SAN planning?

[Stisse-SYSteam]

Hi,

What would be the best setup in performance in first priority....

We have

3 IBM 3850M2

IBM DS4700 with 48 disk 450GB.. (apx 12 disk should be SQL), around 30 disks..

We should run about 30 VMs totaly.

VI 3, VC 2.5 Enterprice.

In a performace perspective what would be best.

three 5 disks LUN RAID 5. ( Three LUNS would be apx. 10 VMs per LUN )

Two 8 disks LUN RAID 5 ? ( Two LUNS would be apx. 15 VMs per LUN )

/Stefan Krantz

[Lightbulb]

More spindles is usally better so go with the 2 x 8 LUN option. If you can get more disks it would be good to have a RAID 10 LUN for high performance vmdks.

[Lightbulb]

Then again limiting the number of VMs per datastore will be benficial. Ultimatly the answer depends on what usage you expect (I/O wise) from the VMS.

[habibalby]

Hi,

since you have 48 X 450 disk, then you should spilt your VMDK's between RAID 10 "1+0" And RAID 5. Create a 500 GB LUN or less that's configured RAID10 "1+0". Create all your VMDK for C:\ drive form this LUN which is RAID 10 "1+0". Create another LUN's with RAID5 for your D:\ drive inside the quest OS, or you can use RDM.

RAID 10 "1+0"will give you better boot performane and your data will be save while they are on RAID 5. Keep two disk for online speare, one for the RAID 10 "1+0 spindles and one for the RAID5 spindles.

Best Regards,

Hussain Al Sayed