ONTAP Discussions

ISILON vs NETAPP for midsize enterprise customer?

EVILUTION
12,474 Views

Quick and dirty...

EMC is our primary vendor so Isilon is being pushed hard....   we are interested in what NetApp does better than Isilon for the "average Joe" customer. 

We are a midsized company that is looking for a HA solution that will be easy to grow and manage as our demands grow.

To keep things simple...  we currently have 60TB of unstructured file server data that we would like to move off of our expensive VMAX storage and onto a NAS.

Additionally we will be looking to migrate some test VMWare servers over to NAS as well as begin testing VDI solutions.

Our proposed solution from NetApp is (4) 2240s at our primary and DR sites.  We will leverage snapshots as a backup solution and replicate to the DR site.  Know I know this will do what we want and we can always had heads as they are needed.  What I want to know is what this solution will do better than what I primary vendor has to offer.  

Please keep in mind simplicy and reduced complexity is HUGE for my shop.... we have a limited number of engineers that are doing it all ... builds, deployments, capacity planning, research and dev.... bla bla bla ... We do not have time to babysit and storage frames.  I'm not really looking for ultimate storage IOP and latency showdowns.  Can anyone help with real world examples?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

JWHITE_COMPUNET
9,609 Views

Things that NetApp does exceeding well compared to Isilon (or even VMAX):

Deduplication.  Dedupe is not just about saving storage.  The NetApp Cache mechanism is dedupe-aware meaning that your Virtual Workloads, especially nearly identical ones like VDI, will fit nicely into cache no matter how many of them there are.  "Cache Amplification."

With Cluster Mode, balancing workloads is manual when you want to move between storage tiers or controllers.  But that usually isn't necessary unless you're doing hardware refresh or drastically changing your workload.  Isilon has performance issues realted to the way it distributes data.  Moving data into lower tiers, locality of data that is spread all over the cluster, and having a variety of node types with different performance characteristics are some of the challenges.  With NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering, most priamry workloads can live in your lowest tier of disk while warm blocks live in large cache regions (Flash Cache, Flash Pool) and Cache Amplification from dedupe enhances this all the more.

NetApp disk IO (via WAFL) is uniquely performance accelerated.  Nobody can keep up with NetApp spindle per spindle, especially on random write (VDI), not even your VMAX.

Don't undervalue NetApp's Snapshot technology.  WAFL is unique in its ability to create large numbers of snaps that impart no performance penalty.  NetApp SnapMirror replication is second to none and is superior to Recover Point or SRDF in my opinion especially built-in compression eliminating the need for WAN acceleration.

Things that NetApp doesn't do as well:

HA Pairs.  HA Pairs impart an odd multiple personality disorder to NetApp systems.  This is MUCH BETTER in Cluster Mode than in 7-mode but getting familiar with all of the HA best practices and nuances around non-disruptive upgrades, etc.

Licensing:

Licensing on NetApp is easy.  Every NetApp differentiator is software-based.  Every model can run every feature and is compatible with every other model while features are installed via license code (Good!).  As a new NetApp owner the thing you need to be aware of is that the licensing is tiered and costs much more on the larger systems.  6200 controllers are a MONSTER jump from the 2240 and will support massive IO but the licensing costs when you add new features will be significant.

Multipating:

NetApp isn't just a NAS, it's also a SAN and performs that task admirably.  Although NetApp has multipathing, it doesn't compare with PowerPath on very large workloads.  In small and mid-range workloads however, where multiple paths aren't saturated, NetApp provides a better performance point per spindle so is worth looking at.

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22 REPLIES 22

bshep8384
11,961 Views

Take a look at this:

http://bit.ly/uuK8tG

If you are looking for a general purpose storage system go with Netapp.  If you need to provide high sequential speeds for large files over NAS protocols as the documents suggests, go Isilon.  I like the flexability Netapp offers, you think you may only use it for the items you listed above but will find out it really is a tool you can't live without in your datacenter infrastructure.  We use the VSC VMWare plugin to provision VDI machines to our VIEW brokers on Netapp.  I can configure 40 on the fly in about 9 minutes, thinly provissioned and ready to use.  Take a sip of the Netapp Kool Aid, you will never want anything else.

My two cents.

SHEP

EVILUTION
11,961 Views

Thanks for the link and description....

Is there anything you don't like about NetApp?  I'd just like to know the day to day things that you wish they had done differently.  Real world input from people that use the stuff means more to me than most other reports.

radek_kubka
11,961 Views

Interesting.

If you are moving from VMAX to FAS2240, then bear in mind the latter is an entry level box, so make sure it will fit the bill performance-wise. Especially that you mentioned not only flat files, but also some VMs & VDI.

Regards,

Radek

EVILUTION
11,961 Views

We will still have the VMAX.  We want to move our unstructured data to a NAS device... first set of data would be the file servers then in our test environment we would rather run lightly pushed test VMs on something other than VMAX.  The VDI thing is new to us.  We currently haven't deployed any but it is on the horizon.

Honestly I'm sure the NetApp design will be fine for the first two years.... but I"m more worried about management and capacity a few more years down the road. 


I'd still like to get a comparision where you could see what one box has over another.  For example...  Isilon has auto tiering of storage... this may not be important now but 3 years from now it may be critical.  Also with a new launch I'm sure the 2240s will be plenty but what about down the road... will I need to migrate data and load balance nodes?  How difficult will it be for me to add another node to a NetApp system and will it automatically redistribute the load.  See I have a few items that make isilon appear better but I want you guys to give me a few examples of what NetApp does better other than response time.

shanekennedy
11,961 Views

in our environment to benefits of netapp over isilon include near-instant snaps & smaller arrays as you need 3 nodes for minimum isilon config, although you could order isilons that were not fully populated

i'm currently of bigger fan of the isilon

EVILUTION
11,961 Views

I'm really surprised there isn't more activity in here....  Maybe I need to ask specific questions to get my answers.

Is anyone running VDI on NetApp?  If so what size boxes and how many?  How does it perform?  Do you have any pain points with NetApp?  What pain points were you trying to address when purchasing NetApp?  What other technology did you evaluate?  Do you find yourself needing to migrate or load balance your data?  How difficult is it to perform the analysis needed to understand this process?  Have you added any nodes to your farm?  If so please describe the process.  Are you replicating data to a dr site?  If so do you have any issues?  Are you leveraging NetApp on-board AV scanning?  How would you evaluate the AV scanning process?  What degree of space savings have you achieved using dedupe/compression?

radek_kubka
11,962 Views

OK - first of all: too many questions! You can make not one, but probably 5 threads of them 😉

Secondly, comparing NetApp with Isilon is a bit like comparing apples with oranges (at least in some aspects - e.g. I doubt the latter would be any good for VDI)

Thirdly, virtually any platform could be either good, or bad, depending how you position, size, deploy and finally manage it.

EVILUTION
11,516 Views

Ha!  Okay maybe that was a bit much.... but it's like pulling teeth to get any useful information on here.

Question:  What are your current pain points with NetApp?

I'm not sure they are apples to oranges.... though so far the retail price for NetApp appears to be lower than the discounted price for Isilon.

radek_kubka
11,516 Views
so far the retail price for NetApp appears to be lower than the discounted price for Isilon. 

So it is apples vs. oranges - normally it should be the other way around, so quite likely there is a very decent spec from Isilon on the table vs. entry-level NetApp.

EVILUTION
16,551 Views

Thank you all for your replies! 

Apparently it boils down to cost.   Right now I can't find very many things that NetApp does better than Isilon.... (other than dedupe and compression) ... but Isilon costs more.  If they were the same price Isilon wins.  I'd like to say that NetApp has more installs but considering they just started implementing clustermode I'm not so sure the install base is an even comparison.  I mean you can argue over different types of file protection like RAID-DP and N+M but that is a wash in my mind.

I guess one perk would be brining in NetApp may provide for more competitive pricing from EMC further down the road.

EVILUTION
16,551 Views

After numerous reference calls and hours of research we finally pulled the trigger and went with NetApp. We did however change our design and
went with bigger boxes. We decided to go with a pair of FAS6210s at the primary site and a pair of FAS3240s at the DR site configured in cluster mode
Even with the bigger boxes the final cost was still well below an X-series Isilon at each site and significantly less expensive than our VMAX storage.

Thanks again for all your assistance and feedback.

radek_kubka
16,551 Views

Glad you've chosen NetApp - that way, it surely won't be your last post here on Communities!

EVILUTION
16,551 Views

I just hope that we don't out grow the pair of boxes.  It seems that NetApp loses its entry level perk once you need more than 2 heads.   With Isilon you have to buy three up front but then you can just add one at a time as needed.  In C-mode you either need to upgrade heads ($$$) or you need to buy another pair of heads ($$$). 

Initially NetApp does seem to be a good fit but honestly I'm still a little nervous about the need to manually balance and possibly migrate the workload as well as the fallout from an unexpected head failure on a heavily loaded system.

I wish there wasn't such a disconnect between the boots on the ground and the guy who writes the check for storage. 

BrendonHiggins
16,551 Views

Welcome to the world of NetApp.  Sorry I did not answer sooner but I am only just getting back into the communities.  Here is a self-help guide I wrote a while ago which you may find helpful.  https://communities.netapp.com/people/BrendonHiggins/blog/2011/08/23/netapp-issue--self-help-guide

Also recommend you get your boss to send you on the NetApp foundation course and the NCDA.  http://www.fastlaneus.com/schedule/netapp

Hope it helps and good luck with your new toys.

Bren

radek_kubka
14,972 Views

As they say, don't judge a book by its cover! Or do not envisage too much trouble upfront!

At the end of the day, NetApp is a good piece of kit and, maybe more importantly, they will not leave you on your own if you hit any bumps.

If you dig around, you can find few interesting stories here on Communities about how far NetApp's help can sometimes go (e.g. 'free' head upgrades for customers if there was no other feasible option to address an issue).

SNETAPPUSER
16,551 Views

Hi Evilution,

I have some interesting questions to ask regarding the proposed solution.

You have mentioned that both Primary & DR sites running NetApp heads in Cluster mode.

1. Are you doing SnapMirroring from Primary to DR site?

2. What sorts of links are you using between Primary & DR sites?

3. Are you running Primary & DR nodes in the same cluster or as two seperate clusters? and SnapMirroring from Primary to DR?

Your early response is very much appreciated since I am also in a position of evaluating a solution architecture in Cluster Mode.

Thanks

EVILUTION
14,972 Views

Good Morning!

1. Yes

2. We have dedicated private fiber that runs to the DR site.

3. We are running them as two separate clusters with the snap mirror going to the DR site.

Cluster mode seems to be fairly new to the NetApp techs in our area.  I believe NetApp professional services will actually be doing all the work to configure.  Our plan is to eliminate backups via snap mirror.  I'm not certain how well that will work as we have a 30 day retetion period for daily backups but I'm told that should be no problem.  We'll see. 

SNETAPPUSER
14,972 Views

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback. If you don't mind may I know more details about your high-level application environment details. I mean, are you using VMWare ESXi 4/5, SAP, Oracle, AIX etc. Also which ONTAP version are using in Cluster mode? Are you using both SAN and NAS protocols? Any special configuration that you're using in the Cluster-Mode environment?

Thanks

EVILUTION
14,972 Views

Good Day,

We have a blend of all those things on the floor.... currently everything is living within our VMAX.  Our plans for NetApp are specific to File Serving, test VMware 5, and approx 100 VDI workstations.   We will not be using SAN protocols as we have a VMAX.  We do not want to connect the NetApp to anything other than our IP network. 

I cannot speak in detail about clustermode at this time as I am not trained up.

JWHITE_COMPUNET
9,610 Views

Things that NetApp does exceeding well compared to Isilon (or even VMAX):

Deduplication.  Dedupe is not just about saving storage.  The NetApp Cache mechanism is dedupe-aware meaning that your Virtual Workloads, especially nearly identical ones like VDI, will fit nicely into cache no matter how many of them there are.  "Cache Amplification."

With Cluster Mode, balancing workloads is manual when you want to move between storage tiers or controllers.  But that usually isn't necessary unless you're doing hardware refresh or drastically changing your workload.  Isilon has performance issues realted to the way it distributes data.  Moving data into lower tiers, locality of data that is spread all over the cluster, and having a variety of node types with different performance characteristics are some of the challenges.  With NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering, most priamry workloads can live in your lowest tier of disk while warm blocks live in large cache regions (Flash Cache, Flash Pool) and Cache Amplification from dedupe enhances this all the more.

NetApp disk IO (via WAFL) is uniquely performance accelerated.  Nobody can keep up with NetApp spindle per spindle, especially on random write (VDI), not even your VMAX.

Don't undervalue NetApp's Snapshot technology.  WAFL is unique in its ability to create large numbers of snaps that impart no performance penalty.  NetApp SnapMirror replication is second to none and is superior to Recover Point or SRDF in my opinion especially built-in compression eliminating the need for WAN acceleration.

Things that NetApp doesn't do as well:

HA Pairs.  HA Pairs impart an odd multiple personality disorder to NetApp systems.  This is MUCH BETTER in Cluster Mode than in 7-mode but getting familiar with all of the HA best practices and nuances around non-disruptive upgrades, etc.

Licensing:

Licensing on NetApp is easy.  Every NetApp differentiator is software-based.  Every model can run every feature and is compatible with every other model while features are installed via license code (Good!).  As a new NetApp owner the thing you need to be aware of is that the licensing is tiered and costs much more on the larger systems.  6200 controllers are a MONSTER jump from the 2240 and will support massive IO but the licensing costs when you add new features will be significant.

Multipating:

NetApp isn't just a NAS, it's also a SAN and performs that task admirably.  Although NetApp has multipathing, it doesn't compare with PowerPath on very large workloads.  In small and mid-range workloads however, where multiple paths aren't saturated, NetApp provides a better performance point per spindle so is worth looking at.

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