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jeffhoward014
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April 16th, 2013 15:00
LSI SAS Switch with MD32xx Head-Units
Hello -
As is no surprise to anyone who's dug into the hardware behind the MD32xx series, it's all basically a LSI back-end on both the SAN controllers and the server HBAs. Has anyone tried the following LSI "SAS Switch" with the MD32xx line?
http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/LSISAS6160Switch.aspx
My understanding is that the HBAs and controllers really don't care if there's a switch between them, however the PowerVault MDSM software would have to be able to deal with more than 8 host port identifiers showing up.
Does anyone know if this works on the MD32xx platform? I'm assuming the LSI hardware is compatible as the controllers in MD32xx were there reference hardware when the SAS6 Switch was developed, but I'm not sure how much Dell has changed the firmware since then.
Thoughts?
- Jeff
I'm using 2 of them in a redundant setup. Working great for me connected to 2 MD3200 and 8 different hosts. Only headache is the thickness and cost of the SAS cables. Highly recommend for the bandwidth and ease of use. Make sure you upgrade to the latest firmware and follow the instructions on LSI website.
jeffhoward014
15 Posts
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Posted April 22nd, 2013 18:00
Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it. Just out of curiosity, how come you went the LSI switch route instead of 10GBe with the MD3260i? Also, are you using the basic Dell "Dual-port SAS6 HBAs"? The jump to 10GBe is an expensive one, ($20K for the switches alone) but there's the added advantage of being able to use the 10GBe network for vMotion and other network functions. All total, we would have to spend $45K for the MD3620i, switches, and NICs. Versus $24K for simply adding another MD3220 and 2x LSI SAS switches.
Do you think you get better performance out of the MD3200's than you would out of the MD3620 over iSCSI? So far it seems like you can beat the raw performance and low-latency of the direct SAS interconnects. Also, has Dell gave you a hard time about support if you call them for troubleshooting?