Nexenta on Commodity Hardware vs. NetApp/EMC

Yes, almost the same quality drives, the supermicro has its main storage on SATA 7.2 drives while the NetAPP has all 300GB SAS Drives.  Also as said, the SuperMicro is a head+storage whereas the NetApp is controller-head and shelves.  if the supermicro board dies for example, the storage is down, whereas in the NetApp the other head will take over.  (Of course it will be in cluster mode, not two single filers)

I know I cant go wrong with either one, question is what are the pros/cons to each?

The main issue I have with commodity boxes is the level of monitoring.  Hopefully the supermicro comes with bmc card so that you can actually tell that a drive went down, otherwise you don't have insight in a good bit of your environment.  Had a customer with this type of solution with Openfiler that went down about a week ago and had to restore from tape.

I'm not sure about the Nextenta,is it active/active or active/passive?  If you have a lot of read/write data it may make sense to get slower drives and get a shelf with 6 to 8 SSD cards for flex pool configuration.  

ZFS is very similar to WAFL with respect to functionality but you may also want to look at SAN integration with your applications such as vmware, sql, oracle, exchange, etc.., wasn't sure if Nextenta offers the same type of options.

At the end of the day iops are iops, both solutions will do the job.

I'm not so familiar with Nexenta either... that's part of the problem! :) I am familiar with NetApp and I know the manageability and monitoring which is a strong point against the SuperMicro in my opinion.  I dont know if it comes with a BMC card, and for sure it doesnt have Autosupport....

Nexenta is supposed to be fully integrate able to VMware, and it gives a datastore to the ESXi, from what I understand it also can copy on a block level from one system to another sort of like snapmirror.

Looks like supermicro may come with a bmc card that will do snmp, smtp, etc.. what I don't know is what type of traps it provides and is it smart enough to monitor the raid controller (other than the built in one), if it can't then that would be a manual check on a daily basis and hopefully you have a spare to rebuild on.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/ipmi.cfm

what I meant is that the architecture of NetApp is to have a head unit, like say an FAS2020 and then have shelves.  Same goes for EMC, and many others.  you can then have 2 heads in a cluster active/passive, or with the newer OnTap 8.1 cluster-mode with namespaces etc.  

Databases such as Oracle RAC use a "raw" file system on a storage, in that case it may be better to use a bare metal server with an HBA to the fabric.  btw, what do you mean ESXi is not efficient when it come to disk IO?

Detailed technical arguments aside, dedicated storage vendors can offer a higher level of support across their hardware and software together. This is because they control and supply both the hardware and the software. It might be hard to match the service level by combining software support from one vendor with hardware support from another.

So if the criterion is 'rock solid storage', I would go with a dedicated storage vendor.

with all the after market support and integration between NetApp and VMware, I would vote NetApp if you want a "rock solid solution"

Not to muddy up the issue, but you may also want to look at Nimble Storage. We've looked at both Nexenta and Nimble and found them both, at least technology-wise, to be "similar" in their approach of caching and SSD and algorithms to help make the IOPs better.  At least from the quotes that we have received, Nimble was quite a bit less expensive.

It looks like the general consensus is to go with NetApp vs. the Nexenta.  dlethe or anyone else, do you think the performance on the SuperMicro/Nexenta could blow away any of the
systems by NetAPP/EMC? that's at least what I was told, that they had put this system together for some high traffic websites to get some big throughput and performance. Granted this isn't as secure/enterprise but with enough hardware/software question is if it can reach a similiar stability and if the performance really blows away these vendors like NetApp/EMC.

ZFS will possibly outperform, but it does not have the Integration, Support and Software thay NetApp/EMC currently has.

Nexenta has a channel too.  Not only that, but let's face it, the author isn't going to make a dent in the quota of an EMC/NetApp rep, so they'll be dealing with a reseller channel, not EMC/NetApp directly.

Those systems are also closed and for the price delta, one can add a lot of extra redundancy and make the ZFS solution bullet-proof.  BUT I must point out that one just can't throw any system together.  The right make/model of SSDs; HDDs; HDD firmware; enclosure/backplane; controllers; and topology matter.   That is why EMC/NetApp make the big bucks.  They qualify and test what works together.

The people I deal with you have had unstable  Nexenta systems didn't buy the right hardware and didn't configure it properly.  They viewed all "enterprise class" HDDs as the same, and felt same way about SSDs & controllers.

Actually there's a decent price war going on between EMC and Netapp, Seems like both are in a refresh cycle and there are some deep discounts and trade in deals.  I think both are looking more towards market share since they make more on support and licenses than on hardware for a 3 year cycle.  Always play the vendors against each other, can't lose no matter who you go with.

I would see if you can get a system to kick the tires on, I have seen EMC and Netapp do this, I wonder if Nextenta would do the same.  A lot of vendors are also supporting openstack which is interesting storage solutions, seems to be gaining traction

Nexenta is an operating system, and one can download the open source version and try it for free.  You can run it in a VM or on a windows laptop if you want to play with it. Nexenta doesn't sell hardware.  

 Equate this as you are evaluating that supermicro gear running Win2K8. Would you call Microsoft and ask them to send you that supermicro system with the disks?   No, but you can download Win2K8 trials (or Win2K12 trials) and run it on your own gear to kick the tires.  Nexenta has that too.