MSA1500i versus Aioxxxx (600, 1200)

[Luis Otavio da Costa]

Hi folks ,

We are considering MSA1500i intead of Aioxxx or NAS solutions with iSCSI Software to access Oracle and Lotus Notes databases .

Which one should be better to use considering meanly performance ?

Another point : can we configure MSA1500cs and MSA1500i as a unique product I mean both functions using 2 FC module and 2 Ethernet module or at least one module in each ?

Thanks in advance .

[Víctor Cespón]

If you only want LUNs served trough iSCSI, go for the MSA1510i. You'll have more speed and capacity than in an All-In-One.
The MSA1500 and MSA1510i are different products (different firmware) and cannot be mixed.

[Luis Otavio da Costa]

Thanks a lot . We´ll consider it a lot .

[Ted Buis]

You could use a ProLiant Windows Storage Server with iSCSI target software to front end the MSA1500cs to have a solution that provides both iSCSI, NAS (CFS & NFS) and FC SAN. Performance is often driven by RAID type and number of physical disk drives (spindle count). You should estimate the number of I/Os per second you need for each of your applications, the capacity and RAID level for each application, and let your HP Solutions Architect help design a solution that can meet your requirements. You may find that neither can deliver all the I/Os that you need and you should consider and EVA4100 on the back end instead of the MSA. The EVA's virtualization capability can be very helpful in providing higher performance in a mixed RAID level environment without suffering from stranded storage.

[Keith_112]

Hi Luis,

Performance can be tuned using spindle count on the backend storage. Adding spindles increases performance as well as cost. MSA1510i uses hardware based iSCSI Target and the AiO uses software based iSCSI Target which allows it to make use of the latest and more powerful Intel processors.

Please be aware of other factors which may affect your decision:

-- Initiator support: AiO supports iSCSI initiators for Windows, Linux, VMware ESX, and Qlogic. MSA1510i supports Windows and VMware ESX.

-- Protocol support: MSA1510i is a dedicated iSCSI array. AiO is a unified storage device that does both iSCSI and NAS (CIFS/SMB, NFS, HTTP, FTP).

-- Management: AiO uses All-in-One Storage Manager (ASM) which is designed for IT generalists and can be used to configure both iSCSI target and iSCSI initiator (initiator using an agent on the Windows Server 2003 system); and optimize storage for applications like Exchange and SQL Server including snapshots and backup.

-- Scalability: both products scale significantly, MSA1510i uses SCSI/SATA drives whereas AiO uses SAS/SATA drives.

-- Redundancy: MSA1510i supports dual-controllers. AiO is a single controller node but supports MPIO in the NIC and replication to another AiO via Storage Mirroring.

HP StorageWorks AiO Storage Manager video:
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/all-in-one/AllinOneStorageSystem.wmv