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rsxsr
Contributor
Contributor

To SANs or not to SANs

Hello, we are in the process of evaluating ESX 3.5 and Virtual Center Server. We have had the reseller to our site with an Engineer. I have posted here in other areas and have gotten very quick responses. Currently my ESX host has all my guest servers running on it and the flat files are stored on it. This is a older Compaq ML570. From the site visit and what I read, our best solution would be to have to ESX host servers and a SANs network storage for my "Flat Files". It seems that in order to accomplish this this SAN's device would need to be close in proximity and have a high speed connection. Here is my question. I have a brand new Proliant DL 380 G5 server. Currently it is idling with server 2003 at my collocation. Can I convert this to a SANs server? Reformat the drives and not rely on windows shares? If not, would Red Hat be a better solution. I'd like to do this right, but the enterprise software is going to use up a lot of my budget. If I can better utilize some of my newer hardware that would be helpful. Thank you for any advice. I would bring the Server back to our current location. It is Raid 5 and has 2 gigabyte nic cards.

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Neth66
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

In my opinion, if you are going to have more than one ESX host, you need to have a SAN. There are solutions available (some even open source) where you can build an iSCSI SAN from a server, but if you are talking about an Enterprise solution, you're probably best getting a purpose built SAN, and not cobbling one together from leftover pieces and parts.

rsxsr
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for the reply. My arm is getting twisted to go with the Enterprise Edition by the reseller. Reasoning that adding on the addons later will cost more money. My experience with VMware is limited to one ESX host that also homes my virtual machines. Seems to work fine, but I am told this is not the best solution. No fault tolerance. My vision is two ESX hosts with a network storage device. I'd rather not cobble something together, but we are a not for profit company that relies on donations which are down due to the economy. This is the third time I have explored VM ware as a solution. It is a lot to get your head around and with no budget, all of a sudden 3 new cheap hardware servers start to look appealing. We just open a disaster recovery collocation before the economy went in the crapper. So money is tight just for keeping that open. Regards mark

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glynnd1
Expert
Expert

Mark,

I think the first thing you need to do is to educate your self, it will save your non-profit a lot of cash.

VI3 comes in three license versions, along with the free ESXi. There is a reason free is free, and a reason Enterprise costs ~$7k.

Read this for a list of features http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/key_features_35.pdf and feel free to PM me if you still have questions.

Unless you need VMotion, and yes it is cool to be able to move a running VM from one host to another then you can step down from Enterprise to Standard. And if you can live without Higher Availability (the feature that restarts VMs on another host should one host die) then you can step down to Foundation.

Foundation will cost you $3,624 for three dual CPU ESX host and Virtual Center - a lot less then two Enterprise ESX and Virtual Center, and one needs Virtual Center with Enterprise ESX to use the features one paid for.

Note: The big disadvantage to Foundation is that it is limited to three dual CPU ESX hosts, if you grow to needed more then three ESX servers you'll need to step up to Standard and full Virtual Center, or just run two groups of Foundation...

Hopefully this makes sense, if not PM me and I'll guide you through it.

Now you need to understand what it is a SAN offers you, and why it is not the same as a server with a bunch of disks offering up storage space, but to summarize it is a server with a bunch of disk offering up storage, but with two motherboards. Stop and think about that for a second. The idea is that should one storage processor aka "motherboard" fail the other one will take over seamlessly, kinds like RAID with hard drives. Redundancy.

So now your environment looks like this: Three ESX servers and one SAN.

Should the motherboard or both power supplied fail in a server all the VMs with crash, but you will be able to manually bring them back on line on one of the other two servers.

Should a hard drive fail in your SAN, it will continue, but you will need to promptly replace the dead drive. Same for a dead controller or power supply. But all your VMs continue to run.

Fail over to another location is not something covered above. But before you research it you need to find out how quickly DR needs to be on-line, and how old the data can be. For some companies this is one DB transaction, for others it is one week, as you can imagine there is a big price difference. This is something you need to consider before you make your SAN decision.

azn2kew
Champion
Champion

Can you explain how big is your environment and is it production/dev/test labs? If its not so demanding, I would use other product like Openfiler, FreeNAS, Solarwinds IET, Xtravirt VSA or even commercial like SANMelody. You can use your existing local hard drives and create iSCSI, NFS, FC storage like for your ESX hosts. So, it depends on your budget and how critical you want your guests to be up and running. Also if you are using DRS, HA and VMotion, than shared storage is required and those are your basic solutions. You can buy nice entry SAN using Dell Equallogic which is very easy to deploy and configure in 30 minutes.

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

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!! Regards, Stefan Nguyen VMware vExpert 2009 iGeek Systems Inc. VMware vExpert, VCP 3 & 4, VSP, VTSP, CCA, CCEA, CCNA, MCSA, EMCSE, EMCISA
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azn2kew
Champion
Champion

As you know, Citrix XenServer 5.0 is FREE for use with all the features you need for enterprise virtualization platform and its worth a try and use your VMware license fee for your hardware components that make good sense if you have small environment and it should work fine. Hopefully VMware will give away ESX 3.5 standard package for free as well to compete with the market shares. I'm consulting for both technologies so have no problems on anything.

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

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!! Regards, Stefan Nguyen VMware vExpert 2009 iGeek Systems Inc. VMware vExpert, VCP 3 & 4, VSP, VTSP, CCA, CCEA, CCNA, MCSA, EMCSE, EMCISA
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rsxsr
Contributor
Contributor

Glynn, you have a simple way of explaining something that seems complicated. I want to reread what you have written and get in touch with you tomorrow. Not sure how to PM from this site. mark

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rsxsr
Contributor
Contributor

Stefan, currently we have about 24 servers at our site and 5 at our DR collocation. They are for the most part new Proliant servers with hardware raid 5 and hotswap scsi drives redundant power. I looked at using VM ware at the DR site, but found it too complicated with no time to learn so I used what I knew. All new servers running double take for our essential servers. We host our own exchange, SQL, financials and donor management software along with a DC and a file server. Some of our older servers died because of an Air Conditioning problem which got me looking at VM ware again. I have a running environment and was able to convert the hardware servers that died onto an ESX 3.5 server I built on an older 4 processor Proliant server. I also built an Virtual center server to convert the hardware servers to virtual machines. After having an sales rep and engineer out to our campus, I can see that I am only touching the tip of the iceberg. But they also gave me some misinformation that has me concerned. Up time is important, but we are not a 24 7 company. If some tasks need to be done manually, I can do them. I expect to ESX hosts running 3 or 4 VM guests. Not our heavy servers like exchange and SQL, but print serving, anti virus, windows update IAS and a couple others. We do everything in house. I am not sure how much leverage I have with VMware for pricing. I will look into the DELL SAN, even though I prefer Proliants from experience. I got a few other replies that I need to adjust to. In the mean time I am playing with OpenFiler. It too is a little unfamiliar. On my 3 rd install today. I'll absorb today's information and check back tomorrow. Thank you for your time. mark

 

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malaysiavm
Expert
Expert

here is another choice you may need to consider which will save some big money from your SAN environment, if you are not running a too critical and big environment

Malaysia VMware Communities - http://www.malaysiavm.com

Craig vExpert 2009 & 2010 Netapp NCIE, NCDA 8.0.1 Malaysia VMware Communities - http://www.malaysiavm.com
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rsxsr
Contributor
Contributor

Ok, Lots of good information. I did an evaluation of Open File, but did not have spare drives to actually tie it to my Host Server. It seems it would certainly allow me to use my new Proliant server as a SAN network storage device for my guest machine flat files. As mentioned though, 2 hosts running 8 VM machines and one network storage device, a failure on the SAN could bring down all 8 machines. A quality SAN even from Dell, sounds expensive and it looks like we should have two. We use Cybernetics miSAN V for our network backups and have used their products for years for both network and tape backups. They have a miSAN-D8 series. They support snapshots that can be offloaded to tape and replication to it's partner. They also have a express depot service in case one were to have a internal back bone failure. It all sounds good. We can place the second SAN at our collocation for extra security in a DR situation. I still do not have a real quote from the local VMware reseller that came on site. That blows me away. I have read the documentation linked above and full enterprise may be beyond what we need at t his time. The ability to create multiple LUNs, make snapshots with the Virtual Machines running, download to our current tape devices and have a spare synching at the colocation, I may not need all the VM ware Bells and Whistles at this point. Thank you for all the input. As stated before, Great Community. cheers. Mark

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