Entry Level SAN

My company has purchased a new ERP system and we have budgeted 45K for hardware. We are not a large company (150+ users), however we do run 24/7 and require HA and redundancy. Right now we use VMware ESxi for some production servers - 2 hosts using local storage. This new system will require Oracle DB, which I plan on virtualizing. My thinking is to get two servers, large RAM and processing with 8gb fiber to a single SAN. Next year we will budget for another server and SAN for a replicated site. Any direction would be helpful!  Thanks.
dennisjameshowardAsked:
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Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert / EE MVE^2)Connect With a Mentor VMware and Virtualization ConsultantCommented:
Dell Equallogic PS4100 or HP Lefthand 4000 series
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andyalderConnect With a Mentor Commented:
You mention fibre channel in the question but you should consider SAS host attach. You may say SAS is only 6Gb but it is multi-lane, normally 4 lanes so 24Gb, not that you are likely to have enough IOPS available to swamp 6Gb let alone 24Gb. SAS host attach is limited to the number of ports on the controllers, so generally you can only have 4 dual attached hosts but that's more than enough for your cluster.

Be aware though that you don't want a dumb enclosure plus PCIe RAID controller but you need intelligent RAID controllers in the SAS attached SAN and dumb SAS HBAs in the hosts.

For example HP P2000 G3 AW594B £7,500, D2700 disk shelf AJ941A £2,500. The D2700 doesn't have the intelligent (and costly) controllers that you need. If the total price for the SAS attached variant is a little less than the fibre channel one it's the right thing.

Several dual controller SAS SANs on the market, it's generally best for support purposses to use the same vendor as your servers.
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slightwv (䄆 Netminder)Connect With a Mentor Commented:
>>however we do run 24/7 and require HA
>>require Oracle DB, which I plan on virtualizing

Are you aware of Oracle's support position on VMWare Virtualization?

They will only support a virtual environment in two circumstances:
1: The problem you have is a known issue.
2: The problem can be replicated on a physical server.

Support Position for Oracle Products Running on VMWare Virtualized Environments [ID 249212.1]
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Syed Mutahir AliConnect With a Mentor Technology ConsultantCommented:
Some good points already suggested by other experts, I would like to suggest :

NetApp FAS 2240 (if you need FC)

You can host your ESX Datastore on NFS - if that is a YES for you, then you can go for a FAS 2220 as well.

NetApp's Data ONTAP 8.x have some great features to compliment VMWare and Oracle.

FC 8GB and 10GB can be included on a FAS 2240-2 and you can get SAS Drives or SATA Drives to host as well.

With NetApp You get :

Double Disk Failure Protection
Flexible volumes with which you can move your data around if need be
Snapshots (superb) - You can create Snapshots of entire volumes, esx-datastores, oracle db only and mount them READ ONLY without consuming / committing DISK SPACE on your NetApp Disks. As Long as they are mounted read ONLY they won't occupy any space on your NetApp disks.

Furthermore - NetApp is a truly Unified storage platform offering File Level and Block Level within the same hardware.

http://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontap/tot-fas2240-inside-look-1111.aspx

http://www.netapp.com/us/products/platform-os/data-ontap-8/
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