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ruhkus

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Looking for some storage advice

I'm IT for a small/mid-size business that currently has 3 HP DL380 servers and a VMWare Essentials license for those servers. We have only a handful of VMs on each machine (2 - 5 each) and data is currently stored on local SAS HDs in the server. However, the business consumes a fair amount of data and I'm about to run out of space on two of these servers (One in the next few months, and another one in about a year.)

I've currently stayed away from SANs due to the high cost, but I realize I may need to go that route and push for approval. I've also considered just getting another server and adding the SAS HDs again as well (although I will probably need to revisit my VMWare licensing, as well as Veeam) (Does it even make sense to buy a SAN without the accompanying vMotion licensing?)

I'm looking for advice, factoring in cost, as to what you feel I should focus on as a good viable solution. Thanks.

Thanks.
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Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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You've got many options, NAS, iSCSI SAN, or vSAN ?

or you could use a SAS SAN, but this would only connect to two hosts.

Depends on your overall budget?
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Bryant Schaper
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ruhkus

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Thanks. I didn't think a NAS would even be in the picture to run a few VM hosts, possibly a Windows domain controller?  I started looking into vSANs, but I think I'd lean towards a NAS if it's a legitimate option.
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This may actually be simpler than I thought. I actually already have a Synology DS1815+  on which two years ago I set aside some space and was able to connect via iSCSI initiator to one of my VM hosts. I didn't end up doing too much with it, but I did see it booted a test VM fine. I let it be though, as I didn't think of it as a legitimate option for storage.

That being said, do you think this type of setup would work better than I thought? I see there's quite a few threads regarding NFS vs iSCSI that I'll have to peruse as well, unless per your comment, you feel NFS is the way to go.
We use iSCSI with an EMC. but NFS is perfectly acceptable too.  I have actually had vendors curious as to why why we choose iSCSI over NAS, and I couldn't tell you anymore.
This may actually be simpler than I thought. I actually already have a Synology DS1815+  on which two years ago I set aside some space and was able to connect via iSCSI initiator to one of my VM hosts. I didn't end up doing too much with it, but I did see it booted a test VM fine. I let it be though, as I didn't think of it as a legitimate option for storage.

That being said, do you think this type of setup would work better than I thought? I see there's quite a few threads regarding NFS vs iSCSI that I'll have to peruse as well, unless per your comment, you feel NFS is the way to go.

If setup correctly, NFS on Synology can be a viable workload for some VM workloads.

Remember that iSCSI is an Overhead for a Synology NAS, because it performs the NAS function native!

So I would conduct some VM workloads tests, and compare NFS versus iSCSI.

and also many are now converting iSCSI SAN to NAS NFS based solutions!
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All good info - I like Synology so I''ll look into that, as well as the HP MSA. Thanks.