Uses for Local Storage

[J1mbo]

Morning

Am finalising vSphere infrastructure spec for an SME:

- 3x Dell R610s (2x X5570s, 48GB, 6x GigE, dual PSU)

- 2x Force10 S25N GigE stacked switches

- 1x EqualLogic PS4000SV (16x 300GB SAS 15k, 2x 2GB controllers, dual PSU)

The R610s have the Perc 6i controller so I guessed it makes sense to spec some local storage for flexibility as cost impact is minimal overall, i.e. 5x 146 SAS 10k in RAID-5.

Q - keep these in hand for now, or use for (eg) vSwap space?

Please award points to any useful answer.

[Luckybob]

You only need so much space for swap on the service console (1.6 GB, twice the recommended). I don't know if I would go with 5 x 146GB drives, unless you wanted a RAID 10 for some performance with a hot spare. You could use the local store and RDM it to an NFS share and host you ISOs to the rest of your cluster. I personally use the space for test systems, not critical files and ISOs. Anything you don't need across the cluster and can live with loosing.

[vmroyale]

Hello.

I personally use the space for test systems, not critical files and ISOs. Anything you don't need across the cluster and can live with loosing.

I'll second this. I prefer to use it as storage for things I could live without if they were lost. I wouldn't want VMs swapping to local storage, if it could be avoided.

Good Luck!

[J1mbo]

Thanks for the replies.

Re VMs swapping to local storage - my reasoning was to avoid (as much as possible) IO congestion on the SAN, and more particularly the 2x GigE connections to it. I also felt that vSwapping, by nature, would benefit from the lowest latency storage?

Please award points to any useful answer.

[admin]

Personally I would use the local storage for keeping VMs which are always going to be local to the same test server, which means the low priority VMs those are not involved in HA-DRS, VMotion etc. While keeping any VMs/Data on local storage we should consider the backup also (speed will be less in case of local storage).