Storage related questions regarding the design of a virtual infrastructure based on vSphere 5

[HX5]

hi guys at the vmware community,

my name is marc and I have some questions regarding our upcoming virtual infrastructure based on vsphere 5 (sorry, for my english). currently, we have 60 physical servers and would to migrate them on our new environment. the questions i have are storage related (like already mentioned)...

as ESXi hosts i will use the following:

- 2x HP DL 380 G7 (Each Host: 2 CPU / 64 GB RAM)

regarding the storagearray(s), i am really not sure, which one i should buy and i have no idea how to connect them to the hosts (ethernet, fc, etc), that i don't get performance issues. The 60 VMs will be running 7x24 and in case of a host failure, the surving host sould be able to boot all VMs.

are there any recommendations regarding a perfomantly StorageArray? Feel free to post whatever you want. At the moment, there is no limit in budget:-)...

if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

best regards'

marc

[firestartah]

Hi

Welcome to the forum

I would personally go with Fibre Channel if budget isn't a problem as FC is enterprise standard and will give you the best performance and availibility.As for the amount of servers you are buying, how large are the 60 servers?

Gregg

[HX5]

Hi Gregg

Thx for fast replying.

The 60 servers are for application development and testing. Those servers are small, means 4 CPUs and in the average with a memory utilization for around 2GB RAM. But once we have our virtual infrastructure, the amount of VMs will rise. Also i will put our DC, DNS, DHCP and the vCenter Server on the environment. What do you think for the amount of hosts? I just need 2 for HA.

Regarding FC and storage:

I would like to buy a HP P2000 G3 MSA Array which comes with 8 Gb Fibre Channel (2) Ports per controller or something similar. But once i have the storage array, can i directly attach the array over FC to the hosts or will I need a FC-switch too?

Best regards'

Marc

[firestartah]

Hi

Well 2 is the minimum you will need for HA and to allow patching/maintenence of a host at a time but obviously the less hosts you have the higher the utilisation but as long as your lead time for purchasing more hosts when needed isn't too long then 2 should be fine for the moment.

For FC storage i would recommend the Switch and i'm fairly certain(i'm not a storage guru though) that the switch is a requirement as you can't direct connect them in. Obviously make sure your switch has 8GB ports. The HP guys that do your spec'ing up should be clarifying this for you though.

Gregg

[HX5]

Hi Gregg,

So yesterday, I was searching trough the web for a solution regarding the storage. If I buy these DL380 G7 i will add for each host a qlogic hba with two FC ports (8Gbs). Then i connect from the HBAs to a qlogic 3810 fibre channel switch (so i will get multi-pathing for each host). Then from the switch to the storage array...

What do you think about this scenario?

Best regards'

Marc

[firestartah]

Hi

Yep that sounds good I would recommend two switches to enable effective multipathing though. So the idea is obviously two paths from the servers to the switches and then from the switches to the storage processors thereby making sure if you lose a switch or a hba port or an SP you still have a path.

Gregg

[HX5]

Hi Gregg

As an information: whit the latest qlogic fc hba's it is possible to direct attach a HP P2000 G3 storage array... As an example, you can take several QLE2560 hba's and direct attach them over fibre channel to the storage array (please see the picture attached)...

That sound good too...

Best regards'

Marc