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9.0

Building a iSCSI-SAN?

Asked by alexciric in Red Hat Linux, XenServer, Storage Technology

Tags: SAN, ISCSI, Linux, Virtualization, Xenserver, performance

Hello experts,

we are about to getting deeper into virtualization with Xenserver.
It is our goal to virtualize windows terminalservers, win64 sql-file-servers and also exchange and scalix servers, which are at the moment already partly virtualized with for example vmware server 2.x.
At the moment we are talking about ~30 - 50 Users wich are organized in about 12 VMs in 4 seperated subnets.

We want to do the following:
- migrate the existing VMs to Xenserver for better performance and management.
- use xenservers livemotion to get better utilization of the vmhosts.
- take away the storage from the individual VMserver to a centralized storagehost

For this we think we need a ultrafast and reliable SAN to get the storage away from local storage into the network. Unfortunately we dont have the money to buy fancy expensive *enterprise* SAN-Solutions.... :-(. So we have to do it on ourselfs.

My plan is to setup a big server with multiple bondaged gbit-interfaces and to export the storage via iscsi to the xenservers (a couple of Quadcore Xeons).

The question is:
- is this the right way to achieve very high storage performance for all VMs?
- in the storage server: should i use SAS-drives or can i have similar performance with SATA-Raids? (already have 12 x73gb Savvio SAS drives for local storage. Move them into the SAN???)
- which raid-level would you prefer? 5?6?10? else?
- can i build this config easy with centos 5.4?
- software raid or is it a must to buy HW-raid-controllers?
- how many Disks do i have to install to get a really impressing drive performance for all the VMs together?
- how many gbit interfaces (or even 10gbit) should i bondage together to achieve the requested performance level?
[+][-]11/03/09 03:27 AM, ID: 25727813Accepted Solution

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About this solution

Zones: Red Hat Linux, XenServer, Storage Technology
Tags: SAN, ISCSI, Linux, Virtualization, Xenserver, performance
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Solution Provided By: BigSchmuh
Participating Experts: 2
Solution Grade: A
 
[+][-]11/03/09 09:08 AM, ID: 25731086Assisted Solution

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[+][-]11/03/09 11:41 AM, ID: 25732676Expert Comment

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[+][-]11/03/09 02:31 PM, ID: 25734563Expert Comment

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[+][-]11/04/09 01:50 AM, ID: 25737738Author Comment

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[+][-]11/04/09 02:27 AM, ID: 25737923Author Comment

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[+][-]11/04/09 05:56 AM, ID: 25739298Expert Comment

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[+][-]11/04/09 12:06 PM, ID: 25743348Expert Comment

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[+][-]11/05/09 04:52 AM, ID: 25748860Author Comment

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[+][-]11/05/09 06:46 AM, ID: 25749938Assisted Solution

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