2nd Gen Infortrend EonStor DS2024 Storage Review and Test

    In the article “Storage Infortrend - an alternative to A-brands. Review and testing ” we described the functionality and performance of one of the most popular at that time SAN Infortrend - DS 3012T. According to the results of the last article, we attributed the advantages of Infortrend storage systems to support for classic Enterprise disks (not branded) and SATA disks in 2-controller systems. These facts make the data of the storage system unique because Using SATA SSD Enterprise, you can build a budget storage system with high performance and fault tolerance.

    In this article, we will look at the 24-disk SAN model of the 2000th series, and pay more attention to the Infortrend SANWatch management interface.

    Comparison of the performance of Infortrend rulers of different generations


    Last year, Infortrend launched the second generation of EonStor DS SAN systems, in which processors were updated, maximum RAM was increased, and the main difference was the transition to a 12-gigabit disk interface, which significantly affected the performance of especially younger models.



    The comparison table shows that the youngest series of the latest generation (DS 2000 Gen2 - the topic of this article) is almost equal in performance to the older series of the last generation (DS 3000T - the topic of the previous article). The 2000 series has a slight lag in IOPs and equal performance in MB / s, but at the same time, the second generation has twice as fast SAS interface and a larger number of mapped drives.

    Booth specification


    Infortrend ESDS 2024 Gen2 storage system consisting of:

    Form factor: 4U Rackmount (depth - 500 mm)
    Installation kit for 19 "rack. The distance between the frames is from 23" to 37 "
        Dual RAID controller (High IOPS)
    RAID level 0, 1 (0 + 1), 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60
        4GB DDR-III Dual Controller (optionally up to 32GB DDR-III Dual Controller)
        2 x FBWC module
        Host-ports: (4 + 4) x 1GbE - RJ-45 (iSCSI)
        Host ports optional: (4 + 4) x 1GbE - RJ-45 (2 + 2) x 10GbE - SFP + (iSCSI)
    (2 + 2) x 10GbE - RJ-45 iSCSI
    ( 4 + 4) x 16Gb FC
    (4 + 4) x 8Gb FC / (2 + 2) x 16Gb FC / (4 + 4) x 10Gb iSCSI (converged)
    (2 + 2) x 12Gb SAS
    (2 + 2) x 40GbE - QSFP
        Expansion Ports: (1 + 1) x SAS 12G x4
          Up to 444 HDDs in one system (with additional JBOD Infortrend connected)
          24 disk bays HotSwap SerialATA / SAS
          10 x SAS SSD 3.8TB Toshiba PX05SVB384 : MLC, Dual port 12 Gbit / s, 270k IOPS random read (4K), 3 DWPD
          10 x SAS SSD 1.9TB Toshiba PX05SVB192: MLC, Dual port 12 Gbit / s, 270k IOPS random read (4K), 3 DWPD
    40 x SAS HDD 1,2TB HGST Ultrastar HUC101812CS4200: 10520 RPM, 128MB Cache, 12Gb / s (via JBOD Infortrend)
          Fail       -safe power supply with hot-swappable 1 + 1 460W
          CacheSafe
    SSD Cache (optional)
    Multi-pathing
          Thin Provisioning
          Automated Storage Tiering (optional 2 tiers / 4 tiers)
          Local replication
          Advanced Local Replication: Snapshot and Volume Copy / Mirror (optional)
          Remote Replication (optional)

    Device mapper
          Management: SANWatch management suite, Terminal via RS-232C, Telnet / SSH, LCD keypad panel
          Notifications: Email, Fax, LAN broadcast, SNMP traps, SMS, Skype
          Infortrend 36 month warranty. Repair and maintenance at the STSS service center.



    The capacious 4U-case allows you to install up to 24 2.5 "/ 3.5" drives, while it has a depth of only 500 mm. As standard, the DS 2024 G2 is equipped with 4 x RJ-45 Gigabit Host Interfaces (iSCSI) per controller. The controllers of this model of storage are independent of each other, but work in pairs, providing fault tolerance. Each controller supports the installation of one interface expansion card.



    460 W power supplies also reserve each other, evenly distributing the load among themselves.

    Infortrend SANWatch Management Interface




    SANWatch software includes tools for configuring data storage, monitoring arrays, disks, and the system as a whole. SANWatch provides an administrator notification when various system problems occur. Infortrend storage allows you to organize RAID arrays of the following levels: (RAID 0, 1, (0 + 1), 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60).



    When creating a logical volume, the necessary disks are marked, the RAID level is selected, and, if necessary, the SED (Self Encrypting Drives) function is activated.

    Thin / Full Provisioning


    When creating a partition, you can select the initialization option after creation, i.e. full allocation of disk space at the time of creation (Full provisioning).



    If the partition should be dynamic, then dynamic allocation of capacity (Thin provisioning) is turned on, indicating the minimum volume reserved for this section.



    Local / Remote Replication


    Volume backups (synchronous or asynchronous) can be done in two ways. Either inside the same subsystem (Local replication), or to the Infortrend remote storage system (Remote replication).



    Snapshots




    The Snapshot function is also available, which can be configured on a schedule.



    Automatic tiering




    The function of automatically distributing data by levels includes the use of various types of disks: SSD, SAS, NL-SAS and SATA. It allows you to increase productivity and volume at the same time, due to the intellectual migration of “cold” and “hot” data between arrays based on drives of the optimal type.



    But, in my opinion, the 4-level tearing in the current realities is losing its relevance. SATA and NL SAS drives are almost equivalent, given the need to use MUX for SATA in 2-controller systems. Thus, one level is eliminated. Well, SAS HDD 10 / 15K is already a dying species. Cost per TB is getting closer to SSD, and performance has not gone far from 7.2K HDD. Therefore, I do not see the point of having a dubious layer in the form of hot SAS disks of a small volume. There remains an ideal 2-level tearing, which is also perfectly supported by Infortrend systems: “hot” data on SSDs and “cold” data on NL SAS.

    SSD Cache



    The SSD cache function speeds up the re-reading of hot data (for example, Microsoft SQL, Mail Server, CRM, SAP, and VDI), automatically moves a copy of the most frequently used data from hard drives to the SSD-based cache pool.



    Testing


    To confirm the performance level of Infortrend storage systems, we used a server with Xeon E5-2620V4 running Windows Server 2012 R2, equipped with 2-port adapters Emulex LightPulse FC 16 Gb / s. For testing, 4 disk array configurations and 4 load modes were selected.

    Configurations:

    1. RAID5 : 10 x TOSHIBA SAS SSD 3.84TB + 10 x TOSHIBA SAS SSD 1.92TB

    2. RAID6 : 10 x TOSHIBA SAS SSD 3.84TB + 10 x TOSHIBA SAS SSD 1.92TB

    3. RAID5 : 40 x HGST SAS HDD 1.2 TB with JBOD

    4. RAID6 : 40 x HGST SAS HDD 1.2TB with JBOD

    Load Scenarios:

    1. Sequential read / write

    2. Random read / write

    3. Database

    4. VDI









    The test results provided by R&D Infortrend confirmed the declared characteristics for this model of storage.
    In conclusion, I repeat: the main advantage of SAN Infortrend is its classic drives at market value, and support for SATA drives in 2-controller systems. This scheme reduces performance and, in the case of HDDs, is pointless. But for SATA SSDs, this is widely applicable. The storage turns out to be as budget-friendly and productive as possible, and the cost of one IOPs of such a solution is the most favorable in comparison with similar 2-controller systems.

    You can estimate the cost of the solution in the necessary configuration on our website in the sectionInfortrend storage systems .

    For the HABR code word, a 5% discount on ESDS 1-controller models, and 7% on 2-controller models.

    Thanks for attention!

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