Bill H
asked on
ESX hosts
Hello,
I am moving to vmware here at the office. We have 3 physical servers and plan to grow in the future.
I am looking for Dual Quad servers w/16GB ram and I will be going with a DAS solution for storage. I am leaning towards Dell rack mount.
I was pointed in the direction of the R620 model, what do you guys think or which model do you recommend?
I am moving to vmware here at the office. We have 3 physical servers and plan to grow in the future.
I am looking for Dual Quad servers w/16GB ram and I will be going with a DAS solution for storage. I am leaning towards Dell rack mount.
I was pointed in the direction of the R620 model, what do you guys think or which model do you recommend?
ASKER
very light usage for all 3.
Then the 620 should be adequate.
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ASKER
Thanks for the tips. I will look into the r720.
I was looking into the MD1200 DAS for storage also.
Licensing i was thiking the essentials plus kit.
I was looking into the MD1200 DAS for storage also.
Licensing i was thiking the essentials plus kit.
Essentials plus is a good starting place.
ASKER
Thoughts on the md1200?
Makes sense to keep your equipment from the same vendor.
Two things to keep in mind when designing shared storage: capacity and performance.
Lots of people only buy for bulk storage, and they forget that they need disk IOpS, too.
If it's all domain controllers, print servers, and file servers then you're probably OK. If you have any kind of heavy IO, like a SQL server, then you may need to dig into the numbers a little more.
Two things to keep in mind when designing shared storage: capacity and performance.
Lots of people only buy for bulk storage, and they forget that they need disk IOpS, too.
If it's all domain controllers, print servers, and file servers then you're probably OK. If you have any kind of heavy IO, like a SQL server, then you may need to dig into the numbers a little more.
ASKER
Yeap, sql stuff is staying physical for long term.
ASKER
I think with DAS storage, there is a 2TB limit on volumes?
There was with ESXi 5.1 and earlier. I'm not sure what the current maximum is on ESXi 5.5. I believe that the max is now 62 TB, but I could be wrong.
The bulk of VMs are on smaller datastores, anyway.
The bulk of VMs are on smaller datastores, anyway.
This was changed on ESXi 5.0.
You have always been able to create large VMFS data stores using extents! But this was no longered needed after 5.0.
What @asa.... is referring to "I think" is with ESXi 5.5 you can now create 62TB virtual disks! (vmdks).
which is a new feature.
See my EE Article for what's also new in 5.5!
HOW TO: What's New in VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.5 (ESXi 5.5)
You have always been able to create large VMFS data stores using extents! But this was no longered needed after 5.0.
What @asa.... is referring to "I think" is with ESXi 5.5 you can now create 62TB virtual disks! (vmdks).
which is a new feature.
See my EE Article for what's also new in 5.5!
HOW TO: What's New in VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.5 (ESXi 5.5)
Well, it will also handle large, 64 TB LUNs on Fibre Channel. I'm just not sure if that maximum is also true for direct-attached storage.
As long as it's on the HCL
Check the VMware Hardware Compatability Lists HCL here
The VMware Hardware Compatibility List is the detailed lists showing actual vendor devices that are either physically tested or are similar to the devices tested by VMware or VMware partners. Items on the list are tested with VMware products and are known to operate correctly.Devices which are not on the list may function, but will not be supported by VMware.
All storage is the same, FC, iSCSI, Local Storage, DAS
Check the VMware Hardware Compatability Lists HCL here
The VMware Hardware Compatibility List is the detailed lists showing actual vendor devices that are either physically tested or are similar to the devices tested by VMware or VMware partners. Items on the list are tested with VMware products and are known to operate correctly.Devices which are not on the list may function, but will not be supported by VMware.
All storage is the same, FC, iSCSI, Local Storage, DAS
You need to calculate your CPU, RAM, and disk performance requirements.