Expanding P4500 G1 Cluster : P4500 G2 or P4300 G2?

[Steve Burkett]

Hi all,

So we've got to the point where our 2 node P4500 G1 10.8TB SAS Virtualisation starter kit is fairly full and needing some more disk space. I'm just wondering if you guys have any suggestions on which way to go with this.

Our reseller is saying to go for a P4300 G2 7.2TB SAS Starter kit. This comes in at around £20k (including the £1500 3 Year support package), and would give us 16 more 450GB spindles. But are we able to mix in 2 x P4300's to our existing P4500 cluster, or would we need to keep them as a seperate cluster?

The other choice is to go with a P4500 G2 7.2TB SAS Storage System (expansion node) which has 12 spindles like our P4500 G1's, but has the larger 600GB disks, more ram, better controller etc. I understand that we won't be able to use the extra capacity of the 600GB disks in our existing cluster as the others are only 450GBer's, and it'd dumb itself down to be the performance of the P4500 G1's. But I guess it's more akin to our existing kit? Price of this is around £23k including £4700 for the Support Pack (Wow! Nearly 3 times the price of the 2 node P4300 Support Pack?!)

Hard decision, what have you guys gone for when you needed to grow your cluster? Any suggestions or tips?

We're running 50 x vSphere virtual servers on our boxes.

Thanks for any info!

Steve.

[teledata]

Steve,

My advice is to find yourself a reseller that is an HP Renew AND HP StorageWorks (P4000) certified partner.

You should be able to buy the 10.8TB SAS Virtualisation SAN. Look for part number AX696AR. I just checked with our distributor, and we have those available (although I'm not sure of the availability in the UK).

I would offer to sell it to you, however I am only authorized to sell them in the US. These are HP Renew, (overstock, customer return etc) but come with the full same-as-new warranty.

The support price difference is because ALL of the kits (2 SAN kits) come with 3 years of basic support, so you are only paying to upgrade from basic to premium. The single nodes only come with 1 year of support, so you have to pay for year 2, 3, AND upgrade to premium.

It is ALWAYS a much better value to buy the P4000 SANs in the solution kits (either starter, virtualization, multi-site etc) than a-la-carte.

[Steve Burkett]

Thanks for the info Teledata. We grabbed a quote for the Renew kit previously (around £29k with a 5 year support contract for the 10.8TB SAS virtualisation kit, same as what we currently have) but unfortunately HP had a blow out sale end of October before their financial year end or something and no longer have any of the Renew kit in stock. Definitely would have gone for this, they were doing them for around £24k in October.

[teledata]

IMO I would get the Starter SAS SAN and run it as a separate cluster. (Otherwise you loose storage capacity, AND lower the total IOP throughput of your existing 10.8TB SAN) You can put it in the same management group, so you can easily migrate volumes between clusters.


Then keep your eyes open for a 10.8 Virt SAN to come available on the Renew list and snap it up next time! ;)

You could also check renew to see if they have a single node P4500 AT006AR (G1 5.4TB) or AX700A (G2 5.4TB <- these JUST came available in our renew inventory)... The renew pricing should be significantly lower than the new 12x600GB model, but you would pay a bit more for the 3 year premium support.

[Steve Burkett]

Follow up on this one, we actually ended up securing an HP renewed P4500 G1 5.4TB unit, same as our previous nodes, so we've been happy for the past year. But now we've nearly filled that as well so are looking to add a fourth node.

Trouble now is the P4500 G1's are listed as obsolete in Europe, so we're either having to source one from Asia (3-4 week delivery time) or go with a G2 model.

Anyone know if there's any issues with adding a G2 node to an existing 3 x node G1 cluster?

[bryan_hadzik]

You can add G2 into a G1 cluster, it will just perform at the slower speed like the G1s.