Server Virtualisation advice

[dave.81]

I'm currently in a very similar situation, hoping to virtualise most of our 7 servers this summer. So far i'm working on needing a budget of around £15k but that will mean using one of our current Dell servers and upping the RAM, buying a new Dell R410 and a Sun Storage 7110 4.2TB.

 

Would then use ESXi free and away we go. Although haven't convinced the people in charge of money yet but i think once they see the electric savings they'll be sold. I have been told when it comes to SANs the more discs the better speed you will get, thats why i'm not building one with just 3/4 huge discs in.

[Silverman]

Don't mean to hijack thread but would like some advice on virtulisation plans we currently have and didn't want to start a new list.

 

The current plan is to have 2 new DCs running on physical servers, our SIMS on a physical server as it is relatively new, an old server converted into a cheap backup box with large SATA drives in RAID5.

 

We are then considering 2 options for virtualisation.

Option 1

Purchasing a new host for XenServer with the spec of 2 x Xeon X5650 2.66GHz 6 core, 24GB RAM and then 3 small SAS drives in RAID5.

Converting one of our current DCs (1 x Xeon 3.2 GHz 2 core, 2GB RAM) into a OpenFiler SAN consisting of 6 x 600GB 15K SAS2 drives in RAID5 to create 3TB of storage

OR

Option 2

Pooling 4 of our current servers which are all running 1 x Xeon 3.2 GHz 2 core, 2GB RAM (which would be upgraded to 8) and again all using 3 small SAS drives in RAID5.

Using this option would also allow us to increase the storage in the above SAN due this option costing less.

Purchasing a server with 1 x Xeon 2.0GHz 4 core and 2GB RAM and putting 8 x 600GB 15K SAS2 drives in RAID5 to create ~4TB of storage

 

We are planning on virtualising approximately 15 servers with this solution.

 

Opinions on these setups appreciated!

Edited June 18, 2010 by Silverman

[tmcd35]

I'd be tempted to suggest Option 3 -

 

Upgrade 2 existing servers to 8Gb and purchase 1 new 24Gb server. Why do you want RAID 5 in the host servers? I'd go for 2x 74Gb (maybe 150Gb?) 10k SAS drives in RAID-1 personally. Only needed for the host OS after all.

 

Also I'd be tempted at using more 450Gb drives rather than less 600Gb drives. Say 12x450Gb in RAID-50? for the SAN.

[Silverman]

Thanks for the reply.

 

The RAID5 on host servers was purely because we already have the hard drives in place for this and thought why not have the redundancy there (these are 10K 146GB drives).

 

The RAID50 does look like a better option but what improvements would 12x450 have over 8x600 as this would increase costs, it is an option but would the performance increase be worth it?

 

With the host servers having 2 existing servers and 1 new 24GB server we would not be able to pool them due to the different processor chips (as far as I am aware), so what benefits would this have?

Ideally I would like to purchase 2 of the 24GB servers in a pool but having 4 old servers with no roles seems too wasteful. We are looking at spending around 8k, with my option 1 coming in at around 7k, option 2 at around 5k and your option 3 at around 10k.

 

Not sure still, I like the idea of having a 4 server pool am wary of the lifetime of these oldish (3-4y years) servers. This option 1 is however 3k under budget so there must be a better option available.

 

Edit: Another thing I am considering is to add another processor to each of the 4 old servers so that they each have 2x3.2 Xeon 2 core and changing the 8GB RAM to 12GB as this would give them abit more longivity, keep the pooling ability and I would still have the money for a large SAN.

Edited June 18, 2010 by Silverman

[diggory]

Don't mean to hijack thread but would like some advice on virtulisation plans we currently have and didn't want to start a new list.

 

The current plan is to have 2 new DCs running on physical servers, our SIMS on a physical server as it is relatively new, an old server converted into a cheap backup box with large SATA drives in RAID5.

 

We are then considering 2 options for virtualisation.

Option 1

Purchasing a new host for XenServer with the spec of 2 x Xeon X5650 2.66GHz 6 core, 24GB RAM and then 3 small SAS drives in RAID5.

Converting one of our current DCs (1 x Xeon 3.2 GHz 2 core, 2GB RAM) into a OpenFiler SAN consisting of 6 x 600GB 15K SAS2 drives in RAID5 to create 3TB of storage

OR

Option 2

Pooling 4 of our current servers which are all running 1 x Xeon 3.2 GHz 2 core, 2GB RAM (which would be upgraded to 8) and again all using 3 small SAS drives in RAID5.

Using this option would also allow us to increase the storage in the above SAN due this option costing less.

Purchasing a server with 1 x Xeon 2.0GHz 4 core and 2GB RAM and putting 8 x 600GB 15K SAS2 drives in RAID5 to create ~4TB of storage

 

We are planning on virtualising approximately 15 servers with this solution.

 

Opinions on these setups appreciated!

 

I'd avoid the openfiler SAN for iSCSI. I was running OF on 4 SANs. Was fine until I had it running under high loads and then would freeze up (which is bad news for VMWare).

 

I've installed nexenta on my SANs now - seems stable under high loads.

However the RAID card on one of my SANs broke (sigh).

 

It's worth having redundant everything on a SAN if you are going to have several important servers running from it.

Also worth noting in VMWare that unstable SAN can cause the vHosts to become unresponsive and possibly freeze up virtual servers that aren't even on that SAN.

(Again from experience...)

 

Backups are very much more valuable.

 

I'm running MS DPM and VMWare Data Recovery.