Dell MD3200i SAN for Hyper-V

[netadmin]

We currently have about 10 virtual servers that run on two physical servers; we are wanting to replace the servers and add a SAN for high availability of the virtual servers. Presently, all virtual servers are stored locally on SATA 3 drives and no SAN is installed.

 

Right now, I'm looking at two Dell PowerEdge R510 servers and one Dell MD3200i SAN (the SAN would be directly connected to the R510 servers using 1Gb Ethernet).

 

A few questions:

1. I am a bit concerned on if our disk access will be much slower using the SAN. Our current disk drive (SATA 3) shows an average speed of 76.2MB/s and top speed of 96.9MB/s per HD Tune. Any thoughts on if the iSCSI drive access would be fairly similar to our current speeds, faster, or slower?

 

2. Has anyone on here used a Dell MD3200i SAN for a high availability Hyper-V setup?

 

Thanks!

[riffleman]

I'd always look at using dual links for an iSCSI San device. We have our SAN running with 2 1Gbps iSCSI links and it performs very well supporting 15 virtual servers on two hosts. The same SAN device is also using 2 further 1Gbps iSCSI links to provide 60 virtual desktops. So I'd say that the bandwidth available from your iSCSI links will far exceed those of your drives.