Recommended 10GE ISCSI SAN switch

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1

Hi guys,

We're shortly going to be getting some 10G SANs, and I was wondering what people were using as SAN switches for 10G SANs.

It is my understanding that low buffer sizes make most 'normal' 10G ethernet switches unsuitable for the job.

We're pretty much an exclusive Juniper shop, but are not biased in any way -- best tool for the job is what I've been tasked with to find.

Keeping that in mind, how would something like a EX4550 fare in the role? Are there better devices in the same price range?

Thanks!

2

I use a ex4550 VC as our TOR for our ESXi / EQL array in one spot, and a
pair of QFX5100-48S in another.

No issues here with either of them. The 5100¹s have a possibility of being
comparable in price once you add in the VC cards and so forth for a pair
of 4550¹s. I would get a quote for them both to see, hard to guess without
knowing what kind of deals your VAR can do.

Stephen Carter

3

Paul S. schreef op 12-5-2015 om 15:36:

Hi guys,

We're shortly going to be getting some 10G SANs, and I was wondering
what people were using as SAN switches for 10G SANs.

In one location a HP Procurve 8212zl with 8 SFP+ module, and a 8Gbe
module. Here i'm using a Dell EQL PS6210 SSD cabinet and 24 SATA disk
EQL cabinet on 10G.

In another location on a budget a Netgear M7100 24X with a Dell EQL
PS6010 with Intel S3500 800GB SSDs.

In both locations the switches appear to be doing fine in combination
with VMware ESXi 5.5 and Intel X540-2 cards.

It is my understanding that low buffer sizes make most 'normal' 10G
ethernet switches unsuitable for the job.

Not so sure on that, opinions vary a lot here. Similar to the stance on
Flow Control where one vendor will advocate using it and another
advocates against it.

If you only have a single link, then Flow control will sleep the
connection which can impact your performance with a higher Queue depth.
For multiple 1G links the impact is ofcourse a lot less overall.

If you are going to invest in a new SAN make sure to ditch spinning
rust, it's the biggest breakthrough in storage since a while and it's a
factor of a *lot*.

The price doesn't break the bank either, the Dell EQL 6110 was out of
warranty, retail value around $3500 us. The 18 Intel S3500 SSDs were
about 11k euro (16 + 2 spare). In raid 6 that's a good 10TB of storage.
It's a shame that SAN HQ keeps emailing us once a day that the drives
are not original :wink:

With that sheer amount of space it's going to take a while before it
ever breaks (wears out). It'll be out of service long before then.

Also, you can max out a single 10G link with about 4-6 recent SSDs, so
smaller cabinets with more uplinks make all the sense. In that respect
the newer cabinets (Dell EQL PS6210) with 24 drives and just 2 10Ge
uplinks are a bit odd. Still, it's nice to do 300-400MB/s in a VM on a 5
year old ESX on a dime. :slight_smile:

We're pretty much an exclusive Juniper shop, but are not biased in any
way -- best tool for the job is what I've been tasked with to find.

Keeping that in mind, how would something like a EX4550 fare in the
role? Are there better devices in the same price range?

If the switches work for you and you are comfortable with them I'd count
that as a better argument.

Only budget switches are likely to cause you real grief here.

Kind regards,

Seth

4

I am using Brocade VDX 6740 switches that support dcbx. They work very well and have had no issues in nearly two years with them.

Thank you,

Jordan Medlen
Network Engineer
Bisk Education, Inc.

5

We use IBM / Lenovo switches for such traffic. Very low latency, rear to
front or front to rear airflow models, large buffers, FCoE, OpenFlow
support, great price-performance...

G8124E or G8272 may be the right models, use DAC cables instead of SFP+ if
possible.

Lumir

6

Unless you need the old VC connections, you might consider the newer EX4600, which is 40x10GbE and 4x40GbE (versus 32x10GbE), at around the same price point. The 40GbE ports are used for stacking, so you don't have to add a VC card.

The newer platforms are going to get better long term software support, as well.

-Randy

7

We've been using Dell 8024F's for over 2 years now. No problems at all.

8

If price is a major concern, take a look at the Force10 S2410. They tend to go for under $2k on ebay. Very basic L2 cut-through low-latency switch. Only drawback is your choice is XFP or CX4 for ports, but if you have server nics with CX4 then you are off the races for very little money.

Whatever switch you use, don't forget to adjust MTU to 9k+.

+1 for SSD based storage, if you are using a vmware environment the newer versions of vsan support all-flash-arrays, worth taking a look at.

Sk.