothing in budget is a major issue, but frankly that is your problem. You need to wake up and realize that in the real world you have to manage expectations.> I can''t exactly march into my boss'' office and propose that we build my own > at-home special which is 16 WD RE2/3 drives $(60) in a $70 case, $100 power > supply, four 4-in-3 modules ($30) and a Chenbro SAS expander ($250) now can > I... > > And your boss can''t expect you to buy a premium storage appliance at thesame cost as your at home special. In the real world, you start with a budget, you look at the options, and you make the best compromise you can. It''s that simple. You don''t get to have your cake and eat it too.> Aside: I find it laughable for anyone to claim a J4500 is "premium" > anything. IBM DS800, EMC Symetrix, NetApp FAS5xxx, sure. But a glorified > JBOD enclosure? Put down the damn cool-aid! > >I find it laughable that anyone would expect to buy a product like the j4500 without any drives. Again, you seem to be living in a fantasy world where you can pick a really great piece of hardware and get it at walmart prices.> The cheapest solution out there that isn''t a Supermicro-like server > chassis, is DAS in the form of HP or Dell MD-series which top out at 15 or > 16 3" drives. I can only chain 3 units per SAS port off a HBA in either > case. > > Enter the J4500, 48 drives in 4U, what looks to be solid engineering, and > redundancy in all the right places. An empty chassis at $3000 is totally > justifiable. Maybe as high as $4000. In comparison a naked Dell MD1000 is > $2000. If you do the subtraction from SUN''s claimed "breakthru" pricing of > $1/GB, the chassis cost works out to $4000. I can live with that. >But this isn''t the way they are sold. It''s that simple. Get over it.> > Now look up the price for 24TB and it''s 28 freaking thousand! I can buy > 24TB worth of good SATA drives for $5000 all day long and twice on Sunday. ( > http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1531954) > >And you are FREE to do that, go buy those drives and build your own unit and stop trying to buy outside your budget.> I can buy Dell trays from DELL themselves let alone a bevy of 3rd parties > for as low as $12 each. SUN''s are like $25 on the aftermarket and much > harder to come by. > > So, does my question make sense now? My only play is Dell at this time. I > was TRYING to see if the SUN route could be made possible since it would be > the better solution. But I guess I''m not "enterprisy" enough, ie with so > much more money than brains for the likes of SUN to give 2 (@Rts. Dell and > HP *WANT* my business by pricing things where I can reasonably get to them. > A fully-qualified 500GB SATA drive from DELL is $300, so a 3x multiplier. > Still quite a bit more than I think is warranted, but SUN wants 5x? Nothing > SUN makes is so much better than DELL/HP, indeed they are essentially > indistinguishable that they can get away with pretending to be EMC. Is it > any wonder they failed? > > Your question made sense, The problem is that you don''t like the answer. Ican totally understand why you''d inquire about it but at the same time you don''t get to come in and make up your own prices. That is simply not how business is done. This is why people are laughing.> > Spare me the bit about how there is so much expensive and complex > engineering invested in something as stupid straight-forward as the J4500 or > in qualifying drive firmware. I''ve worked on qualifying SUN, IBM, and other > storage products (firmware, hardware, OS drivers) some of which were of our > own designs that the big names simply slapped their label on. They outsource > this stuff to a certain company just west of Chicago on route 355 (among > others). I know what I was paid. We had 4 guys in that lab and as a > overhead/GB we were no bigger a pimple on a gnat''s hind end. There is no > mysterious voodoo in storage enclosure design that requires an army of > highly trained PhD''s months to figure out. > > > > Wow, you have a hard time with reality huh? It''s pretty funny that youthink you know the product better than the people who make it. It''s also funny that you want it so bad but you think it''s "stupid" and "straight-forward" I''m truly sorry that you can''t afford to buy the j4500, but don''t cry foul just because you don''t like the price. Its childish. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20100209/b9a5ffb4/attachment.html>
Joerg Schilling
2010-Feb-10 09:32 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
matthew patton <pattonme at yahoo.com> wrote:> > It might help people to understand how ridiculous they > > sound going on and on > > about buying a premium storage appliance without any > > storage. > > Since I started this, let me explain to those who can''t begin to understand why I proposed something so "stupid". At work (branch of a federal gov''t big-5 Department) I need 40TB but have next to nothing in budget. (For some reason all you damn citizens think you''re entitled to keep most of your paychecks to yourself instead living off what I decide to give you in foodstamps and rent-controled housing.) Therefore, I can''t afford let alone justify the preposterous premium demanded by "enterprise" EMC/Sun/IBM/NetApp. I can really use dedup, (integrity would be nice), and reasonable rack and power footprint since I''m out of that too.Did you ever try to get an offer for a NetApp machine in the same range as a SunFire 4540? I did and the price was twice as much than with the Sun. With the Sun I did even have a 3 year maintenance contract included. This of course was in both cases with disks. It seems to be wrong to look at single component prices if you are looking for a solution. It is also wrong to cry about the price of single components in a solution if you did already decide to build a system from single components. J?rg -- EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Ross Walker
2010-Feb-10 15:06 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
On Feb 9, 2010, at 1:55 PM, matthew patton <pattonme at yahoo.com> wrote:> The cheapest solution out there that isn''t a Supermicro-like server > chassis, is DAS in the form of HP or Dell MD-series which top out at > 15 or 16 3" drives. I can only chain 3 units per SAS port off a HBA > in either case.The new Dell MD11XX series is 24 2.5" drives and you can chain 3 of them together off a single controller. If your drives are dual ported you can use both HBA ports for redundant paths. -Ross
On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Ross Walker <rswwalker at gmail.com> wrote:> On Feb 9, 2010, at 1:55 PM, matthew patton <pattonme at yahoo.com> wrote: > > The cheapest solution out there that isn''t a Supermicro-like server >> chassis, is DAS in the form of HP or Dell MD-series which top out at 15 or >> 16 3" drives. I can only chain 3 units per SAS port off a HBA in either >> case. >> > > The new Dell MD11XX series is 24 2.5" drives and you can chain 3 of them > together off a single controller. If your drives are dual ported you can use > both HBA ports for redundant paths. > > -RossYou''d need more than 3 to get his 40TB usable with current 2.5" drive capacities, unless you''re suggesting he use laptop drives. --Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20100210/620b20bc/attachment.html>
rwalists at washdcmail.com
2010-Feb-10 17:37 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
On Feb 9, 2010, at 1:55 PM, matthew patton wrote:>> It might help people to understand how ridiculous they >> sound going on and on >> about buying a premium storage appliance without any >> storage. > > Since I started this, let me explain to those who can''t begin to understand why I proposed something so "stupid". At work (branch of a federal gov''t big-5 Department) I need 40TB but have next to nothing in budget. (For some reason all you damn citizens think you''re entitled to keep most of your paychecks to yourself instead living off what I decide to give you in foodstamps and rent-controled housing.) Therefore, I can''t afford let alone justify the preposterous premium demanded by "enterprise" EMC/Sun/IBM/NetApp. I can really use dedup, (integrity would be nice), and reasonable rack and power footprint since I''m out of that too. > > I can''t exactly march into my boss'' office and propose that we build my own at-home special which is 16 WD RE2/3 drives $(60) in a $70 case, $100 power supply, four 4-in-3 modules ($30) and a Chenbro SAS expander ($250) now can I... > > Aside: I find it laughable for anyone to claim a J4500 is "premium" anything. IBM DS800, EMC Symetrix, NetApp FAS5xxx, sure. But a glorified JBOD enclosure? Put down the damn cool-aid!I don''t disagree with any of the facts you list, but I don''t think the alternatives are fully described by "Sun vs. much cheaper retail parts." We face exactly this same decision with buying RAM for our servers (maybe more so since it is probably even more difficult to argue there is a difference in RAM chip quality when the same manufacturer''s part is sourced from Sun vs. elsewhere). Sun''s RAM prices are much higher than retail, exactly as you describe here. The first thing to do is negotiate...they discount RAM heavily when threatened with sourcing it elsewhere. But you''ll still wind up with a difference, and not necessarily a tiny one. The thing we consider is how we''ll live with a failure. If it''s 100% Sun RAM there''s no question. We call, they come out and we''re back in business. If it isn''t Sun will blame the 3rd party RAM and insist we try without the third party RAM. Sometimes that''s not possible (we don''t have enough Sun RAM to run the application). The 3rd party vendor might blame the Sun RAM (which is generally easier to test without). We will have to spend time testing and/or debating with different warranty providers to get it resolved. That increases our hours to fix it and/or the downtime (or we just throw out all the RAM and don''t use the warranty, buying 3rd party). Sometimes that makes sense (older server being repurposed for non-critical stuff), sometimes it doesn''t (our most critical processes). So we really don''t view it as RAM vs. RAM comparison. It''s more RAM + easy warranty service vs. RAM + more difficult warranty service. Both can provide the same service to us, but under different cost/restoration conditions down the road. I think it''s the same thing here. If you want a fully supported product down the road where everything that goes wrong is Sun''s fault, then buy that from Sun. If you want something much cheaper but where you will need to negotiate future fixes, assemble it from various sources. If you want a hybrid buy as much hardware as you can from a single vendor (preferably pre-integrated/as a single product vs. assemble yourself) and then run OpenSolaris on it (maybe w/Sun support contract). In some ways its nice to have the option. You can get similar services at hugely different price points...7410 cluster all the way down to white box home NAS. Good luck, Ware
Daniel Carosone
2010-Feb-10 21:36 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 12:37:46PM -0500, rwalists at washdcmail.com wrote:> I don''t disagree with any of the facts you list, but I don''t think the alternatives are fully described by "Sun vs. much cheaper retail parts." > > We face exactly this same decision with buying RAM for our servers > (maybe more so since it is probably even more difficult to argue > there is a difference in RAM chip quality when the same > manufacturer''s part is sourced from Sun vs. elsewhere). > > The thing we consider is how we''ll live with a failure. > [..] > So we really don''t view it as RAM vs. RAM comparison. It''s more RAM > + easy warranty service vs. RAM + more difficult warranty service.Yes. This is a great example of exactly the problem with disks. With RAM, the choice is clear and available (if not always easy). You decide how much the operational assurance is worth to you, and how/when you want to pay for the potential downtime and hassle of failure. Once you''ve made your decision, you act, and the parts work together until and unless some fault arises, at which point the cost implications of your decision come into play. Sun (or HP or IBM, etc) don''t use some proprietary RAM socket adapter and skewed pricing model, in an attempt to force or bias the decision.> If you want a fully supported product down the road where everything > that goes wrong is Sun''s fault, then buy that from Sun.Sure, that''s never been in doubt. People (not even Sun salespeople) are trying to upsell one component, based on the additional benefits of the overall package. The benefits, and even the convincing value proposition to some other customer, of the package are not in dispute. However, that''s irrelevant to someone who is not that customer; the upsell is not attractive to someone who does not want, or cannot afford, the extras.> If you want something much cheaper but where you will need to > negotiate future fixes, assemble it from various sources.I think the OP reached this conclusion long ago, before the original post. He just wants to buy a disk tray, and however much he or anyone else might wish that he could buy more, he''s constrained otherwise, including having to accept the possible implications of later issues. The frustration here is that Sun is not a viable source; he''s already tightly constrained, and this is a further unwelcome constraint. Ordinarily, that would be fine and he''d take his money elsewhere. In this case, there''s an audience here of interested people, Sun customers and employees, who might either know of a way to work around or remove that constraint, or take note of the market feedback about uncatered demand. Apparently not. In this case, there are also not many other sources for shelves with similar density. If that''s really what makes the component "premium", so be it. I hope other vendors are taking notice of the opportunity Sun is choosing (for reasons however valid) to ignore. -- Dan. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 194 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20100211/c89905f9/attachment.bin>
Dan Pritts
2010-Feb-11 22:46 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 03:44:02PM -0600, Wes Felter wrote:> Have you considered Promise JBODs? They officially support > bring-your-own-drives.Have you used these yourself, Wes? I''ve been considering it, but I talked to a colleague at another institution who had some really awful tales to tell about promise FC arrays. They were clearly not ready for prime time. OTOH a SAS jbod is a lot less complicated. danno -- Dan Pritts, Sr. Systems Engineer Internet2 office: +1-734-352-4953 | mobile: +1-734-834-7224 Internet2 Spring Member Meeting April 26-28, 2010 - Arlington, Virginia http://events.internet2.edu/2010/spring-mm/
Daniel Bakken
2010-Feb-11 23:14 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Dan Pritts <danno at internet2.edu> wrote:> I''ve been considering it, but I talked to a colleague at another > institution who had some really awful tales to tell about promise > FC arrays. ?They were clearly not ready for prime time. > > OTOH a SAS jbod is a lot less complicated.We have used two Promise Vtrak m500f fibre channel arrays in heavy I/O applications for several years. They don''t always handle failing disks gracefully-- sometimes requiring a hard reboot to recover. This is partly due to crappy disks with weird failure modes. But a RAID system should never require a reboot to recover from a single disk failure. That defeats the whole purpose of RAID, which is supposed to survive disk failures through redundancy. However, Promise iSCSI and JBOD systems (we own one of each) are more stable. We use them with Linux (XFS) and OpenSolaris (ZFS), and haven''t any experienced problems to date. Their JBOD systems, when filled with Western Digital RE3 disks, are an extremely reliable, low-cost, high performance ZFS storage solution. Daniel Bakken Systems Administrator Economic Modeling Specialists Inc 1187 Alturas Drive Moscow, Idaho 83843
On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 12:55 PM, matthew patton <pattonme at yahoo.com> wrote: ..... snip ....> Enter the J4500, 48 drives in 4U, what looks to be solid engineering, and redundancy in all the right places. An empty chassis at $3000 is totally justifiable. Maybe as high as $4000. In comparison a naked Dell MD1000 is $2000. If you do the subtraction from SUN''s claimed "breakthru" pricing of $1/GB, the chassis cost works out to $4000. I can live with that. > > Now look up the price for 24TB and it''s 28 freaking thousand!There''s your first mistake. You''re probably eligible for a very nice Federal Systems discount. My *guess* would be about 40%. ..... snip ....... Regards, -- Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc,Plano,TX al at logical-approach.com Voice: 972.379.2133 Timezone: US CDT OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Member - Apr 2005 to Mar 2007 http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/ogb_2005-2007/
Daniel Bakken
2010-Feb-12 20:26 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced
On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 12:11 PM, Al Hopper <al at logical-approach.com> wrote:> There''s your first mistake. ?You''re probably eligible for a very nice > Federal Systems discount. ?My *guess* would be about 40%.Promise JBOD and similar systems are often the only affordable choice for those of us who can''t get sweetheart discounts, don''t work at billion dollar corporations, or aren''t bankrolled by the Federal Leviathan. Daniel Bakken Systems Administrator Economic Modeling Specialists Inc 1187 Alturas Drive Moscow, Idaho 83843
matthew patton
2010-Feb-23 15:53 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced drives
For those who are interested in some of the options out there. DIY DAS: Supermicro 36 bay case - $1800 Promise 16 bay JBOD VTrak J610sD - $3700 Promise VTE610sD - $7500 (SAS attached head unit with onboard raid controllers, takes JBOD expansion) The following apply to 1TB SATA drive configurations, dual controllers under federal pricing: HP MD600 - $722/TB DELL MD1000 - $680/TB (780/TB w/ nearline-SAS) Sun J4500 - $1014/TB (federal discount is a mere 13%, not 40) NexSan SATAbeast - $1400/TB (FC attached dual-head) Of the "we force you to buy our overinflated drives" camp, Dell is the cheapest but also the most inefficient by far on power/space. The HP puts 70 disks in 4U. NexSan 42, and Sun 48. The clear winner here is HP.
Bob Friesenhahn
2010-Feb-23 18:44 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced drives
On Tue, 23 Feb 2010, matthew patton wrote:> > Of the "we force you to buy our overinflated drives" camp, Dell is > the cheapest but also the most inefficient by far on power/space. > The HP puts 70 disks in 4U. NexSan 42, and Sun 48. The clear winner > here is HP.What is the performance like with HP? Is there a loss of bandwidth or reliability due to their approach? Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
Will Murnane
2010-Feb-23 19:32 UTC
[zfs-discuss] verging OT: how to buy J4500 w/o overpriced drives
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 10:53, matthew patton <pattonme at yahoo.com> wrote:> Of the "we force you to buy our overinflated drives" camp, Dell is the cheapest but also the most inefficient by far on power/space. The HP puts 70 disks in 4U. NexSan 42, and Sun 48. The clear winner here is HP.The HP MDS600 is 5u tall. That''s 14 disks/u, compared to Sun''s 12, which means it''s not so great a difference. Will -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: mds600.png Type: image/png Size: 73936 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20100223/504a1bf5/attachment.png>