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HP p2000 G3 vm storage

Greetings,

I have a p2000 G3 with (8) 450 GB disks. I was thinking of a RAID 50 using 4 disks in one RAID set and the other 4 disks in the other RAID set. I am ordering an extra to use for a spare. When I set it up, since it is one RAID 50 vDisk it is assigned to controller A (it shows automatic but I assume it goes with A for the first vDisk). I will be running a few VMs off of this storage so I thought it would be better to have some on controller A and some on controller B but I don't have the disk space to create (2) RAID 50 vDisks.

Any suggestions on the most efficient set up appreciated.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

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king daddy

ASKER

thanks hanccocka, as usual. I was considering RAID 10 but when I realized I'd lose about 1 TB of storage, I thought I'd at least inquire about RAID 50. Luckily it's not that big of a deal as this storage was purchased for the sole purpose of moving VMs from other storage and creating a few new ones. It may host Exchange (if I move it), but it will host our doc mgt system index server (it's a beast) and a SQL server, along with a few other servers that aren't as resource consuming.

Based on your response, I should use all 8 disks in the RAID 10, rather than creating (2) RAID 10 sets with 4 disks each. If I did create (2) RAID 10 sets, I could then assign them to different controllers, conceivably for better performance as they will run VMs on different controllers. Does that make sense and if so, is it worth doing or will running all of them on one controller provide the performance I need?

thx

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

Yes, you will DOUBLE the IOPS by having all disks in one RAID set.

Member_2_231077

LUN ownership on P2000 is per disk group, not per LUN, but 8 disks is a tiny amount for a single controller so it won't matter that the other controller will be idle (apart from providing a mirror for the write cache).

king daddy

ASKER

OK, I went to provision the RAID 10. Not sure if you are familiar with the p2000 interface, but when I go to create a RAID 10, it gives the option of number of sub vdisks. If I leave at default of 2, I can only provision 2 RAID sets consisting of 2 disks each, forcing the other 4 disks into the spare. If I choose 4 sub vdisks, I can provision 4 RAID sets each containing 2 drives, with no spares. Is that what you meant regarding all 8 disks in the RAID 10 set? I guess they are all "together" in the overall RAID 10 set. It justs looks weird to me. I have attached a screenshot.

thx Doc1.tiff

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

Yes, we are familiar.

Yes, that's what I mean by 8 disks.

king daddy

ASKER

great. thx

SOLUTION

Paul Solovyovsky

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king daddy

ASKER

paulsolov - thanks for the info. I was originally going to go with either RAID 5 or 50. since, luckily, this storage is strictly for performance, I am going to go with RAID 10. thanks again.

thanks hanccocka as well.