Hi everyone. I'm in the process of rebuilding our Dell MD3000i iSCSI SAN. We're currently running the following:
Dell R805 ESX-based hosts x 3
Dell MD3000i iSCSI w/ the following drives:
- 300Gb 15k rpm SAS drives x 8
- 450Gb 15k rpm SAS drives x 5
- 1Tb 7.5k rpm SAS drives x 2 (NOT INSTALLED YET)
- no standby drives
Connected via a dedicated PowerConnect 6248 switch w/ jumbo frames enabled.
Two years ago we had a consultant configure this environment. It desperately needs a "re-do." The LUN configuration is currently:
- RAID 1 totaling 278Gb w/ 1Mb block sizes
- RAID 5 totaling 1.4Tb w/ 2Mb block sizes
- RAID 6 totaling 1.3Tb w/ 1Mb block sizes
We're running 18 VMs totaling 2Tb of space. One of the VMs is our file server which, alone, takes up over 1Tb of space across the three LUNs above.
I'm thinking about the following setup and would appreciate any feedback anyone might offer:
- four RAID 5 LUNs totaling 500Gb w/ 8Mb block sizes each (two on each controller)
- one RAID 10 LUN totaling 1Tb w/ 4Mb block sizes (based on the slower 1Tb drives)
- leaving disks for hot spares and future expansion
I realize this may be a bit vague and that I probably left out information. We're running VDR and need space for temporary snapshot processing as well as taking into consideration swap needs.
If anyone could tell me if I'm on track or off base or crazy or whatever, I'd appreciate it.
Thx much, in advance!
Regards,
Kory
