"But wait," the fellow in the checkered suit cries out. "You're comparing our shiny new hyperconverged hotness one against the other. Surely things will be different when you compare us to dedicated storage." Never one to shrink from a challenge, I removed the disk drives from the R720 configurator on the Dell site and got a price of $5,780 per server.
I then had to figure out how much usable storage capacity an EVO:RAIL really delivers. With 14.4 TB of raw disk, I could store 7.2 TB of data at the default data protection level of two-way mirroring, which VMware calls failures to tolerate=1. I'm on record saying I don't think that's protected as well as RAID-6 on a dual controller storage system, but with just four nodes, EVO:RAIL can't support the three-way mirroring I prefer. VSAN needs five servers to support three-way mirrors. In a larger cluster of two or more EVO:RAILs, I'd get 4.8 TB of usable space.
Now, 7.2 TB leaves no spares, and best practice for a shared nothing cluster would be to ensure that there's at least enough free space to accommodate a node failure, so the system can rebuild without waiting for hardware to be replaced. Following those practices, a small environment with just one EVO:RAIL would really have 5.4 TB of usable space. Larger environments with more nodes would have less overhead.
Just because I had the configuration and price handy, I added a Tegile HA2100 storage system (600 GB flash, 14 TB of disk in RAID-6). That gave me:
Part
|
Price
|
Qty
|
Ext
|
R720
|
6000
|
4
|
24,000
|
vSphere
|
8,738
|
4
|
34,952
|
vCenter
|
6,244
|
1
|
6,244
|
Server total
|
|
|
65,196
|
Tegile HA2100
|
60,000
|
1
|
60,000
|
Grand total
|
|
|
125,196
|
The EVO:RAIL system does have more flash and might perform a bit better than the Tegile, so let's substitute with the HP 3PAR StorServe 7200 all-flash array; it's only got 3.5 GB of raw flash, but with data reduction, it should easily match the 5 GB or so of the EVO:RAIL system. That gave me:
Part
|
Price
|
Qty
|
Ext
|
R720
|
6,000
|
4
|
24,000
|
vSphere
|
8,738
|
4
|
34,952
|
vCenter
|
6,244
|
1
|
6,244
|
Server total
|
|
|
65,196
|
HP 3PAR 7200
|
35,000
|
1
|
35,000
|
Grand total
|
|
|
100,196
|
Oh, that can't be right. What if we use a Data Gravity NAS? It will host the user home directories, along with personas for VDI, so we don't need to create and manage Windows file servers for them, back itself up, and provide all sorts of analytics on the files. The entry model has 2.4 TB of SSD and 48 TB of disk for $75,000. Exactly how much data it will hold depends on how many copies of data you keep, but I'd be surprised if it was less than 12 TB of primary data. If the Data Gravity box can support 12 vSphere hosts, which it should, we're still talking about saving $64,000 over what three EVO:RAIL systems would cost.
Naturally, all these systems will also need 10 Gbit/s Ethernet switches, cables, and the like. That could add anywhere from $5,000 for a single workgroup class switch to $25,000 for a pair of enterprise-class, 24-port switches and twin-ax DAC cables.
Of course, the external storage in these solutions can also be used to support other workloads, from physical servers to the Hyper-V cluster they're running in the development shop.
I understand the value of a simple installation, but I don't understand why I would pay a premium of $20,000 or more for packaging. Wouldn't it be smarter to have a good VAR or consultant -- and, as a consultant for 30 years, I know there are some -- spend a day or two installing and configuring a system for $5,000 and spending some of the rest of the money you saved on some training for your admins?
I would do this job for you myself for $10,000 just to demonstrate that, as nice as an easy installation might be, it's not worth $20,000.
Disclosure: Dell, HP, and Tegile have been clients of DeepStorage LLC.