IKtech
asked on
vmware shared storage setup
I have a qnap NAS with four drive bays and I am looking for suggestions for setting up the raid level and iscsi targets for use with VMware esxi 5.1 hosts.
I am not sure if I would get a better performance out of setting up one LUN using all four drives in a RAID 10 or setup two volumes each RAID 1 and divide the VMs that I plan to run on this device between the two volumes.
I am not sure if I would get a better performance out of setting up one LUN using all four drives in a RAID 10 or setup two volumes each RAID 1 and divide the VMs that I plan to run on this device between the two volumes.
ASKER
I have a sql and and exchange VM. I am not sure if I will put both of these servers on the same storage device. This is production.
Performance is a higher priority than storage space.
Performance is a higher priority than storage space.
I think then two RAID 1 volumes and two LUNs.
Are the disks SATA 7200rpm does not give much for performance but that's the best you will get.
Are the disks SATA 7200rpm does not give much for performance but that's the best you will get.
ASKER
I have qnap devices for shared storage and Cisco switches sg300 28 port switches. I believe both support jumbo frames.
As far as the raid 10 VS. raid 1 (x2) goes, do you think there is an advantage to having the servers running across two LUNs or two separate RAID volumes?
As far as the raid 10 VS. raid 1 (x2) goes, do you think there is an advantage to having the servers running across two LUNs or two separate RAID volumes?
ASKER
I am going to get 10k RPM drives with 6gb/s sata.
ASKER
I am assuming I can map 2 LUNs to the same iscsi target and esxi will be able to see both LUNs. is that a safe assumption?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
You should be able to create multiple LUNs and create multiple datastores
ASKER
Is there any issues with having only Gig switch ports and using jumbo frames?
ASKER
also will I need to adjust settings on the router to make jumbo frames work? It is the gateway for two subnets that I am using.
Your router, switches and SAN (Qnap) will all have to have Jumbo Frames enabled,
and try a before and after performance check, Jumbo Frames do not always increase performance.
and try a before and after performance check, Jumbo Frames do not always increase performance.
ASKER
RAID 10 is a good option for me and it seems to have worked well. Thanks for the advice.
A four disk unit, will not provide you many IOPS, but you may not need high performance.
So do you require performance or storage requirements?
More spindles = More disks = More IOPS = More performance.
Or you could create two RAID 1 volumes, and create a LUN on each.
What Virtual Machines do you intend to run, SQL, Exchange, is this production, Office Use or a Lab?
I would keep the LUNs between 500GB - 800GB if possible.
Try and enable Jumbo Frames for iSCSI, and use Multipathing, to increase throughpout
see my EE Articles
HOW TO: Enable Jumbo Frames on a VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 5.0) host server using the VMware vSphere Client
HOW TO: Add an iSCSI Software Adaptor and Create an iSCSI Multipath Network in VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.0