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ras2a
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Clustering and optimal set up with our kit

Hi all,

In need of some wise words of wisdom and advice from you good people Smiley Happy

Our kit:

Hardware:

x2 HP DL380 G7s (x8 300GB SAS HDDs in RAID 10 > 1.2TB usable), 48GB RAM, x2 Intel Xeon E5606 CPU, x4 pNICs in each Server

x1 HP StorageWorks x1600 SAN (x6 2TB SATA HDDs in RAID 10 > 6TB usable), x2 pNICs

Software:

vSphere 5 Essentials Kit. We have x14 Servers (mix of both Physical and current VMs).

Veeam v6

Questions:

1) SAN has x2 pNICs - Is it better to team these due to iSCSI traffic requirements, or use one for Management and one for iSCSI network?

2) I wanted to split SAN into x2 arrays (both RAID10), but can't as RAID10 needs x4 HDD min. Is one large array ok/advisable/best practise etc, or would it be better to install another x2 HDDs (giving 8 HDDs total) and then split into x2 RAID10 arrays?

3) vSphere 5 Essentials does not offer HA or vMotion. Could we create a 'cluster' of the ESXi hosts without these features and what resilience (if any) does that offer?

Any help or advice on best practice or optimal config for our kit would be brilliant

Thank you in advance guys, much appreciated

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sparrowangelste
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a single nic would work, many posts on the forums point to 1 nic being adequate and sufficient enough, but if you have 2 nics you can have multipathing to have redundancy in your links to your datastore luns

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com

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sparrowangelste
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1)  SAN has x2 pNICs - Is it better to team these due to iSCSI traffic  requirements, or use one for Management and one for iSCSI network?

if you only have 2 nics use one for Management and one for iSCSI network

2)  I wanted to split SAN into x2 arrays (both RAID10), but can't as RAID10  needs x4 HDD min. Is one large array ok/advisable/best practise etc, or  would it be better to install another x2 HDDs (giving 8 HDDs total) and  then split into x2 RAID10 arrays?

if io requirements arent high, raid 5 should be ok. Moer HD up front i lways good.

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com
ras2a
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We have multiple DB applications, so I'd prefer to stay with RAID10 over RAID5. Would the single 1Gbps NIC on the SAN be sufficient for all storage traffic?

Thanks

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sparrowangelste
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usually 1-2 nics is good enough.

also often multiple iscsi nics might give you path failover but not greater throughput.

depnds on the storage

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com
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ras2a
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Thank you. How about the clustering? Is HA, DRS etc an absolute pre-requisite or could we have some sort of rudimentary cluster using just our vSphere 5 essentials kit?

thanks mate

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mcowger
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Only you can answer that question.  How much does downtime cost you?

--Matt VCDX #52 blog.cowger.us
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ras2a
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I should have re-phrased that, my apologies. I just wanted to see if any sort of very basic clustering was possible with the base version (essentials kit) of vSphere 5? Or do we have to have essentials plus (that comes with vMotion / HA)?

Thanks

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LuigiC
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The initial description says each server has 4 nics ....where did the other 2 go ?

with 1 Gbps ... I think you can't count on doing more that 70MB/sec. Do you need more than that ?

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ras2a
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@ LuigiC: Our x2 Hosts have x4 pNICs each. Our SAN has x2 pNICs (HP StorageWorks x1600) < I was just wondering if we should team the x2 NICs in the SAN, or if using a single NIC would suffice for the iSCSI traffic Smiley Happy

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sparrowangelste
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a single nic would work, many posts on the forums point to 1 nic being adequate and sufficient enough, but if you have 2 nics you can have multipathing to have redundancy in your links to your datastore luns

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com
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LuigiC
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Yep, agrree. and depending how you bind them (active/active) you'll have double the capicity.

ras2a
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Ok thanks guys

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kkzainul
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Thank you for your email. today am on leave, may not be accessing my e-mails. If your query is urgent please e-mail osimblrwintelchange@logica.com<mailto:osimblrwintelchange@logica.com>.

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ras2a
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I should have probably re-phrased this -- We have a HP SAN that has x2 built in NICs.

To me, it makes more sense to configure both of these in a Team to increase throughput (and for failover). - would you chaps agree with this? In other words, is there any benefit in using one of the NICs for management of the SAN and one for the iSCSI traffic? Surely not?

thank you guys

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