comparing different MSAs and disk options

Tom Lyczko — Fri, 22 May 2020 14:37:52 GMT

I'm shopping for a new MSA iSCSI SAN for a VMware cluster (3 hosts only).

Some questions about possible configurations.

We have two SQL servers running Kronos and Great Plains, plus an Exchange 2013 server.

I'm curious about how end users would possibly perceive the differences between the following configurations regardless of what SAN is used:

1) 12 10k 600 GB drives (RAID 5) or 24 10k 600 GB drives (RAID 6)

2) 2 SSD drives appropriately sized (RAID 1) and either 10 or 22 SATA drives with appropriate RAID, with tiering turned on

3) is the 1050 noticeably slower than 2050?? -- tn terms of customers' perceptions of how "fast" things are??

I ask all these questions because I'm only planning for the next 5-6 years, I expect everything to be cloudified after that....I only need 6-8 TB storage, we're presently using perhaps 3 TB of storage right now, and I'm looking for a balance of speed vs. cost.

I'm also looking at new servers, for which I've requested the fastest possible 8-core processor that I think we can afford.

Thank you, Tom

Re: comparing different MSAs and disk options

arun_r — Thu, 28 May 2020 15:22:41 GMT

Hi Tom,

MSA quickspecs provides a basic guidance of the IOPS that you can expect in few configurations.

Its just a guideline on what you could expect from the array.

MSA 2050 quickspecs page 25:

https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=a00008276enw#

MSA 1050 quickspecs page 22:

https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=a00005875enw

SSD drives with performance tier will definitely give better performance. However, I cant comment on how fast the applications work from end user perspective with different configurations.

One major difference between MSA 1050 and MSA 2050 is the number of host ports (4 for MSA 1050 and 8 for MSA 2050) which limits the number of paths and load balancing at host port level.

It would be good to engage a pre-sales storage consultant through HPE sales team to get more appropriate answers for your queries.

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comparing different MSAs and disk options

Re: comparing different MSAs and disk options