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    Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution

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    • hobbit666H
      hobbit666
      last edited by

      So the question is do we need a SAN, I don't think we do. But how do I sell/convince management that other options are available/cheaper and better (I like Scale and think they will good fit, 2-3 node cluster with a good DR plan)

      Few Details
      One of my projects I'm on at the moment is finding a new supplier for a MPLS (we're using this solution as it's worked well for several years 10+). Part of this deal we will be getting some rack space in the DC and it's been mentioned that we should move our server+NAS into there.

      Background on our current set-up (please remember this was sold to us and set-up before I arrived here 4+ years ago)
      3x Dell Servers
      1x Dell SAN

      Running 12 VM's - DC, SQL Server, Finance & HR, Misc VM's and the biggie! Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Citrix XenApp
      58 Sites all access this and run live off the Citrix as we do a lot of Account sales to farms so the store need up to date account information so they don't sell stuff to people on hold.

      Now the suggestion has already been made that we need a refresh and it's ready been mentioned SAN! from my days on here and SW I know with only 20-30 VM's and 3-4 Hosts we most probably don't need a SAN, but we do need HA, as the SQL/Dynamics/Citrix need to be running 100% during office hours as down time (even 10minutes) could loss us a £50K order.

      Hope it all makes sense (I does in my head but never been good at getting down on paper and across to people like my MPLS proposal but that's another story lol 😄 )

      scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 3
      • scottalanmillerS
        scottalanmiller
        last edited by

        Tagging @scale @ScaleLegion

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • DustinB3403D
          DustinB3403
          last edited by

          For the record, scale starts at 3 nodes.

          No less.

          scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • scottalanmillerS
            scottalanmiller @hobbit666
            last edited by

            @hobbit666 said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

            Now the suggestion has already been made that we need a refresh and it's ready been mentioned SAN! from my days on here and SW I know with only 20-30 VM's and 3-4 Hosts we most probably don't need a SAN, but we do need HA, as the SQL/Dynamics/Citrix need to be running 100% during office hours as down time (even 10minutes) could loss us a £50K order.

            Since a SAN undermines HA (doesn't make it impossible, just works against it) ask people why they are even putting a SAN on the table. Force them to tell you where the idea came from (hint: answer is always a sales guy) because, and you should point this out before they answer, the SAN introduces these problems:

            • Complexity. More moving parts, more dependencies.
            • SIngle Point of Failure without mitigation.
            • Risk that the SAN will be dual controller and worse than a normal server (unless you spend a fortune)
            • Expensive. It's an entire device without a purpose, so every penny is lost money
            • Risk. It adds risk, working against your HA.
            • Undermines Existing HA. Things like DC HA are totally broken by introducing a SAN.
            • Slow. A SAN has extra bottlenecks and overhead, it can't ever be quite as fast as local storage.

            So costly, slow and risky. Establish that these are the natural artifacts of a SAN. Then ask them that given these architectural facts, what were the benefits that they were thinking the extra cost and risk were going to be worth.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • scottalanmillerS
              scottalanmiller @DustinB3403
              last edited by

              @DustinB3403 said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

              For the record, scale starts at 3 nodes.

              No less.

              The smallest is one pure storage and two mixed compute/storage nodes. Compute doesn't need to be on every node necessarily.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • J
                Jason Banned
                last edited by

                You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

                scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote -1
                • scottalanmillerS
                  scottalanmiller @hobbit666
                  last edited by

                  @hobbit666 said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                  from my days on here and SW I know with only 20-30 VM's and 3-4 Hosts we most probably don't need a SAN...

                  Number of VMs is not a factor in choosing a SAN. But number of host nodes is. And at three or fewer, SAN is literally off the table, there is no possible use case for it. At four it's a million to one that it could make sense, but it could but never where HA is even remotely important. So from the most basic SAN factors, SAN isn't even a remote possibility here. No matter what your goals are otherwise, SAN can't meet your needs. It's super simple in this case because of the HA need, even at four nodes SAN isn't viable. No way to implement it without totally screwing the company financially.

                  http://www.smbitjournal.com/2013/06/when-to-consider-a-san/

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • scottalanmillerS
                    scottalanmiller @Jason
                    last edited by

                    @Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                    You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

                    For commercial use, too? How did I not know that they had opened this up?

                    J 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • hobbit666H
                      hobbit666
                      last edited by

                      Thanks Sam. Will look over your article on Monday try and get ready when we have the talks soon lol.

                      scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • J
                        Jason Banned @scottalanmiller
                        last edited by

                        @scottalanmiller said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                        @Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                        You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

                        For commercial use, too? How did I not know that they had opened this up?

                        Yes, the EULA has no restrictions on that. Their marketing terms of course try to convey you should " When you are ready to purchase a ScaleIO software license for full production use and maintenance, contact a Sales Associate" but the EULA has nothing requiring it.

                        scottalanmillerS KOOLERK 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote -1
                        • scottalanmillerS
                          scottalanmiller @Jason
                          last edited by

                          @Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                          You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

                          Just checked, it says you have to purchase a license to use it. This is the trial only and is only for testing.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • scottalanmillerS
                            scottalanmiller @Jason
                            last edited by

                            @Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                            @scottalanmiller said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                            @Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                            You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

                            For commercial use, too? How did I not know that they had opened this up?

                            Yes, the EULA has no restrictions on that. Their marketing terms of course try to convey you should " When you are ready to purchase a ScaleIO software license for full production use and maintenance, contact a Sales Associate" but the EULA has nothing requiring it.

                            Oh okay! You've been through the EULA? That's awesome that they quietly left that out.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • scottalanmillerS
                              scottalanmiller @hobbit666
                              last edited by

                              @hobbit666 said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                              Thanks Sam. Will look over your article on Monday try and get ready when we have the talks soon lol.

                              There is a video coming from MangoCon 2016 very soon that covers this as well.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                              • scottalanmillerS
                                scottalanmiller
                                last edited by

                                Maybe print out the SAN article and this one as well for them.

                                http://www.smbitjournal.com/2013/06/the-inverted-pyramid-of-doom/

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • scottalanmillerS
                                  scottalanmiller
                                  last edited by

                                  And print this out and have it ready in the "tech pack" for them. This covers why those SAN sales people are out to get them.

                                  https://mangolassi.it/topic/8822/why-dual-controllers-is-not-a-risk-mitigation-strategy-alone

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                                  • ardeynA
                                    ardeyn
                                    last edited by

                                    As Scott said, using a dedicated SAN for this kind of environment is currently the leading cause of cancer in the United States. You could use some type of VSAN to provide shared storage between the servers. VSAN/HP VSA/StarWind will do the trick if you decide to repurpose existing hardware. If you decide to get new hardware, then Scale or StarWind's HCA are your friends.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                    • Deleted74295D
                                      Deleted74295 Banned
                                      last edited by Deleted74295

                                      Do you have a fancy PDF brochure and a nice PPT presentation stating that your solution is high performance and wonderful?

                                      People would rather pay more for a riskier solution if how it is packaged is appealing to them.

                                      Education is 1 thing and works for some leadership types but others just want a flat quick guarantee of "Will this be the right thing, sell it to me" and you don't have much time to do that.

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • Oles BorysO
                                        Oles Borys
                                        last edited by Oles Borys

                                        @ardeyn Thank you very much for mentioning StarWind.

                                        StarWind HCA should fit your needs perfectly. It is based on Dell hardware and will provide you VMs with pure 100% synchronous HA. This solution is also fully supported by a single vendor and comes to your site preconfigured.
                                        We are also Dell OEM partner, thus less expensive than our competitors.

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                                        • KOOLERK
                                          KOOLER Vendor @Jason
                                          last edited by

                                          @Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                                          @scottalanmiller said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                                          @Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                                          You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

                                          For commercial use, too? How did I not know that they had opened this up?

                                          Yes, the EULA has no restrictions on that. Their marketing terms of course try to convey you should " When you are ready to purchase a ScaleIO software license for full production use and maintenance, contact a Sales Associate" but the EULA has nothing requiring it.

                                          This isn't true. Don't get yourself intro trouble with misuse! You can't use it for production and you have to let EMC know you evaluate with a prod use in mind. That's EVERYTHING but free... IMHO.

                                          https://www.emc.com/content/terms/eula-scaleio.htm

                                          E. “Internal Business Purposes” means an internal (non-commercial) Use for the purpose(s) of testing and demonstrating the features of the Software, and not for Customer product development, product testing, or other Customer research and development or commercial purposes.

                                          J 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                          • J
                                            Jason Banned @KOOLER
                                            last edited by Jason

                                            @KOOLER said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                                            @Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                                            @scottalanmiller said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                                            @Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

                                            You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

                                            For commercial use, too? How did I not know that they had opened this up?

                                            Yes, the EULA has no restrictions on that. Their marketing terms of course try to convey you should " When you are ready to purchase a ScaleIO software license for full production use and maintenance, contact a Sales Associate" but the EULA has nothing requiring it.

                                            This isn't true. Don't get yourself intro trouble with misuse! You can't use it for production and you have to let EMC know you evaluate with a prod use in mind. That's EVERYTHING but free... IMHO.

                                            https://www.emc.com/content/terms/eula-scaleio.htm

                                            E. “Internal Business Purposes” means an internal (non-commercial) Use for the purpose(s) of testing and demonstrating the features of the Software, and not for Customer product development, product testing, or other Customer research and development or commercial purposes.

                                            You are reading that incorrectly. That's just definitions, not the terms. Our EMC rep already confirmed it to us.

                                            dafyreD KOOLERK 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote -1
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