VSAN

[Hogwarts-Techie]

Not sure this is the best place to put this!

 

Is anyone using VSAN in production yet?

 

found this thread but no replies http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/137030-vmware-vsan.html

[PotNoodleTech]

Hey that was me. It looks a great product. Not surprised both our threads have zero replies, doubt any schools could stomach the per CPU licencing - it was WAAAAAY too expensive for me so have gone with a 12Gig SAS JBOD array & moving to HyperV too. Edited June 23, 2015 by PotNoodleTech

[rich_tech]

seems impressive technology there, if you can cut out the SAN/NAS devices all the better I think in terms of infrastructure costs, though if its expensive like you have said it isn't going to be an attractive option.

 

Hyper-V is a winner to most people on EES because it comes without the additional costs.

[Hogwarts-Techie]

I would have to say that having used both, VMware is a clear winner for me. i am not 100% sure but i think the essentials plus covers the VSAN. going to check. The cost saving of having to buy a SAN is massive. Purchased mine over a year, ago at a cost of £40,000. A VSAN would save me £1000's

[Paid_Peanuts]

VSAN is not covered under the essentials plus licencing model. Based on our essentials plus setup over 3 hosts the cost for the VSAN licencing was : £7000+

You have to buy a minimum of 6 CPU licence for it and first years support is mandatory. Add onto that the cost of drives for your hosts...

Makes a jbod look more attractive!

[Arthur]

Hyper-V is a winner to most people on EES because it comes without the additional costs.

When Windows Server 2016 is released next year, you will also get Microsoft's VSAN equivalent - Storage Spaces Direct - for "free".

Edited June 26, 2015 by Arthur

[Steve21]

When Windows Server 2016 is released next year, you will also get Microsoft's VSAN equivalent - Storage Spaces Direct - for "free".

 

Looked so good until I read this bit:

Hyper-converged: Where there are 4+ nodes with DAS disks, and this is both the compute and storage tier. There is no other tier, no SAS, nothing, just these 4+ servers in one cluster, each sharing the storage and compute functions with data mirrored across each node.

 

4 HOSTs minimum. Bit disappointed in that, obviously depends on schools situation, but if they're affording 4 HOSTs with decent DAS you think they'll afford a cheaper (Cheaper as in non-flash/10Gb) SAN option too? :s

 

Will be interesting to see how that actually plays out in theory though, as again I'm guessing if things like HOSTs go offline for maintenance that's gonna cause a huge hit on performance etc? Unless they're splitting it on multiple servers so it can deal with that scenario, which would mean huge reductions in storage space

 

Steve

[RobFuller]

I guess the minimum node count make sense as the workload would be split on the remaining.

 

I've just ordered 2x 12Gig SAS JBOD arrays like @AButters will be using a mixture of SSD and 10K SAS drives with MS storage spaces to make a SoFS cluster for my hyper-v workloads. Looking forward to using storage spaces direct on my older sever with large DAS. Be interesting if I could tier that into my JBOD pools! Will have to investigate.

[rich_tech]

Looked so good until I read this bit:

 

 

4 HOSTs minimum. Bit disappointed in that, obviously depends on schools situation, but if they're affording 4 HOSTs with decent DAS you think they'll afford a cheaper (Cheaper as in non-flash/10Gb) SAN option too? :s

 

Will be interesting to see how that actually plays out in theory though, as again I'm guessing if things like HOSTs go offline for maintenance that's gonna cause a huge hit on performance etc? Unless they're splitting it on multiple servers so it can deal with that scenario, which would mean huge reductions in storage space

 

Steve

 

That was a little bit disappointing for the smaller sites like ours reading that, were a 2host/SAN setup here.

 

I imagine having to shoot for 10gb cards for servers as a minimum then to handle the internetworking to not smash performance, which is again expensive stuff.