NetApp vs EqualLogic. An exercise in dumbness
So right now, we’re looking for an iSCSI capable SAN solution. Plenty of vendors, all with advantages and disadvantages. So I jump on the interwebs to do a bit of background research.
And pretty much all I can find is NetApp employees/fanboys and EqualLogic employees/fanboys picking apart each other’s tiny failings and sniping at each other using negative language, in a manner that I can only describe as pathetic.
Seriously guys, stop it. I just want to know what’s best for me, not what’s best for you…
yerp said,
16 April, 2009 at 2:45 am
Get both companies to Demo their product. Shortly after, you’ll see one isfar superior to the other in almost every way. To many ppl are stuck / advised one way and have to back it. I’m so confident you’ll find one far superior that I won’t even mention which one it is.
RUSH said,
22 April, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I had both vendors provide Demo’s and saw pros/cons to both. Yerp, which product did you find so superior and why?
NetApp-
Pros – Scalable, solid performance, CIFS (great if you need this add-on), great support
Cons – Pricing is a bit more expensive and is a la carte
EQL -
Pros – Easy to use, decent support, all inclusive add-ons, price
Cons – questions about performance
For a smaller shop, running SQL ERP app, many other SQLs DBs, Exchange and about 10TB of total storage needs, I am leaning toward EqualLogic.
David Ramsay said,
24 June, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Just a quick question, which units did you get from Netapp and EqualLogic and how where they populated with drives?
Richard Charlesworth said,
30 August, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I have an EqualLogic SAN in place. It is a 6T configuration. We spec’ed out to maximize performance because we had the same concerns that RUSH commented on. I am happy to say that I no longer have ANY concerns about performance. This thing is SCREAMING fast. All my background previously was in the FC SAN world and I have NEVER seen a SAN perform this fast.
For disclosure sake… I have the EQ on a completely issolated switching fabric (like not even physically connected to anything else) where we have tuned the switches for jumbo frames, etc.
I am going to purchase another EQ this year but maximize it for storage capacity instead of performance. My plan is to divi up the volumes based on performance need (SQL and Exchange on the fast SAN and all the file store and backups on the other). However, I think there might be a chance that I will see little practical speed difference between the two. We will see.
Richard Charlesworth said,
30 August, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Additional note: I am NOT using any 3rd part HBA’s on my servers…. just the integrated TOE cards that all the Dell servers come with these days. My plan was to evaluate using the TOE cards and then add QLogic HBA’s later if performance was not where I needed it… no need..
James said,
1 October, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I had the same trouble this year, we already had NetApp kit, but I decided to go with Equallogic due to the arcahic NetApp OS restrictions:
http://www.verydodgy.com/blog/2009/03/why-i-chose-equallogic-over-netapp.html
Phil Wiffen said,
2 October, 2009 at 8:51 am
Thanks James, that’s an interesting post!
Sam said,
27 December, 2009 at 3:23 pm
FYI Netapp is bundling their app options these days. the prob James speaks about in that blog no longer hold true.
we’re currently atempting to figure out which san box to get too (1/2010)
both companies are still touting they are better than the other, i just want whats best for our environment and apps. most bang for the buck!
Sam
Darin said,
4 January, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Does anyone see any issues with using NetApp’s proprietary RAID DP? Do you know of any performance gains using their DP verses Equallogic’s RAID 50? Also, what capacity gains can be realized using the deduplication capabilities in production on the NetAPP? Our environment is Exchange, Microsoft SQL and typical file storage (mostly scanned images).
Phil Wiffen said,
7 January, 2010 at 11:18 am
Darin,
NetApp don’t recommend that you use Dedupe on Exchange as it can massively degrade performance with little to no real gains in storage optimisation. I don’t know about SQL server, as we don’t run it here, but I imagine it’s a similar story! On the other hand, we use VMware extensively, and are seeing a good 30-40% dedupe on our VMs.
Jack said,
5 March, 2010 at 12:04 am
Thank you all for simplifying this for me. I have been on the fence between Netapp and EQL for quite some time listening to VARs promote thier own agendas. I am a small shop running Exchange and Oracle trying to put the final touches on a DR plan. EQL seems like the logical choice for us as we embark on virtualization environment.
Dave said,
28 March, 2010 at 12:24 pm
We have a few NetApp toasters and they work fine and all and if you need unified storage then Netapp or Sun is the way to go imo. If you’re not planning on putting you VMware images on NFS then I’d go with Equallogic, since according to me they are easier to set up (it’s a DIY setup in under 30 mins) most of the time.
Also they are cheaper. Having said that there are a lot more competotrs out there selling the same type of products… XIV, 3PAR etc…
My 2 öre (from Sweden here)
/Dave
Bryan said,
7 July, 2010 at 8:34 pm
We have a netapp cluster running sata drives. Performance was less an issue then cost. Using it for about 4 years now. Mostly for CIFS shares and a little iSCSI. Great machines but you pay for it in support. We have had one bad experience with support where the system went down and they sent a tech that didn’t know what he was doing and almost destroyed a raid group. Backup becomes a problem when you get 15+ TB’s spinning since performance drops when multiple BU streams are running. This is most likely due to the SATA drives. I would highly recommend NetApp.
Desmond said,
8 August, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I have had Netapp for sometime. I wanted to decomm old array and add new array It was hella job took 3 week for me to make sure this is working fine. Performance otherwise is good. My branch office in Australia went with EQL. They were able to do with EQL within no time and no issues at all. Array Evacuation is one of the strong features EQL has and automatic load balancing is another great feature. Support is great. Now we have EQL in other branches also. Some are running Netapp may be we would change to EQL over a period of time.