storage design on ESXI 5

[itpassionate77]

Hi all,

I need to design a new infrastructure for one of my client. For the moment the customer is not using virtualization at all.

I will implement VMware vSphere in the new infra.

I would like to have your opinion on the storage part.

I want use an external shared SAS storage between 2 ESXI hosts to take advantage of HA and for future provisionning. I want to implement a RAID 10.

Do you think I will get better performances if, on the RAID10 array:

A) I create 2 LUN with 1 Datastore on each. One DS would be dedicated for the System drives of the VM and the second one for the data drives

B) I create 1 LUN with 1 DS where I will mix system drives and data for all the VMs'

In the first period, I will have around 8VMs with Windows 2K8R2 with a mix of roles (AD, Exchange, DB,...)

Thanks all for your feedback on this,

Regards

[sparrowangelste · Accepted solution]

how big is the mirror size wise?

made of how many drives?

without more info :

c: 2 luns, 1  datastore each. mixed.

[itpassionate77]

Hi,

Thanks for your input,

I plan a RAID 10 composed of 6*600GB (1.8TB usable) 10K 2.5"

[Josh26]

The correct answer is "neither".

You should have at least two LUNs to best utilise multipathing.

Put some VMs on one LUN and some on the other.

Do not, for any reason, decide you have an "OS LUN" and "DATA LUN", it's a management nightmare for no gain.

[ranjitcool]

Hello,

It really depends on what the current I/O is on the machines. If you have good stats on hand then having two luns is not an issue.

Although as mentioned above it can be a management nightmare.

Having two luns, you will have two queues which can help mitigate any I/O contention that may occur by using 1 lun.

You can also have the OS drives on a raid 5 instead of a raid 10 while having data drives on raid 10 - this will allow you to save some disks that you may loose in a raid10 config.

RJ

*Please award points if you find my answer the most helpful*

[itpassionate77]

Thanks all for your input on this topic. Sorry for the delay of answering but I was sick.

I will gather all your information to give my customer the best design for its needs.

Regards,

Michaël