Infortrend storage is an alternative to A-brands. Review and Testing

Storage systems are increasingly used in the IT infrastructure of the small and medium business segment. Jobs migrate to the virtual environment, and the usual “file trash” in the form of old iron full of disks is no longer enough to store data. Therefore, for many small companies, sooner or later, the question arises of choosing an entry-level Enterprise storage system. Tasks for the storage system become standard: to provide the necessary performance, fault tolerance and compatibility with the existing IT infrastructure. But, unfortunately, the decisive factor in the choice is the validity of the cost of the decision.

First-tier manufacturers have suitable products that meet all the requirements for functionality and level of service. But there are certain difficulties with the compatibility and cost of ownership of such solutions. Therefore, this article is devoted to an alternative to A-brands - the Infortrend storage system.

Infortrend is a representative of Taiwanese manufacturers with a specialization in storage systems. For more than 20 years of work on the design and production of its own storage systems, Infortrend has created a product that successfully competes with representatives of major global brands.

Infortrend Main Product Line

EonStor GS is a unified SAN and NAS storage with file, block and object access within a single device.

EonStor GSe - 1-controller budget option EonStor GS

EonServ - hybrid solutions, classic x86 server + software RAID Infortrend.

EonStor DS is the most common storage line. It is a classic SAN with block access, the functionality and performance of which we will discuss later in this article using the Infortrend ESDS 3012T as an example.

Booth specification

Infortrend ESDS 3012T storage system consisting of:

Form factor: 2U Rackmount (depth - 529 mm)
Installation kit for 19 "racks. Frame spacing from 24" to 36 "
    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 are standard: (4 + 4) x 1GbE - RJ-45 (iSCSI)
    Host ports optional: (2 + 2) x 10GbE - RJ-45 iSCSI
                                (4 + 4) x 1GbE - RJ-45
                                (2 + 2) x 10GbE - SFP + (iSCSI)
                                (4 + 4) x 8/4 / 2Gb FC
                                (2 + 2) x 16Gb FC
                                (4 + 4) x 8Gb FC / (2 + 2) x 16Gb FC / (4 + 4) x 10Gb iSCSI (converged)
                                (2 + 2) x 6Gb x4 SAS
                                (2 + 2) x 12Gb SAS
    Expansion ports: (1 + 1) x SAS 6G x4
      Up to 312 HDDs in one system (with additional JBOD Infortrend connected)
      12 disk bays HotSwap SerialATA / SAS
      4 x SSD 200GB SATA 6G eMLC NAND Enterprise ( 84K / 12K R / W IOps, 550/230 MB / s R / W, 1.1PB write resource)
      8 x HDD 6000GB SAS 12G 7200rpm
      Fail- safe power supply with hot-swappable 1 + 1,530W
      CacheSafe
      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)
      Management: SANWatch management suite, Terminal via RS-232C, Telnet / SSH, LCD keypad panel
      Notifications: Email, Fax, LAN broadcast, SNMP traps, SMS, Skype
      SSD Cache
      Infortrend warranty 36 months. Repair and maintenance at the STSS service center.

Photo report

Despite the compact size of the storage system itself, it comes in a fairly overall box.



The dimensions of the package are due to the fact that the baskets with discs are stacked in separate compartments of the box. This ensures the safety of such fragile items during transportation. In storage systems of other manufacturers, disks usually go already installed inside the case.



Storage controllers in this series support the installation of a single host interface card.



Host boards with various connection interfaces are optionally supported.



Universal drive cages - allow you to install both 2.5 "and 3.5" drives without the use of additional adapters.



A unique feature of Infortrend storage systems is the use of SATA disks in 2-controller configurations. This is implemented using a specialized board that allows you to simulate 2 ports on one SATA interface, which provides connection to two controllers for fault tolerance.



For example, to build a budget solution with a high level of IOPS, in this storage system you can use the classic Enterprise SSD with SATA interface.

Testing

For performance testing, 5 disk array configurations and 4 load modes were selected.

Configurations:

1. RAID10 : 4 x Intel SSD 200Gb S3610

2. RAID5 : 8 x Seagate HDD SAS 6000Gb, Enterprise Capacity 3.5, SAS 12Gb / s, 7200 rpm, 128Mb buffer

3. RAID5 + SSD Cache : 8 x Seagate HDD SAS 6000Gb , Enterprise Capacity 3.5, SAS 12Gb / s, 7200 rpm, 128Mb buffer + 1 x Intel SSD 200Gb S3610

4. RAID6 : 8 x Seagate HDD SAS 6000Gb, Enterprise Capacity 3.5, SAS 12Gb / s, 7200 rpm, 128Mb buffer

5. RAID6 + SSD Cache : 8 x SeagateHDD SAS 6000Gb, Enterprise Capacity 3.5, SAS 12Gb / s, 7200 rpm, 128Mb buffer + 1 x Intel SSD 200Gb S3610

Load scenarios:

1. Database


2. File storage


3. VDI


4. WEB service


Summary table of results:



Next, we consider comparative charts.
It is pointless and unreadable to put the results of SSD and HDD into one chart - the difference between the HDD modes is lost, but I still leave one chart.



And that's why. There are customers who for the database are relatively small, but with a large number of users, choose arrays on the HDD and neglect the use of SSDs. The reasons include the "low" resource of solid-state drives and the "high" reliability of SAS HDD. And in order to “increase” the performance, they take not 7.2K disks, but SAS 15K disks. In the current realities, according to statistics, the probability of failure of a spindle disk threshing at a speed of 15,000 rpm is much higher than that of a server SSD with a giant rewrite resource and no moving elements.

And this graph, in addition, reflects the performance gap between the SSD and HDD arrays, and it doesn’t matter which drives are used - SSDs will give the result at least an order of magnitude better (when using SAS SSD, the performance will be even higher).

Since we are testing all the same storage systems, not disks, let us examine in more detail the performance of arrays in various modes.





There is a natural drop in RAID6 performance compared to RAID5 - this is an inevitable sacrifice in favor of fault tolerance. SSD Cache in most cases, even in synthetic tests, showed a performance gain. I believe that in real conditions this difference will be even greater.

Infortrend Storage Advantages

I won’t suck it out, but I’ll write frankly - the advantages are only 2:

1. Infortrend storage supports most models of classic Enterprise disks available on the market. This means, firstly, there is no need to overpay, at the time of purchase of storage, for branded (same) drives, as is the case with A-brands, and secondly, there are no problems replacing non-warranty drives in the future, in 3-5 etc. years of operation. There is always a suitable replacement on the market, and you will not have to buy branded discs through the service channel many times more expensive than modern counterparts.

2. As I already mentioned - Infortrend works without problems (with a certain loss of performance) with SATA Enterprise-drives of both SDD and HDD. But, using SATA HDD is not profitable, because cost of SATA disk + MUX-card = cost of NL SAS, the same volume. But with the SSD, the situation is different - not only are SAS SSDs rare, they cost significantly more than SATA analogs. In addition, SAS SSD rewriting resources do not capture the segment of enterprise drives of entry and intermediate levels. Using a SATA SSD (such as Intel S3520 or S3610), you can build a budget storage system with high performance. When I say budget, it means 3-4 times cheaper than A-brands.

There is another feature of Infortrend storage. It can be attributed to both disadvantages and advantages - it all depends on where you bought it. This is a guarantee, or rather, the absence of an official guarantee on the territory of the Russian Federation. But we give our warranty on Infortrend from 2 to 3 years (depending on the model), with service in the SC throughout Russia. To ensure prompt replacement, we have a warranty warehouse.

To calculate the model and select the necessary specification, we have a convenient configurator on our site . The ESDS 4024B model is also presented there , which supports the installation of 2 interface boards on each controller.

conclusions

Recently, Infortrend storage systems have become a popular solution in the field of small and medium-sized businesses due to the above advantages. The ability to use in multi-brand solutions allows you to integrate storage systems into an existing infrastructure without being tied to the manufacturer of server and network equipment. One of the most common use cases for these storage systems is building a failover cluster. Also, a small share of projects is occupied by the replacement of branded storage systems with Infortrend. This happens when the customer is faced with a choice - replacement of non-guaranteed branded disks or a new storage system with disks for the same money.

Thank you for your attention, waiting for your comments.