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haigy
Contributor
Contributor

server spec advice

Hi, I currently have 2 esx servers at my main site and would like to add in a third at a remote site for DR purposes, I have a dell PE 2950 that I can load with memory and have 2 dual processors on it, my only concern is it is SATA drives on it, but as it would be only for DR purposes I thought this would be ok, it would also save me having a SAN as I can put nearly 2TB of disk space into it

the only way it would be used is if my main site went down

quesition is would sata be OK, I know I will not get the same performance from SAS or SCSI drives, but would only ever be used in an emergency

thanks for any info

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ejward
Expert
Expert

SATA is fine. have you seen the Dell 710's? You can squeeze more disk into them and get 72GB of RAM into them for less than the cost of putting 32GB in a 2950.

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haigy
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks, just wanted to check, will have a look at the 710s may come in handy for a SAN with openfiler in the future

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satishgte
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

hi

SATA Drives support ESX Server you can use CERC SATA 1.5/6ch Controller sata controller

Go throgh vi_system_guide.pdg

thanks

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kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

SATA will work fine. If you're not looking at high I/O, but high capacity, then that is really what SATA was meant for, the cost notwtihstanding. I run SATA in my lower/non-prod environments. And I boot off of SATA in prod. The only time this may cause problems is if you are running an extremely large number of vm's on a server, and the aggregate IOPs is more than the drives can handle. I would also not create one large logical drive, if you can avoid it. If you can't, that's fine. I have had to run 2950, maxed drives, RAID5, 1 spare, for ~ 2 TB of disk, and it runs just fine for several vm's.

-KjB

VMware vExpert

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
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haigy
Contributor
Contributor

thanks

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RParker
Immortal
Immortal

RAID5, 1 spare, for ~ 2 TB of disk, and it runs just fine for several vm's.

Define 'several'? How many is that? And also RAID5 allows you to lose a disk and still keep the RAID intact. By utilize a spare, and by your own post SATA is sub par to SCSI in performance, so you are taking away IO by utilizing a 'spare' drive, which isn't part of that IOPS count. So you are further reducing your aggregate of possible disk performance by using a spare.

I also found that in my testing that 'serveral' of those VM's were around 10, and after that there were performance crashes, not merely drop offs, but crashes. So if you power on 2 or 3 VM's at once, they are abysmal boot times, so you have to change the way you manage SATA drives for VM's. Also copying anything internal to those same VM's was horribly slow.

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kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

Well, the count was 15-20. It is a remote office, so I'm not sure what they're running at the moment. Again, performance is not the concern here. The server's used for ad, file services, as well as other small workloads. But I run all my nonprod stuff on SATA, but that's a higher number of spindles. You have to work with what you have.

-KjB

VMware vExpert

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
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