iSCSI VS DAS HP P2000

[karldonteljames]

Hello there!

 

I work in a primary school and we currently have a number of server 2012's (4), what I would like to achieve is total failover with the utilisation of a SAN. I've been looking into HP

P2000 SAN and think it looks great. I want to be able to setup two of the servers as DC's (as they are at the moment) but have all files and services shared between them. I would like to add virtual servers to them eventually and be able to use server aware updating.

 

Initial storage will be comprised of 600gb 10k SFF SAS drives giving me a total of 4tb storage. (I have no idea how to divide this up as of yet)

 

We have HP DL380's as the servers, each with 4 NIC's in the rear. (all configured as one NIC on each server, and trunked on the switches)

We have HP Procurve layer 2 switches which are fully Gb, with two vlans (main school network and separate guest WIFI VLAN)

 

I believe the simplest way is with an expansion card in each server and then using DAS to connect to the SAN, (two mini SAS cables on each server for redundancy) I also believe that this has the fastest throughput, however I am trying to think long term, and if I use iSCSI I understand I can then add new servers to the cluster, and take the old ones offline once all of the roles have been transferred? can anyone offer any advice on this please?

 

We currently have:

 

SERVER 1:

AD

DNS

DHCP

FILE SERVER (DFS, DFSR)

 

SERVER 2:

AD

FILE SERVER (DFS, DFSR)

 

SERVER 3:

PRINT SERVER

WDS\SCCM

EPO

WSUS

 

SERVER 4:

DAS

STORAGE SPACE for local server backups.

 

I would like to be able to provide all of my staff with DIRECTACCESS too at the end of the project. our school is a large primary school serving approximately 100 members of staff, 480 pupils, and approximately 150 PC's/LAPTOPS with the possibility of adding in more mobile devices this year (about 30 more) we have a ruckus managed wireless network so network throughput isn't a massive issue at all, I just need help with the backend.

 

Thanks!!!

 

Karl

 

p.s. Please forgive the poor grammar and spelling!

[SYNACK]

I would do the whole lot in one go, Virtualise the lot. Do you have a Microsoft volume agreement with SA. If you Server 2012 R2 Datacenter is licenced per box basically so you can have limitless servers on the same box without extra fees.

 

I would look as using the SAS connectivity - you are right, it is a stack faster than 1GB iSCSI. and a clustered volume on the SAN where the VHDs are stored. You then have each of your hosts as virtual hosts clustered together than can share the storage and migrate hosting about between them as needed. To automate this you may need SCCM Virtual machine management but manually your sorted with just the Datacenter Liscences.

 

Your staff must be far friendlier on storage than ours, we have less staff but more pupils and our storage is along the lines of double that just for documents however if using Server 2012 you can use single instance storage which usually cuts the storage used in less than half.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I would do the whole lot in one go, Virtualise the lot. Do you have a Microsoft volume agreement with SA. If you Server 2012 R2 Datacenter is licenced per box basically so you can have limitless servers on the same box without extra fees.

 

I would look as using the SAS connectivity - you are right, it is a stack faster than 1GB iSCSI. and a clustered volume on the SAN where the VHDs are stored. You then have each of your hosts as virtual hosts clustered together than can share the storage and migrate hosting about between them as needed. To automate this you may need SCCM Virtual machine management but manually your sorted with just the Datacenter Liscences.

 

Your staff must be far friendlier on storage than ours, we have less staff but more pupils and our storage is along the lines of double that just for documents however if using Server 2012 you can use single instance storage which usually cuts the storage used in less than half.