Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Hardware

Purchasing Used High-End Storage Arrays? 20

Posted by Cliff from the purchasing-big-iron-from-for-sale-listings dept.
sphealey asks: "I have an opportunity to purchase a used disk storage array in the terabyte class (which we need) originally manufactured by a leading vendor. The price is reasonable, and the seller is offering to provide installation and a 90-day warranty with the system. The unit appears to be complete and functioning. My question is, what are the pitfalls? And which are likely to occur?

"What I have considered so far:

  • Original vendor charges outrageous fee to license necessary client-side software.
  • Original vendor charges 're-entry fee' of some sort to place unit back on maintenance and support.
  • Shipping and installation nightmares are worse than the usual for this class of equipment, and there is no original vendor to turn to for assistance.
Do any Slashdotters have any experience in this area? Any success or failure stories in purchasing used big iron?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Purchasing Used High-End Storage Arrays? More

Purchasing Used High-End Storage Arrays?

Comments Filter:

  • Same (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    same as with any used equipment.

    If you've never bought anything used then I suggest you don't start with something of this magnitude.

    If you have, then surely you're aware of the pitfalls.
  • Do not let the college kid intern give his friends accounts on a machine that can mount this volume so that they can run gnutella clients. Your terabytes of space will be filled with mp3's, pirated iso's of games, every episode of Star Trek X Files Simpsons and Seinfeld and Lexx and etc. ever broadcast, within days. Those guys will fill your space at a rate which can be calculated from the size of your internet pipe. They will go out and rent DVDs just to copy them to your space so they can re-download them everytime they want to watch it, screwing your bandwidth bill.

    Don't ask how I know this. And no, I just deleted it all, so you can't look in there and poke around and see if they have any porn.

    Word to the wise.
    • kinda sounds like a parent? and don't ask me what happened to the gigabytes on my home workstation, where the virus came from (dual boot) or if my workstation has visited any inapporpreate web site.

  • Be careful on compatibility (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For example, HP sells rebranded Metastor arrays (from LSI I think) but they cleverly replace the firmware with their own wonky HP load.

    This doesn't do anything good for the customer, in that it actually decreases the amount of control you have over the array.

    But it does something cool for the vendor (HP that is) because without the HP firmware the Metastor won't work perfectly with the (proprietary, closed-source) HP-UX disk management and monitoring utilities.

    Unscrupulous installers of non-HP Metastor arrays will turn off disk and fiber channel monitoring in HP-UX so as to prevent generating false errors... this also prevents detection of real errors, how 'bout that.

    Be wary, and get a written guarantee of compatibility up front if you can.

  • terabyte (Score:1, Troll)

    by KyleCordes ( 10679 )
    IIRC, a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes. 100 GB drives are available, so terabyte array really is not very big.

    Make sure you know how the price compares with a new solution to the problem you have... just because it's a fraction of its original price doesn't mean it's a good deal.
    • I haven't the fainted idea why my post was moderated 'troll'... I certainly did not intend it as such.
      • I wouldn't have moderated it "troll" myself, but it was perhaps not the most informed comment ever posted.

        If you are talking about stringing together some ATA drives to make a big storage pool for personal use, then 1 TB is do-able these days.

        However, that's a long way from the configurability, scalability, reliability (99.99999% uptime) and managability of an EMC Symmetrix, HP XP256, IBM Shark, or similar systems in a datacenter environment.

        For example, EMC claims that in 20 years not a single bit of data has been lost on any of their storage arrays where the installation has been approved by EMC field service. That's not an claim to claim to make lightly, nor something easy to accomplish with a string of drives from Fry's.

        sPh
        • Indeed, you are right about both the post and the drives.

          However, there are lots of situations for which people have a need for very large storage, but don't have a need for 99.99999% uptime, amazing reliability, etc., and you can now buy the former for much less cost than the latter. Three years ago, if you needed terabyte, you had to spend a huge amount on an EMC or whatever; now, you only have to spend that if you need a huge amount *and* you need great reliability.

          The world keeps changing, too. In a few more years, if you need a terabyte, that will be one hard drive. If you need higher availability, you'll need just a normal RAID subsystem, which is included in many servers and is far cheaper than an EMC storage system.

          I remember looking at a 10 gig storage subsystem for a document imaging application some years ago. It was an optical disk system with a robotic arm for swapping a library of disks, $20K+ Today my notebook has that much space.
          • No disagreement here. I remember standing in front of a Division Capital Expenditure Board to get approval for an enormous 1 GIGABYTE disk drive for my file server. It would fit in a wristwatch today...

            sPh

  • If its... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Erk ( 17215 ) on Sunday November 18, 2001 @11:09AM (#2581049)
    EMC, then you're in trouble. EMC charges for the software like you mentioned, for both the Clariion and Symmetrix. That is how they make their money. And technically, if you have the opportunity to buy a used Sym, then it is a semi-illegal sale, since EMC is the only authorized person to resell a Sym. Once you buy it, you're stuck with it.

    Sun stuff is pretty good - all of the necessary software to use the array on a direct connect basis is available in the box. It's not pretty, but it works. You can config it using RaidUtil.

    HP would probably lean towards the EMC model more than the Sun model. Software is their big push. You might be able to get it config'd on a direct attached basis, but dunno about in a SAN w/o appropriate software.

    Compaq is the same as HP, but their stuff isn't as good.

    Netapp? They seem to be the most user-friendly when it comes to used equip.

    Just my $0.02.
    • And technically, if you have the opportunity to buy a used Sym, then it is a semi-illegal sale, since EMC is the only authorized person to resell a Sym. Once you buy it, you're stuck with it.
      Actually, in the US I believe that there is a federal law which prohibits prohibitions of that nature. Written to prevent automobile manufacturers from locking up the spare parts market, but applies to other resales as well.

      However, that's not to say that the vendor couldn't make things unbearable for the buyer using perfectly legal means if they were of a mind to, which is what I am trying to scope out here.

      sPh

  • Did you win this auction?
    http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIte m& item=1292583082

    If so - hela-good deal. If you aren't doing video, I'd scrap Sangery and go direct attached instead.

    Pitfalls? Things like to die in shipping, but if you get the 90 day warranty you should be covered. After that, it's a question of support. What will RMAs cost you? What will it cost you to get help over the phone or e-mail? What would an on-site visit cost you if you needed one? etc. If you haven't dealt with such a bit of hardware before, vendor support could make a big difference in PITA factor, and cost. Good luck.
  • There are three sets of possible issues you might encounter: Hardware, Software, and Compatibility. It looks like you've considered some of the software issues, though I'm not sure you've considered the harware or compatibility issues yet.

    Hardware issues probably center around reliability, more than anything. If you're purchasing a 3 year old disk array which received constant use, then you can expect that you WILL encounter hardware issues - if not now, sometime during its useful life. You might just encounter a bad disk, or there may be larger problems (like with the head unit). I've seen NetApps which are only a few WEEKS old lose disks (not much EMC experience here).

    You may need/want to update firmware or patch the internal OS of the unit. Be warned that you may need to purchase some sort of support contract to get patches and updates. Also, hardware like this is notoriously touchy about being moved - so once you get it set up, don't tear it down and set it up somewhere else, unless you're prepared to fight with it.

    Finally, compatibility issues may arise. I've noticed that NetApps in particular are very touchy when using Linux NFS clients - very often the clients will need to be rebooted when they hang. I think this is more of a Linux NFS client code issue than a NetApp issue (Linux NFS is *slowly* getting better), but its something to keep in mind. Without knowing what hardware you are going to purchase, it's very difficult to tell you what to look out for, but my primary experience has been with NetApp (fairly reliable, and a huge pain to work with in a cross platform environment) and a little EMC (nifty, a little faster, and a lot more expensive).

Slashdot Top Deals

Don't panic.

Close