VMware and P4300G2 / P4500G2 (Lefthand)

[Joe Zasada]

Looking at storage options to run VMware. Looking at the P4300G2 and the P4500G2. The big question is... is the P4500G2 really worth almost double the cost (for less storage space)? and how much of a difference would I experience over the P4300G2?

[Mike Povall]

Hi Joe,

Which ones are you looking at?

Don't be confused into thinking that the P4300 16TB bundle is on the same performance scale as the P4500 units as it uses MDL SAS drives (capacity & performance of SATA in a SAS package).

The P4300 uses 8 disks in a single LUN for data across the unit so only one disk failure compared to the P4500 using 12 disks in two LUNs for data. In the past LeftHand used to publish 'worst case' performance numbers for the units where the P4300 was 1100 IOPS and the P4500 was 1700 IOPS. If it was a SATA unit then it was down to 400 IOPS.

I have implemented both P4300 and P4500 units in VMware environments but would only use the ones with 15K SAS drives for production environments.

Regards, Mike.

[Joe Zasada]

Thanks mike. Your info is very helpful. I'm leaning towards the P4500G2.