Until ten years ago, serious storage systems were always associated with very high cost and complexity in operation (specialists had to take many courses to be able to fully work with them). Despite these inconveniences, the customer received reliable, multifunctional and very productive (for its time) storage systems. Customers who did not have the budgets for enterprise-level storage systems had to be content with extremely low-end storage systems with very limited performance, or completely abandon the idea of using storage systems.
As time went on, storage systems from the low-end segment (low-end) became more and more functional, more and more features were added to them, which were previously present only in enterprise storage systems.
In parallel, SSD drives appeared. After a while, their production became massive and the cost, accordingly, fell. As a result, the issue of performance in storage systems of a low price segment was also resolved. Low-end storage systems can now technically deliver 100 thousand IOPS for a reasonable price, which was previously possible only on enterprise arrays, the cost of which was high.
Also, in the process of storage development, their interfaces have become simpler and more intuitive. Many operations were automated, which greatly reduced the requirements for the qualifications of service personnel. As a result, even “mere mortals” IT specialists, who did not take long and expensive courses, were able to effectively solve storage administration tasks in small enterprises.
As a result, we have now come to a situation where, with the right approach of the manufacturer to its products, it becomes possible to provide the end customer with a storage system that, by its key characteristics, such as reliability, functionality and performance, will be in the low price segment.
Storage Lenovo ThinkSystem DE2000
Lenovo has leveraged its approach to low-cost storage with the ThinkSystem DE2000 storage system.
ThinkSystem DE2000 storage is a block storage system that supports FC and iSCSI protocols, the main distinguishing features of which are: one of the best-in-class performance, high reliability, flexible functionality and, most importantly, very low price.
The storage system is delivered in two chassis - 2U 24 SFF drives or 2U 12 LFF drives.
All physical components of DE2000 storage systems (controllers, power supplies, I / O ports, etc.) are duplicated and, accordingly, there are no points of failure. I / O is provided by two controllers in active-active mode, and, thus, the storage system allows for data availability at the level of "five nines" (99.999%).
In terms of price / performance ratio, Lenovo ThinkSystem DE2000 storage is one of the best solutions in its class. The computational resources of DE2000 storage controllers allow you to achieve storage performance of up to 100,000 read IOPS and 35,000 write IOPS (4k block, random), which is a very decent indicator for storage systems from a low price segment.
The total raw space supported is 1.47 petabytes, and the DE2000 is scaled vertically using disk shelves using the SAS12G protocol. Supports 2U shelves with 24 SFF drives or 12 LFF drives.
Smart data storage
In addition to standard methods of organizing storage and data protection (classic RAIDs 1/10, 3, 5, 6), DE2000 storage systems support DDP (Dynamic Disk Pool) technology, which allows you to distribute parity information and free capacity within a disk pool, thereby facilitating manage the array of data and reduce the likelihood of failures, since parity is not stored on all disks at the same time.
DDP pools support the ability to dynamically rebuild in case of a disk failure in the pool, which, in turn, significantly speeds up the traditionally long rebuild process.
In addition, one of the nice things about DDP pools is the support for automatic data rebalancing within the pool. This feature is extremely useful when adding or removing drives to storage systems, since it removes the administrator from the task of manually reconfiguring arrays.
As befits a modern storage system, in the DE2000, in addition to protection mechanisms using disk redundancy (RAID, DDP), there are other options. At the local level, DE2000 supports snapshots and clones, and for disaster recovery it supports asynchronous replication with other Lenovo DE-series arrays. Note that older storage systems (DE4000 and DE6000) also support synchronous replication.
Special attention was paid to control in DE2000 systems (as well as in older models). Complex, confusing and illogical management interfaces are a thing of the past. ThinkSystem DE-series systems use a convenient and intuitive web-based interface that will not cause any problems for almost any IT specialist.
At the same time, it is possible to approach management efficiently and add storage systems to the Lenovo XClarity centralized management console, which will allow you to manage both storage systems and Lenovo servers from a single window.
So, we can say that from the point of view of reliability, functionality, convenience and performance for its class (remember - this is a low-end), the DE2000 system is definitely a very high-quality solution. Therefore, the quality characteristic has been achieved.
And the most interesting ... the price
Storage DE2000 is a system from a low price segment, so the price is one of its main advantages. Usually storage manufacturers do not like to share prices with customers in the public field and send them to partners for project calculation. The situation with DE2000 systems is somewhat different - you can find out its price right now. It starts at 346,690 rubles in the basic configuration and further depends on the packing. You can make a more accurate calculation by leaving a request on this page .
Is it expensive or not? In our subjective opinion, for a dual-controller fault-tolerant storage system with enterprise functionality, which can deliver up to 100,000 IOPS of performance, which is easy to manage, well scalable and has a 3-year warranty from Lenovo (one of the world's largest manufacturers of computing equipment) such a price extremely attractive! Therefore, the characteristic “inexpensive” has also been achieved.
In addition, these storage systems in various configurations are in stock in Russia and delivery times are only a few days, which is much more pleasant than waiting for the standard 6-8 weeks (a common practice when it comes to buying storage systems). Thus, the "fast" characteristic is confirmed not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of delivery times.
Output
Lenovo ThinkSystem DE2000 storage system is not any breakthrough and innovative product, all functions and features of the system are in one form or another in other storage systems. Therefore, if you formulate the main advantage of DE2000 storage systems in one word, then it will be the word "practicality". The DE2000 storage system ideally combines useful functionality, ease of management, reliability, decent scalability and performance characteristics, availability in stock and, most importantly, a very pleasant price.