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AkulshFlag for India

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Switches for iSCSI 10 Gb SAN

We are purchasing Dell's Compellent SAN, with 10 Gb iSCSI connections for a new VMware infrastructure.

I know that Dell's 'Force10, S4810P' switches would work swimmingly with this SAN, but are there some decent, less expensive, alternative switches that would work just as well? Thanks.

AK
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gheist
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Any example of make and model?
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Purchase and go with the Dell S4810P switchs, it helps with Dell Support, and their Engineers at recommending options and performance tweaks, if you purchase another non-Dell switch, they will just give you the PDF information, for you to change yourselves...

So how good at networking are you?

e.g. LAGS, Bonds, Etherchannel, Stacking....?
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We will have only 2 VMware hosts, each with four 10 Gb and two 1 Gb NICs.
Should not two 24-port switches be enough? We are being sold on 48-port switches.
(We might add one or two more hosts in distant future, but still...)
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Andrew,

You are quite correct that we should stick with Dell switches, but this is a rather small scale VMware infrastructure with only 10-15 VMs planned for now, on 2 hosts. Do we really need two 48-port S4810P switches? Should not 24 port switches suffice? Thanks.

AK
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wlacroix

WIth all my experience with iscsi sans over the last 3++ years, I would suggest fiber channel over 10g any-day.