ESXi 5.0 & Iomega PX4-300d

[phollmann]

Hi all,

has anyone an Iomega PX4-300d in use with an ESXi 5.0 and normal HDDs (not SSDs)?

This storage looks very interesting for small VMware environments, but is the performance okay for this? Concrete, I plan to use this box with 4x 2 TB-discs together with 2 ESXi-servers. I would like to run 3 or 4 VMs on it (alltogether).

Greets,

Phil

[dales123]

I guess it all depends on the workload of the 3-4 vm's and their IO requirements, if they are just file and print vm's then you should be fine but if those vm's are crunching hi-def video all day it might be a different story. What are the proposed vm's used for any how many people connect to them. 

[phollmann]

Hi,

the first VM is an SBS 2008 with about 20 users (you can´t call them power-users), second VM is the fileserver and the third hosts an Oracle database...

[dales123]

OK, well both SBS and file duties should be ok on such a device especially for 20 users(as long as they are not on OEM licences). I would however advise you to do alot of prep work and investigation for the oracle DB (their licencing for virtual instances used to be a bit funky I'm not sure if it still is or not). Heres a good start on licencing oracle http://blogs.vmware.com/apps/2012/02/facts-about-virtualizing-oracle-part-2-of-2-oracle-licensing.ht... . Also I would look into running perf mon on the physical boxes to gain some insight into your current IO requirements or you could use something like this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd537566.aspx  or many other IO report generators.

It might seem like overkill but the same amount of planning and thought is required for a small environment as it is for large as the last thing you want is users knocking on your door complaining.

[phollmann]

Okay, I didn´t thought about the Oracle licencing... The software vendor whose software is using the Oracle database already told me that the actual licensing fits to the new VMware-environment, so that should be fine.

I´m going to monitor the performance...

Is there just anyone who´s already working with the PX4-300d?

[MarekZdrojewski]

I'm using one in my home lab, its quite fast with iSCSI. Check this blog post from Gabe, he tested the Iomega StorCenter PX4-300R which is a rack mounted version of the PX-300d.

- hth

Regards.