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Equallogic vs Lefthand: SAN Comparison

by Joe Gleinser 26. October 2009 22:13

By far our clients and prospects have two SANs in mind, the Dell Equallogic and the HP Lefthand. While both are impressive SANs that are very similar, there are some critical differences.

Clustered Storage vs Cluster-able Storage: Both products offer clustered storage but only Lefthand can tout that out-of-the-box. Each Lefthand includes two chassis by default where-as Equallogic offers dual-controllers and an extremely reliable single chassis configuration. What is the actual difference in reliability? I have not found any real-world tests but if I can get two for the same price as one, I'll go that route. Advantage: Lefthand

Licensing: Both Dell and HP have listened to their clients anger at complicated licensing systems. Both the HP Lefthand and Dell Equallogic offer an all-inclusive licensing method. Unfortunately unless you buy the HP Lefthand Starter SAN Solution, you may need to be the Multi-Site/DR license in the future for real-time failover and failback. Advantage: Equallogic

Density: The HP Lefthand is essentially a ProLiant DL320s server. The Dell Equallogic is custom designed chassis. Because of this difference the Equallogic gets more spindles per U. This is certainly a consideration when you're ordering racks of SANs. It is much less of a concern when order a SAN or two. Advantage: Equallogic

Groups: EqualLogic PS series allows only two SANs in a group. Data cannot span more than these two SANs. With HP's SAN/IQ Network RAID you can span multiple SANs in a variety of configurations. This provides better performance and reliability. Advantage: Lefthand

Site to Site Replication: Out of the box both SANs offer site to site replication. Only the HP Lefthand supports synchronous data replication with automated failover and failback. The Lefthand supports multiple sites in all configurations. Advantage: Lefthand

Obviously a lot of features are excluded as they are quite similar between both products. The reason GCS chose to emphasize the HP Lefthand SAN was a significant price and value advantage. However it is not quite so apparent as when compared to other SAN vendors on the market.

Here is a helpful comparison chart for HP and Dell's iSCSI SAN lines:

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Comments

10/27/2009 2:14:36 AM #

Hi Joe,
Several things that I can fill in here:
- The very cool thing with the HP LeftHand P4000 cluster is that it's a scaleout/scale-up cluster.  What I mean is that when you add a node, you increase performance and capacity.  And I just heard from a VMware architect in Europe who recently installed a 63 node cluster.  All I could say is WOW!
- Another advantage of the clustering used with the P4000 is the DR capabilities we have.  At the recent VMworld 2009 event, we did a demo showing a complete node failure and the P4000 cluster didn't miss a beat.  Here's a link to a blog I wrote that includes a video of the demo: http://bit.ly/3XFzMi.  My colleague Adam Carter who did this demo later told me that Equallogic can't do this today.
- You mentioned additional licensing required for Multi-site/DR.  Actually, when you buy an HP LeftHand P4000, it includes all of the software capabilites you would need for multi-site/DR.  The only time you would need to buy something more is when you need hardware at another location to create a multi-site configuration.  Another option is our HP P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) which basically allows you to run a P4000 as a guest OS on a VMware ESX server - and VSA does require a license.  So customers can take drives that are sitting around unused in an existing server and use that capacity as a node.  VSA is also the only "virtual SAN" solution that is on the VMware Hardware Compatability List.  For anyone that wants to give it a try, we have a free 30 day trial of VSA available at www.hp.com/go/TryVSA.
- Lastly, my hp.com blog very often covers our HP LeftHand solutions.  Here's a link to all of the posts we've done: www.communities.hp.com/.../default.aspx.  

Nice post - well done!
Calvin Zito (http://twitter.com/HPStorageGuy on Twitter).  

Calvin Zito |

10/27/2009 2:15:53 AM #

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10/27/2009 8:46:28 PM #

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10/29/2009 10:46:14 PM #

@Joe, thanks for the nods in your blog.  Fair disclosure: I’m with Dell’s storage group.

Reasonable people may differ on whether one product or another is better, and you are entitled to your opinion.  However, your blog post contains a number of inaccuracies and assumptions regarding the EqualLogic line from Dell around ‘clustering’, groups and cost.  I’d like to clear those up and attempt to in a post at the Dell’s Tech Center on this: www.delltechcenter.com/.../...gic+vs.+alternatives

It’s worth pointing out to readers that you and GCS have a commercial interest in promoting LeftHand in your assessments as you resell it, whereas you do not sell the EqualLogic line apparently.  GCS does appear to be a Dell partner for other product lines, and we appreciate your business.  We hope you’ll pick up the EqualLogic, PowerVault or other Dell storage lines.

Dylan Locsin |

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