iSCSI 'SAN' in New Zealand?

[jpreou]

Anyone running with an iSCSI 'SAN' in New Zealand in production use? Or in a well used development environment analgous to a production environment? Wondering how well these things are performing; a little reluctant to trailblaze the technology with customers without being familiar with it, or having 'in use' confirmation from others...

Cheers,

[Atko · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeff,

Blast from the past Graham Atkinson here from Aquila days !! Anyway...

We've got a couple of customers successfully running ESX with iSCSI SAN's. One of them has a NetAPP FAS270 that is just starting to run out of steam, not to the extent where it is causing issues, but there’s not much head room left and the customer wants to add a SQL server DB LUN to it. They are running approximately 23 moderately used VM’s (including Citrix servers) the SAN is not 100 % dedicated to VM, it has a couple of other LUNS on it used by a file server.

NetApp have some good products, and definitely check out IBM as well, basically they have rebadged NetApps which are often quite a bit cheaper..

Cheers

Graham

[jpreou]

No sh**!!! Where are you, NZ or UK or where?

We tend to supply HP gear here (I only just started here), but the guys are a little wary of iSCSI over 'traditional' FC SAN technology. The price point is compelling for the smaller customer's though. The HP AiO or EVA's are iSCSI certified for VMware/ESX...

[jpreou]

Ha. Perhaps I should read your location of your user account. Auckland, huh? The 'big smoke'. Seven years in and around London did it for me. Hamilton is 'ok'. Jackie is here with me still...

[jpreou]

Just spoke with Jackie. Check out your GAL: looks like we might work for the same people!

[christianZ]

Don't forget iscsi hp storage doesn't support any iscsi hbas - the esx software initiator is a little sluggish.

And none iscsi hbas are supported with hp servers !!