New HP kit for the geeks

[Lee]

Spent a few days mounting hardware in the cab.

Had a few new items arrive. More drive arrays, a new tape library, another tape drive, 2 fibre san switches, array controller and a couple more servers.

It should be enough to support 80 of us. Each server has 10 gb of RAM and a combined total of around 10tb in storage.

Just need to get it all configured now.

We've always used Dell kit up until recently. Never had any probs with Dell stuff, but I'm loving some of the features the HP stuff has. ILO is fantastic, so much so I reckon I should work from home and have a monkey in the office to physical jobs for me.

Just imagine the commision on this lot DK.

Still got a few more things to put in. I hate having gaps! Then once this is up and running we'll be getting 3 or 4 cabs of the same once we move in the new year! We don't have space or power in this office.

 

[McBunny]

what ups are you using ?

 

[Dafthead]

Not bad!! I've got an HP 7000 enclosure with 12 bl460c's in, each one's a quad core with 12GB RAM, the front end for our dual-head NetAPP SAN, currently in the process of virtualising our entire server room

 

[Lee]

The most we could power off the current main in that office, which is just enough to power the contents of that cab.

http://www.mgeups.com/indexint.htm

They own APC now. It's just a cheap solution until we move and get a new coms room with the UPS hardwired in to cover everything.

 

[McBunny]

hmm they dont seem to do one big enough really :s

really need a 10k va one with an uptime with about 30 mins apc one is coming in around 6k at the mo

 

[Dafthead]

Mike, we have one of these

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SURT10000RMXLI

cost us £2800

 

[TELFORDS_LURK]

Nice setup Lee, hope you have better luck with your SAN than we did. Replaced a disk in our MSA 1000 last week and it corrupted the entire array. Have had to restore from tape and set the entire system up again.

Is that a Virtual Tape Library too? I have heard very good things about these.

Chris

 

[McBunny]

Mike, we have one of these

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SURT10000RMXLI

cost us £2800

thats what im going for i think but with 4 extra battery packs these ones

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SURT192RMXLBP

 

[JoelDee]

Fuckall that

 

[James.]

christ, I wish I could understand any of that.

 

[Lee]

The UPS are right on the edge Mike. The problem we have is the floor we are on is running out of capacity to power all the equipment we have. We actually set aside £10k for new UPS but there's no way of powering the dam things at the moment.

I had the APC and MGE Reps work out our requirements so what we have there is enough. There's 2 2000va and 2 3000va units there, plus an old APC unit powering the oldest HP server in there. We don't need uptime, just time for them to shut down cleanly.

Chris, there's sod all on at it the moment so nothing to lose. We'll backup everything to another disk array and then that to tape.

 

[McBunny]

you see thats the trouble so far that will cover the new server from the apc configurator but my trouble is we are also going for a san but i dunno what one yet

 

[Lee]

I sent a list of everything we needed to power to a guy at APC and a guy at MGE. They both came back with almost the same figures. If you are looking at spending a good £10k plus on UPS they'll send a guy out to do a survey for you. That's what I'll do when we move.

 

[dk]

Spent a few days mounting hardware in the cab.

Had a few new items arrive. More drive arrays, a new tape library, another tape drive, 2 fibre san switches, array controller and a couple more servers.

It should be enough to support 80 of us. Each server has 10 gb of RAM and a combined total of around 10tb in storage.

Just need to get it all configured now.

We've always used Dell kit up until recently. Never had any probs with Dell stuff, but I'm loving some of the features the HP stuff has. ILO is fantastic, so much so I reckon I should work from home and have a monkey in the office to physical jobs for me.

Just imagine the commision on this lot DK.

Still got a few more things to put in. I hate having gaps! Then once this is up and running we'll be getting 3 or 4 cabs of the same once we move in the new year! We don't have space or power in this office.

Nice Lee, MSA1500 i think with some MSA30's, a DL360g4p SAS model and a DL360G5 with an MSA 20 maybe, then an MSL6000 tap library and 1/8 tape autoloader?

I have just ordered a nice new EVA4100 for us with a couple of shelves, all the redundancy, 16 port switches, loads of snapshotting software and some new servers and a fibre channel LTO3 tape library, about 120k of stuff and its £40k to us because of our partnership, bargain

We are also looking at UPS';s and its surprising how cheap they are these days, we are looking at an APC 30KVA which is way more than we need but there are two ways to increase the length of time it will keep going, add some extended runtime batteries or increase the VA which in turn decreases the load % and increases the time.

The 30KVA we are getting is only 7k so a bargain really, we were thinking about a 40KVA but we really don't need it. The 30KVA is the size of a rack pretty much and weighs 530kg, so we are getting some structural engineers in on friday to test the floor to see if it will take the load of that and the extra servers and san we are getting, its on the second floor with a false floor so we aren't taking any risks.

We are also having it hard wired so that anything we plug into any plug in our server room is automatically covered by the UPS.

Oh and HP mailed me today asking if I wanted a free LTO4 tape drive to play around with, not bad, 1.6TB per tape and 240mb/s

 

[dk]

Not bad!! I've got an HP 7000 enclosure with 12 bl460c's in, each one's a quad core with 12GB RAM, the front end for our dual-head NetAPP SAN, currently in the process of virtualising our entire server room

I am talking about these and quoting them daily at the moment, we sold over 200 c-class blades to a customer last month for a new datacentre so we are currently favour of the month at HP at the moment as its the biggest blade deal for a reseller I think.

I love them, they are such good technology, all the management features etc. I love having a chassis full of fans and pulling one out and hearing the whole thing so for it, sounds like an aircraft taking off lol

 

[dk]

hmm they dont seem to do one big enough really :s

really need a 10k va one with an uptime with about 30 mins apc one is coming in around 6k at the mo

drop me an email if you want, we are currently looking at UPS's too, APC have some good models and as mentioned above, we are getting a 30KVA for well under 10k so it shouldn't be a problem to get something for your budget.

 

[fulhamfcboy]

Men just love the head swell from talking about IT kit, power output and cooling solutions dont they?
Im not taking the piss, because im an IT bod, and its exactly the same, but when you read this post it does sound like you all where a t shirt saying "theres no place like 127.0.0.1"...or ::1 if your using IPV6

 

[McBunny]

Men just love the head swell from talking about IT kit, power output and cooling solutions dont they?
Im not taking the piss, because im an IT bod, and its exactly the same, but when you read this post it does sound like you all where a t shirt saying "theres no place like 127.0.0.1"...or ::1 if your using IPV6

you would be supprised what im wearing :rasp:

 

[dk]

Nice setup Lee, hope you have better luck with your SAN than we did. Replaced a disk in our MSA 1000 last week and it corrupted the entire array. Have had to restore from tape and set the entire system up again.

Is that a Virtual Tape Library too? I have heard very good things about these.

Chris

we have had an MSA1000 for 3 years now and it hasn't missed a beat as yet, very good for the money, not sure what could have gone wrong there, if you simply remove a drive and put a new one in it should just rebuild the array in minutes.

the VTL, not a massive fan, theya re ok but people think they are a replacement for tape drives when in reality they aren't as you can't take them off site, so they shold only be used for quick restores really but still output to tape, but if you are doing that you might as well get something like an EVA and snapshot during the day and then you can restore anything in seconds!

 

[dk]

Men just love the head swell from talking about IT kit, power output and cooling solutions dont they?
Im not taking the piss, because im an IT bod, and its exactly the same, but when you read this post it does sound like you all where a t shirt saying "theres no place like 127.0.0.1"...or ::1 if your using IPV6

aren't you talking about layer 8 of the OSI model?

 

[dk]

The most we could power off the current main in that office, which is just enough to power the contents of that cab.

http://www.mgeups.com/indexint.htm

They own APC now. It's just a cheap solution until we move and get a new coms room with the UPS hardwired in to cover everything.

i thought i hear they were bought out by APC and not the other way around? but then i haven't read it, just heard it second hand.

 

[dk]

you see thats the trouble so far that will cover the new server from the apc configurator but my trouble is we are also going for a san but i dunno what one yet

get a nice new EVA, excellent technology, none of this emc/dell stuff

 

[dk]

am I spamming now?

I love it when we talk really computing and not all this homeuser stuff, this is my kind of thread!

 

[TELFORDS_LURK]

Nice setup Lee, hope you have better luck with your SAN than we did. Replaced a disk in our MSA 1000 last week and it corrupted the entire array. Have had to restore from tape and set the entire system up again.

Is that a Virtual Tape Library too? I have heard very good things about these.

Chris

we have had an MSA1000 for 3 years now and it hasn't missed a beat as yet, very good for the money, not sure what could have gone wrong there, if you simply remove a drive and put a new one in it should just rebuild the array in minutes.

the VTL, not a massive fan, theya re ok but people think they are a replacement for tape drives when in reality they aren't as you can't take them off site, so they shold only be used for quick restores really but still output to tape, but if you are doing that you might as well get something like an EVA and snapshot during the day and then you can restore anything in seconds!

Aye, thats what we did, replaced the drive (which coincidently also arrived 3 days later, even though we have a 24 X 7, 4 hour responce care pack and several calls to their bloody indian call centres) it rebuilt itself, then netware decided it was corrupt. Support call later to Novell which basically blamed the hardware and the hardware pretty much saying, nope not my fault, so we're left in the middle with corrupted volumes.

As for the VTL i agree with what your saying, its not a complete backup replacement but is ideal for quick restores.

 

[McBunny]

3 days for a drive tsk tsk never had that from dell

 

[dk]

we have had an MSA1000 for 3 years now and it hasn't missed a beat as yet, very good for the money, not sure what could have gone wrong there, if you simply remove a drive and put a new one in it should just rebuild the array in minutes.

the VTL, not a massive fan, theya re ok but people think they are a replacement for tape drives when in reality they aren't as you can't take them off site, so they shold only be used for quick restores really but still output to tape, but if you are doing that you might as well get something like an EVA and snapshot during the day and then you can restore anything in seconds!

Aye, thats what we did, replaced the drive (which coincidently also arrived 3 days later, even though we have a 24 X 7, 4 hour responce care pack and several calls to their bloody indian call centres) it rebuilt itself, then netware decided it was corrupt. Support call later to Novell which basically blamed the hardware and the hardware pretty much saying, nope not my fault, so we're left in the middle with corrupted volumes.

As for the VTL i agree with what your saying, its not a complete backup replacement but is ideal for quick restores.

hp carepacks, they really do try it on, i basically don't leave them alone until its sorted, if i don't get what i want i call up again and speak to someone else.

last week we had two power supply failures which was random (different servers) and called HP, on both ocassions we had the part onsite within 3 hrs which was excellent.

If they miss the deadline i just escalate the call which is easy as a reseller as I have direct contact to the right people but i i wasn't a reseller i would be right on the phone to my reseller to escalate for me as thats what we do for customers not getting the right service, it annoys me when customers complain weeks later though when theres nothing i can do, if they told me at the time i could have done something!

 

[dk]

3 days for a drive tsk tsk never had that from dell

never had anything delivered within 3 days though with Dell.......lucky if you can get a quote back in that time

 

[Daz]

3 days for a drive tsk tsk never had that from dell

never had anything delivered within 3 days though with Dell.......lucky if you can get a quote back in that time

Dell's support has gone to complete s**t.
They say 4 hours, but the last 3 times I've contacted them for various hardware failures, they've taken 3 days to "decide there is a problem". They get you upgrading firmware on hard drives, raid controllers, etc.
A year ago they were awesome, now they've gone to s**t, heh.

 

[McBunny]

hmm must admit not had a server hardware problem in a long time

oh and there is a good reason dell take longer to deliver you actually get what you want rather than what hp want you to have

 

[FlamingMonkey]

haha everything that goes wrong with Dell kits needs a firmware update, when you ring them, f**king knobs, its not the firmware, its your shitty ass arrays!!!!

 

[Dafthead]

Not bad!! I've got an HP 7000 enclosure with 12 bl460c's in, each one's a quad core with 12GB RAM, the front end for our dual-head NetAPP SAN, currently in the process of virtualising our entire server room

I am talking about these and quoting them daily at the moment, we sold over 200 c-class blades to a customer last month for a new datacentre so we are currently favour of the month at HP at the moment as its the biggest blade deal for a reseller I think.

I love them, they are such good technology, all the management features etc. I love having a chassis full of fans and pulling one out and hearing the whole thing so for it, sounds like an aircraft taking off lol

Been installing them today, so so easy to work with! HP are running the free enclosure, gig switch and install at the mo, so they're really pushing them aren't they! it's the way forward though!

And yes a few people have commented on them starting up like a harrier already haha

 

[Cookie]

Pretty toys Lee

I'm in the process of speccing up something similar to replace our ageing DLT4 tape setup, should be fun scaring my board with massive figures