Storage nightmare or overlooked solution?

[shadoh10006]

I have the following setup

R710 (native SQL)

R900 (ESXi)vsphere

MD1000 Storage

And heres my issue!

THe SQL server must remain native for configuration purposes. The R900 is hosting "worker" vm's that are processing jobs handed out by the SQL server. the workers finish the processing and then report back to SQL all the results and save completed documents and data on the MD1000...

Currently the R710 SQL server and MD1000 are attached via SAS. The R900 and SQL server are attached via a switch and 4x1GB connections.

The workers must rely on SQL to serve them access to the MD1000 and thus creating a HUGE bottleneck including approx 50-90 ms latency between the VM and datastore.

Wishful thinking i would like to direct attach the R900 to the MD1000 keeping all the data to be processed and already processed here...I am planning on having a RAID10 setup on the MD100 for performance and reliability.

What i cant figure out is how to access the MD1000 once it is attached to the R900? should i use RDM? VMFS? NFS?

All Comments/criticism welcome !

[AndreTheGiant]

MD1000 is just a DAS.

You have to connect to a supported PERC/e adapter and you will see it as a local disk.

To use the data storage on this storage, you have to use RDM, but RDM are not available from GUI from local storage...

You have to create with the CLI:

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/vmware-esx-storage-how-to-get-local-sto...

Andre

[shadoh10006]

i got from this link

http://vmzare.wordpress.com/2007/02/19/vmware-raw-device-mappingrdm/

can i access this entire datastore without worrying about the 2TB limit ??? and would i be able to map directly to the RDM with all my vm's?

[AndreTheGiant]

can i access this entire datastore without worrying about the 2TB limit ???

No!

The limit also is applied to RDM disk.

and would i be able to map directly to the RDM with all my vm's?

Yes... but usually one VM for each RDM... To have more VM to the same RDM you have to configure a cluster at guest level and/or use a cluster-aware filesystem.

Andre

[shadoh10006]

I found mention to openfiler and Celerra simulator and have ben trying to set them up.. i started with celerra as it has some pretty good reviews. however it has massive overhead requirements... so openfiler may be my best shot...

So by filling up the md1000 i want to use that as an entire raid 10 disk and 2 volumes ... should i use the hardware raid or configure it using openfiler? What filesystem should i use nfs or vmfs...any restraints when dealing with external physical machines?

I dont want to over complicate this and need the storage to be as stable and accessable as possible...to all the vm's... as well as other physical devices...so i can add/remove data easily

Am i asking for too much?

[shadoh10006]

I may have forgotten to mention that all my vm's and datastore would be on same machine but im not using the MD1000 to store or use for VM.

I just need highspeed acess to the datastore without routing through a physical windows box...thus improving speed of processing files in the datastore. ITs all i have to work with..

[AndreTheGiant]

should i use the hardware raid or configure it using openfiler?

Cause MD1000 require a PERC/e card, use hardware RAID (faster and reliable and you can use the hot-swap)

What filesystem should i use nfs or vmfs...any restraints when dealing with external physical machines?

IMHO I suggest NFS, cause software iSCSI target does not perform so much.

Andre

[shadoh10006]

Thanks Andre i have been using openfiler unless anyone knows a better solution... and right now i have openfiler serving up my nfs store with cifs and it seems to be performing well.. i am trying to now share up a larger volume with stability..i am concerned about the volume becomming corrupt or failing how would i recover it?

[AndreTheGiant · Accepted solution]

i am concerned about the volume becomming corrupt or failing how would i recover it?

The first solution is always do backup.

See:

Cause you have a NFS datastore you can also (if you know Linux) create some script on openfiler to save file VM files (but file must not in use).

Andre