VMware - Server and SAN considerations
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008Overview
Just some jotting from a recent meeting. Considerations for hosting a maximum of 20 VMs, all running Windows 2000, all with 8Gb storage maximum = 160Gb. Additionally, require space for 7x daily backup (7×160Gb = 1120Gb usable space).
SAN
- SAS disks are basically as good, in throughput, as FC disks.
- SATA disks noticably slower than SAS, not advised for anything other than backup use, certainly not as home drives for users, for example.
- Dell MD3000i used with iSCSI and ESX3.x no problem. Price?
- NetAPP FS2000 series is lowest with iSCSI availability (FAS Series Overview). Costs - the FAS270 may be around US$20,000 … oh dear, well that ends that thread then!
- SANDirect web site has great, easy-to-view information on many SANs for a quick comparison of features.
- The Intel® Storage Server SSR212MC2 may also be of interest, need to check out further.
- Evolution Rack Server - popular in the University, check out the model A60.
- RAID 6 popular with large disk size, protects against failure of two disks (long rebuild time with larger disks).
This article, "Things we wish we’d known about NAS devices and Linux
Raid", discusses RAID failure probabilities and is, frankly, superb.