Software SAN vs M3600i

[salvadorb]

Hi guys,
I hope you're doing well. We have some XCP-NG servers running in our network and we want to deploy our first SAN in order to allow HA. I've been considering two options:
- 2 x Dell R720xd servers with dual10GB card and 2 x Seagate Exos X20z 18TB each machine and a StarWinds VSAN software
- 1 x Dell M3600i with dual 2x10GB iSCSI cards with 4 x Seagate Exos X20z 18TB

Which one do you think is a better a better idea (and why if possible) for a SAN which will be used with a XCP-NG cluster.

Best regards,

Salvador

 

[Renat]

What are the comparison conditions?

Software San:
--verified tech employer to setup iscsi target or SMB; support selected software. Means a longer process of time to install system.
--availability to use cheap unsafe SATA hdd
--two full separate HA nodes

MD3:
--ready solution like a black box (easily and quick way to setup export of block device)
--only SAS! hdd
--only verified Dell HDD for MD3 storage, not for Dell servers (that has only 10Tb models), if you didn`t process Unbranding procedure (to accept "non-Dell for storage" sas HDD/SAS SSD)
--if only MD3 chassis itself (backplane) will dead.

 

[Connorise]

With a single SAN, which even could be backed up by two controllers, and two network cards, you are still building an inverted pyramid of doom, and you are relying all your storage subsystems on a single piece of hardware, and it is a very fragile architecture. The first option with two nodes with virtual SAN software seems more bulletproof because your storage physically resides on two separate nodes, which means that even if one of the nodes physically fails, you will still have one more node to read/write from/to. I would vote in favour of Starwind vSAN.

 

[salvadorb]

Hi,
I also found True as Scale, it means to support multiple nodes. Do you think it's a safe option?

 

[Lix]

Not on two nodes, also Gluster is slow and not prod ready in xcp-ng.

 

[Rand__]

@gea 's napp-it allows HA and has all the ZFS goodies.

 

[gb00s]

Not on two nodes, also Gluster is slow and not prod ready in xcp-ng.

Is this a statement specifically for xcp-ng or GlusterFS on X in general?

 

[Lix]

2x nodes in any case. xcp-ng’s Gluster driver is not on the supported list: Storage in XCP-ng | XCP-ng Documentation

 

[fops]

2 x Dell R720xd servers with dual10GB card and 2 x Seagate Exos X20z 18TB each machine and a StarWinds VSAN software

We have a lot of customers with Starwind VSAN HA software, most of them are Dell shops. So far, It is a pretty solid solution with a decent support team, which helps to deploy the initial configuration.

 

[Connorise]

Yes, the support is just great.