viniciusferrao
Contributor
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2013
- Messages
- 192
Hello guys,
You've read correctly, I want to use this expensive DELL storage as a JBOD device using the external SAS interface to a single 1U machine loaded with FreeNAS.
It seems a bit insane from a point of view, but here's the situation: the Powervault device was already bought and it's on production. But this storage is getting us on nerves.
I was called to solve some issues on the network of this company, but when I arrived I've saw a lot of issues on other services, and the storage subsystem was one of them. I will not even mention that DELL sold this storage with only four disks, and recommended RAID5, to run more than 40 VMware VM's, including a 120 user Exchange Server. But that's another problem.
In 4 months we had three database crashes in the Exchange 2013 Server. Three times the database went to an unrepairable state and backups are rolled back with lost messages and full-day outages.
After much stress with DELL blaming everyone else, even VMware was blamed, they finally talked about this Firmware Update: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=MDX0G
With the following fix: Addressed a rare condition which has the potential of causing a processor fault that could result in a data integrity issue.
To sum up everything the company is really pissed of with DELL and they do not trust anymore on the PowerVault device and they want a better solution.
To fix things, I was thinking in using those guys as JBOD devices, buy an enterprise grade machine with lots of RAM, two SSDs for L2ARC, Dual 10GB NICs and an External SAS controller to be FreeNAS appliance. The machine I've in mind is the Lenovo RD540 loaded with at least 64GB: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/servers/thinkserver/racks/rd540/
Here in Brazil, those machies are really cheap now (for their grade) since they become EOL and they come completely redundant with two 300GB SAS disk, IT controller, redundant PSU and etc.
And since the company have some disks across the three (yes, three) Powervault MD3820i devices, the idea is to put 11x 10k discs (one hotspare) on the main FreeNAS storage and use cheap 7200RPM disk on other MD3820i devices. So the plain is to built three FreeNAS machines with thoses MD3820i attached as JBOD devices.
So I was opening this thread just for sharing my frustration with DELL and to hear some opinions from our awesome community.
Thanks in advance,
Vinícius.
You've read correctly, I want to use this expensive DELL storage as a JBOD device using the external SAS interface to a single 1U machine loaded with FreeNAS.
It seems a bit insane from a point of view, but here's the situation: the Powervault device was already bought and it's on production. But this storage is getting us on nerves.
I was called to solve some issues on the network of this company, but when I arrived I've saw a lot of issues on other services, and the storage subsystem was one of them. I will not even mention that DELL sold this storage with only four disks, and recommended RAID5, to run more than 40 VMware VM's, including a 120 user Exchange Server. But that's another problem.
In 4 months we had three database crashes in the Exchange 2013 Server. Three times the database went to an unrepairable state and backups are rolled back with lost messages and full-day outages.
After much stress with DELL blaming everyone else, even VMware was blamed, they finally talked about this Firmware Update: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=MDX0G
With the following fix: Addressed a rare condition which has the potential of causing a processor fault that could result in a data integrity issue.
To sum up everything the company is really pissed of with DELL and they do not trust anymore on the PowerVault device and they want a better solution.
To fix things, I was thinking in using those guys as JBOD devices, buy an enterprise grade machine with lots of RAM, two SSDs for L2ARC, Dual 10GB NICs and an External SAS controller to be FreeNAS appliance. The machine I've in mind is the Lenovo RD540 loaded with at least 64GB: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/servers/thinkserver/racks/rd540/
Here in Brazil, those machies are really cheap now (for their grade) since they become EOL and they come completely redundant with two 300GB SAS disk, IT controller, redundant PSU and etc.
And since the company have some disks across the three (yes, three) Powervault MD3820i devices, the idea is to put 11x 10k discs (one hotspare) on the main FreeNAS storage and use cheap 7200RPM disk on other MD3820i devices. So the plain is to built three FreeNAS machines with thoses MD3820i attached as JBOD devices.
So I was opening this thread just for sharing my frustration with DELL and to hear some opinions from our awesome community.
Thanks in advance,
Vinícius.