EMC AX4 vs open-E iSCSI Benchmark

[Laxity]

Hi,

we are currently switching from open-E DSS (v5) to an EMC Clariion AX4.
Currently both systems are running at the same time, so I was able to do some benchmarking.

To cut it short: open-E wins performance wise

open-E environment:

XenServer 5.5 connected (Intel NIC) using one GBit Ethernet (via one Cisco Gbit switch) link to open-E DSS (v5)

The DSS server is a:
1x Intel Xeon Quad Core E5420 2,50GHz
2048 MB DDR2 667-RAM
Areca Raid Controller ARC-1261 ML 16xSATA II
Supermicro Mainboard X7DBE
some 1000 GB SATA II WD Raid Edition II Green Power Drives configured as a RAID-6 array
Intel PRO/1000 PT NIC

Benchmark result:



EMC environment:

XenServer 5.5 connected (Intel NICs) using four Ethernet (via two Cisco Gbit switches) link to EMC.

The EMC is a Clariion AX4 iSCSI with two SPs and using 750GB SATAII drives in a RAID-5 array.
It is connected using multipathing (4x Intel NICs), it has 4 paths (each 1GBit) using two Cisco GBit switches (2 links for each switch).
The multipathing is for fail-over only, only 1 path is in use (==1Gbit).

Benchmark result:


So open-E wins the speed comparsion!

[symm]

so why switch to the clariion ?

[To-M]

Thanks for this information! Did you say your switching back to EMC?

[Laxity]

so why switch to the clariion ?

Several reasons:

Security (see: http://forum.open-e.com/showthread.php?t=1426 ) for example.

Secondly the fail-over limit of 4TB per target was very impractical in our environment.

Also we can scale the EMC up to a max. of aprox. 60TB without having any downtime whatsoever.

And I think it is far more reliable when it comes to fault tolerance.
Having done some testing with rebooting one of the two SPs or un-plugging up to three ethernet cables - it simply works like a charme.

We will use the open-E servers as file servers in the office from now on.

[symm]

Good Luck with the clariion $$

I am sticking with Open-e, been happy with the performance so far

[To-M]

Several reasons:

Security (see: http://forum.open-e.com/showthread.php?t=1426 ) for example.

Secondly the fail-over limit of 4TB per target was very impractical in our environment.

Also we can scale the EMC up to a max. of aprox. 60TB without having any downtime whatsoever.

And I think it is far more reliable when it comes to fault tolerance.
Having done some testing with rebooting one of the two SPs or un-plugging up to three ethernet cables - it simply works like a charme.

We will use the open-E servers as file servers in the office from now on.

For the security we supplied a small update to turn off SMB for your system if there are more that need to be turned please send that in and we will address it as before.

In the next release of DSS V6 we will have support for multiple 16TB support volumes for replication and the auto failover And in the later future releases we will even grow to larger volumes.

[Laxity]

Good Luck with the clariion $$

I am sticking with Open-e, been happy with the performance so far

I also really like the open-E solution. Thats why I posted this speed compasion in the first place

[masim]

Hello,

Can you send me a full test results with specs please. I want to try replicating it...

I send you a PM with my e-mail address.
Thanks!

[Robotbeat]

Yeah, in a year or so, Open-E should be up there, able to expand storage (cheaply!) and upgrade the software without any downtime for autofailover. There's a lot of things coming, actually. And some of those things are being pushed by one of our customers who have EMC already and are migrating to Open-E.

[To-M]

Yes and that feature I heard from our developers will be ready by Friday or Monday of next week - thanks for waiting Robotbeat!