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menora
Contributor
Contributor

will it work?

Hi All, I've got this situation, please kindly give your comment.

I'm planning to migrate SQL, Exchange, AD to ESX server, I'm choosing between NAS and SAN. however some people said I can't setup SQL and Exchange on NAS, some people said no problem. Who is correct? Can i map the NAS storage to ESX server (as datastore) and then assign it as C drive on the SQL server VM? that way i can install SQL on NAS, am i correct? I don't have the device to try, i can't actually try it.

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virtualdud3
Expert
Expert

It isn't so much a matter of not being "able" to install a SQL VM on a NAS datastore, the question is whether or not the performance will be acceptable.

Unfortunately, without knowing the specifics of your environment, performing a formal assessment, etc. there really isn't any way that I can answer that for you.

############### Under no circumstances are you to award me any points. Thanks!!!
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menora
Contributor
Contributor

Sounds like it will work.

Well, basically we only have around 300G of user data on File server, 100G data on SQL server and around 200G of exchange data (only 10G of exchange store). the user data and sql are only for local office user (we have 4 remote branches), and the exchange is for everyone (around 100 users). user doesn't access sql instead we've got informix on other server. sql is just few special software for few users.

Performance is not a critical issue to us whereas the reliability and availiablity is vital.

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dalepa
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

NFS works great as a datastore, the VM only sees the local disk, so the datastore protocol NFS/FC/ISCSI makes no difference.

However NFS varies from vendor to vendor, so a cheap storage solution may cause you more trouble than it's worth. The Netapp S500/NFS is a great starting solution and will grow with you over time...

975VMs via NFS and growing...

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menora
Contributor
Contributor

I'm looking into Adaptec snap server 410 and 720. are they any good? will they work?

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dalepa
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Is it on the HCL? It will probably work, however it is ISCSI only and ~$5-6K/TB... The Netapp S500 cost less and not only supports ISCSI, but also supports FC, NFS, CIFS, NDMP, Instant Snapshots and Remote block level replication and is on the HCL list for about $2-3K/TB. As far as I know, the S500 is the only low end storage that has all these features.

If you want a cheap ISCSI solution, Satabeast scales up to 42TB in 4U for ~$1.2K/TB. We had one more than a year now with 0 problems, but again, it's FC or ISCSI with none of the netapp features...

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menora
Contributor
Contributor

it sounds pretty good. however if i need to have up to minute data backup, replication will not do the trick. is there any software can handle that?

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dalepa
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Snapshots can be scheduled each minute, however I think you are talking about sync replication. Netapp snapshots can also be setup as synchronous, however you may see a performance issue on writes since each write will need to occur on the secondary... Netapp also has syncmirrors if you really need it. The sync is done on the backend of the netapp via FC with a distance limiation...

lots of native options with netapp...

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menora
Contributor
Contributor

what if i use iscsi, and i've got sql and exchange data needs to be sync or snapshot. would it capable of do that?

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menora
Contributor
Contributor

the s500 does look very attractive. besides the hardware, do i need any other addon software? or it just comes with everything.

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