What the Zeus? Nexenta beats VSAN, Nutanix and SimpliVity

IT biz Northern Backup has replaced Hitachi, Dell and HP SAN arrays with Nexenta storage, which it chose ahead of VMware VSA, Nutanix and SimpliVity alternatives because Nexenta storage was both cheaper and faster. Calgary-based Northern Backup was started up in 2004 and offers offsite back-up, managed hosting and support …

[jamesb2147]

SDS and NexentaStor

This honestly baffles me. My employer was looking into NexentaStor solutions and after spending a few hours with the then-Nexenta CTO (who also worked for a startup vendor) working out a solution and walking us through the technical details of the product, he stumbled upon a feature that didn't occur to us as being particularly useful until he said it: we could stick our existing arrays into the NexentaStor box and manage it just like any other NexentaStor storage.

I don't know why they're so bad at advertising this. Being able to swap out the back-end storage while maintaining the software is a HUGE positive for the company and they didn't seem to realize what they were onto.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: SDS and NexentaStor

When you attach other storage with it's own controllers you arn't actually getting the benefit of ZFS and it blocks a lot of the fundamental features. You wouldn't want to do that for longer than a transitional period. They probably don't mention it because they are fed up with explaining that it isn't a free lunch to guys like yourself. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: SDS and NexentaStor

"...we could stick our existing arrays into the NexentaStor box and manage it just like any other NexentaStor storage...."

There's also the question of regarding how far the support team would assist you if you encountered any performance problems with those (underlying) luns.

I think the thing that escapes most people regarding Software Defined Storage is that whilst you *can* use any HDD, you really should stick to the certified hardware list, if you can.

I can already hear the chorus of "aha, but then what is the point of commodity hardware then..?!"

The thing is, for a particular set of hardware to perform to the specified IOPS value, each piece of hardware needs to be tested and certified as being compatible with the supplied drivers (including the firmware revision - particularly for those below the recommended).

As far as I understand, driver performance isn't binary (pun not intended) but that stuff works "within range of the specification". If you have some hardware performing at the threshold, you're going to have some performance issues when you push it harder and invariably to the edge.

I'll reiterate the earlier point regarding the certified hardware list - this is kit that *should* be tested and certified as working by the hardware teams, so that you have less hassle later on.

For those recycling old hardware, this is a caveat that people should bear in mind that some of those disks in a mixed disk population may not fall "within spec". For those buying newer stuff as part of decommissioning/commissioning, perhaps a useful area of concentrate on.

[Anonymous Coward]

so a SDS play is cheaper than an HCI box

and this surprises anyone?