Recommendation for iSCSI hardware

[rainerhahnekamp]

Hello everybody,

we are currently virtualizing our infrastructure with VMware Infrastructure 3.5. It is crucial for our business that our servers run under a high-availability solution but due to our low budget we cannot afford expensive Fibre-Channel SANs. So wet must stick to the most inexpensive solution available. As far as I know that would be iSCSI Unfortunately we do not have much experience in SANs so I would be gladful for some recommendations concerning prices and products for an approximately 2TB large iSCSI based SAN with common features.

I am aware that a general answer of that kind is nearly impossible but we would at least need some hint.

Thanks in advance

[Lightbulb · Accepted solution]

Do you have a general price range so that some of the answers can be filtered?

[malaysiavm]

If budget is allow, you can consider netapp FAS2xxx series which have the functionality you need to run the VM. Beside that, you can also consider Equallogic ISCSI. Both of these boxes have the features you need on VMware and is well integrated. You can choose to use SATA hard drive for your SAN boxes if budget is the concern, and increase the spindle in your storage box to improve the performance.

Malaysia VMware Communities -

[HSpeirs]

Two low cost iSCSI SAN's worth considering are the HP MSA2012i and Dell's MD3000i. I did some extensive testing with both and would be happy to use either - with a slight preference for the HP unit.

H.

[rainerhahnekamp]

Hello,

our price range is below 10.000€.

Unintentionally I marked your post as answered and I do not know where I can undo that...

[Lightbulb]

Never say I did not sing for my supper. You could also check out the EMC Clariion AX (http://www.emc.com/microsites/clariion-support/ax45-support.htm) about $8,000 US with 4 drives (Expandable to 60) an single processor (Expandable to 2)

Also you could look into a software based ISCSI/NAS offering like Openfiler (http://www.openfiler.com/) which you could run on your own hardware.

[azn2kew]

Equallogic and NetApp iSCSI is a great one to have if you have the budget, since iSCSI is free with NetApp and Equallogic has all built in management console and its very easy to configure and deploy in 30 minutes max. If you want free iSCSI why not look at Openfiler and FreeNAS, Fedora Core IET, Solarwinds IET and even Xtravirt VSA appliance and just bring up a dozen of SATA drives server and have it done with. Performance should be efficient if you have enough NICs and redundancy. Good luck.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[christianZ]

As mentioned in that price range you can find MSA2xxi, maybe Dell MD3000i or IBM3xxxi - all that w/ only one Controller (you needs disk drives too - min. 6-8, SAS).

The other vendors are Promise or Infortrend - Promise seems to have better support and nice management.

Check here for HCL:

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php