We are also a Dell shop, and we are currently running 4x 2950's with the Intel X5355 quad core chips, 16GB of RAM, and 4 NICs. With a configuration like this you will run out of RAM resources mu...
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We are also a Dell shop, and we are currently running 4x 2950's with the Intel X5355 quad core chips, 16GB of RAM, and 4 NICs. With a configuration like this you will run out of RAM resources much faster than CPU, especially if all of your VMs can be single vCPUs. We are running our ESX cluster on a FC SAN, so we are able to get away with 4 NICs, though I would prefer at least 2 more. Since you are planning for iSCSI, I would start with no fewer than 6 NICs (integrated broadcom and 4 port Intel PRO 1000). You will use 2 of the NICs for iSCSI traffic, 1 for the Service Console, 2 for VMs, and 1 for Vmotion/SC failover. If most of your servers aren't very CPU intensive, you may want to look into the Woodcrest Dual Cores to save some money, as you'll be able to cut costs here, and then use the SAS drives for the OS. The MTBF on the SAS drives is much better than SATA. We are using a Compellent SAN, which gives us the ability to use both FC and iSCSI. I am not sure how cost effective this would be for your environment. I haven't heard many good things about the EMC AX150, but since you are planning for iSCSI, why not look into Equalogic? Many people on these boards use them, and they seem to be tied in pretty closely with VMware. I can't imagine that a 1-2TB Equalogic will be all that exepnsive, and the EQ will be much more scalable than the AX150. -Jon-