Critique my virtualization setup

[Mackintire]

I just wanted to get your thoughts on my low power virtualization setup.

Dell Poweredge C1100
2X XEON QC L5520 2.26GHZ
2X 60GB Intel 520 SSD in RAID 1 for the Host OS volume
2X 500GB Seagate 15k HDD in RAID 1 for Hyper-V guest volumes
72GB DDR3 RAM
H310 RAID Controller
2X Intel® 82576 – 2 x Gb Ethernet
Windows Server 2012 Datacenter (Hyper-V 3.0)

Cisco SG300-20

QNAP TS-419P II 4X 3TB WD RED RAID 5 connected to my guest OS's via iSCSI

APC RS1500 UPS


Everything is backed up to the QNAP and that is backed up to the cloud via Crash Plan.


The C1100 idles at 75 watts and usually operates around 120 watts when moving data around to over machines.

The TS-419 idles at 23 watts with the drives spun down.

The entire setup eats about a 165 watts when idle..which I don't think it bad considering the capabilities.


At any given time I have 3-12 VMs running.


Any feedback, suggestions, questions?

 

[Mackintire]

I'm half tempted to install a P400 in this machine. I had a Dell 530 that I installed a P400 into with no issues. And I am aware that the P410 like to act up in any hardware other than HPs.

Any options?

 

[Netwerkz101]

Compute:
- Seems like a beast of a VM Host ..plenty of CPU and RAM capacity.
- Perfect for what they were built for ...sit and spin in a data center.
- 1U noise would bother me ..but separation could cure that problem easily.
- I am seeing these on ebay for $550 shipped..is that where you got yours?
- What's wrong with the PERC H310? (vs P400?)

Network:
- Nice, fanless, feature rich, layer 3 capable switch
- I have the same and I'm not taking advantage of it at all - strictly a "storage" switch.

Storage:
- I have come to love the (set it and forget it) purpose built NAS boxes.
- For backups ... I'm sure the 4 bay unit will serve you well for a long time.

So yeah ... nice setup ..but I am biased because I have similar network and storage.
I would want to take the components out the 1u chasis and put them in a larger case
with larger, slower, and more quiet fans ...... but I'd buy one too if I was in the market
right now - good bang for buck.

 

[Mackintire]

In preference and performance...

No cache cards:
HP P212
Dell H310 is better for SSDs in RAID 0,1,10 then the E200

Cards with Cache:
HP E200 (not for SSDs)
HP P222
Dell Perc 5
HP P400 with 512MB Cache
Dell Perc 6
HP P800
HP P410
HP P421
Dell H700
HP P810
Dell H710P
HP P812
Dell H810
HP P822

As far as I know the HP Raid cards that are newer than the P400 and P800 do not function correctly in anything that is not a HP server.

 

[Thuleman]

Is this for production or just to mess around?
I think that your storage performance is going to be meh at best if you actually put a load on that QNAP.

 

[Mackintire]

Home Lab, non-production use.


Max transfer between the virtual fileserver and the QNAP is 95MB reads and about 68MB writes.



Our production file storage SAN are EqualLogic PS6100E with 72TB and a PS5000VX with 7.2TB. The file server measures 470-490MB/s read/write our of the PS6100E. But our POP is connected by a 1GB metro to the datacenter in this building we are not going to see those kinds of transfers.

We also have a pile of NAS devices on site and a 3PB Isilon unit being evaluated in the lab.

 

[cafcwest]

Depending on the load of your VM's, you might want to go SSD all around in the hosts. A mirrored pair of 15k SAS drives is still pretty meh in performance. Since you have a multi-tiered backup strategy, stick a good single 480-512GB SSD in it and enjoy buckets of IOPS!

 

[Thuleman]

Home Lab, non-production use.

Max transfer between the virtual fileserver and the QNAP is 95MB reads and about 68MB writes.

Glad to hear that it's home use. The problem isn't really the read/write speed, it's the IOPS and disk latency during high disk access concurrency. Though again for home use this isn't an issue as it doesn't really matter if disk access is sluggish if you ever even put that much load on the system.