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performance - Why should I choose an Enterprise Storage Vendor?



I have been basically psyched out by some of the sales consultants from enterprise vendors such as EMC and NetApp.



We have a new requirement to store around 30 TB of unstructured data, and around 100-200 GB of structured data (mostly MySQL). I am considering setting up couple of JBODs which are custom built running FreeNAS, OpenFiler or OpenSolaris for the unstructured Data. The total cost with redundancy and backup is coming to less than 10,000 USD for me.



For the latter, I am planning to use a standard HP DL-180 G6 Server RAID 1 ( 2 SAS Drives), with an incremental backup to a backup system.




The entire cost is working out less 12,000 USD.



The files inside the JBOD are often accessed by a web application used by some of our mobile workforce. Presently the data size of files are less than 1 TB, but this should increase to 20-22 TB in next 2 years time. Also the number of users accessing may also go up. That means this would be accessed very often. Something like 20-25 concurrent users at any point of time, and during peak may be about 250.



Sales consultants from the so-called enterprise vendors have been asking us to move the infrastructure to their boxes, which with all licensing will cost us 50,000-55,000 USD ( 32 TB Storage Array).



Spending 40,000 USD extra is a lot of money, and we would like to save.



However I would like to take more opinions on the right strategy. What more should I do to make data more secure and not compromise on performance



Answer



You don't pick a storage vendor (enterprise or otherwise) to keep your data secure. For the most part, you can get the same RAID resilience with an EMC SAN as you can with direct-attached storage, and many times performance can be equal as well. The reason you should pick an "enterprise storage vendor" is if (and only if) your application needs the features they provide. Think snapshots, replication, shared storage, etc. If you don't need those advanced features, then it's not worth your money.



If you do end up going with the non-"enterprise storage" route, be sure to do yourself a favor and don't use SATA disks. At the very least, stick with the midline SAS drives. They'll perform much better and are much more reliable.



You haven't gone into great detail about your environment, but my guess is that you would be able to get by just fine using direct-attached storage.


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