How to perfectly configure a new SAN, Switch and Virtual Server

[bandgeekmafia78]

Hi.

I've just purchased a DELL PowerVault MD1200 SAN and a Dell PowerConnect 5524 10GBe switch. I already have a virtual server.

Over the Summer I intend to virtualise a large majority of my Servers and I'd like to connect my SAN to the virtual server. I've got a fairly good idea of how to set it up but I just wanted to see how you would do this in order to maximise performance, redundancy and efficiency. I don't want to start down a path and then realise I've made a mistake at the very start!

A lot of people seem to suggest that your SAN switch should be on a seperate subnet mask to the rest of your network - is that correct?

Thanks

[Domino]

Yeah, a separate vlan/subnet for the storage traffic is a good move :-)

[m25man]

+1 for VLAN you dont want your normal LAN traffic chopping up your storage traffic.

[SYNACK]

+1 for VLAN you dont want your normal LAN traffic chopping up your storage traffic.

Pref a couple of separate switches for redundancy as iSCSI can be nasty on switch resource usage degrading service to both the SAN network and the normal one. We just gave it a separate VLAN spread across two switches as our traffic load is not massive or as latency intolerant as it could be.

[bandgeekmafia78]

So is it better to use a seperate VLAN or a use a different Mask? Does it matter which one?

[SYNACK]

So is it better to use a seperate VLAN or a use a different Mask? Does it matter which one?

Both, and yes, otherwise you have huge iscsi traffic polluting and being interrupted by normal network traffic, the more isolated from the normal network the better.

[m25man]

As @SYNACK says you want to keep your storage traffic away from your regular traffic so VLAN or seperate switch.

Remember your clients will connect to your servers over your Data LAN the servers talk to the storage over the storage LAN you want to seperate these packets as much as possible.

The Dell switch is no slug though just keep an eye on the CPU and throughput, whilst isolation is good it comes at a cost.

[AButters]

IMHO for best performance and security you are better off keeping your SAN trafic on a totally seperate switch if possible.

If not possible - then definatly VLAN it on your existing switch.

[bandgeekmafia78]

The SAN will be on its own dedicated switch. I'm guessing you can aggregate the ports to increase throughput on your SAN traffic?

[glennda]

I have a couple of clients with dual HP2810's for redundancy 4 nics trunked between the two and each controller has a network cable in each again same with the VM hosts - VM hosts have PCI and onboard cards again one in each for redundancy.

[SYNACK]

The SAN will be on its own dedicated switch. I'm guessing you can aggregate the ports to increase throughput on your SAN traffic?

Depends entirely on the SAN featureset but probably.

[glennda]

The SAN will be on its own dedicated switch. I'm guessing you can aggregate the ports to increase throughput on your SAN traffic?

If going for a seperate switch you need to get one which supports Jumbo frames.

[Domino]

If going for a seperate switch you need to get one which supports Jumbo frames.

Like so

elephant-frames-prev1258736606U5FDDP.jpg