• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

ESXi host for SMB

U

UncleDavid218

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 16, 2006
Messages
2,734
All,

In the next 12 months we will be pursuing a complete replacement of our existing server hardware.

We are a 50 user SMB that does engineering and manufacturing. Our primary applications are SyteLine 8.03 (SQL), SolidWorks Enterprise PDM (SQL), and Exchange (2007). Not likely to expand to more than 80 users anytime soon, but I still need a relatively scalable option.

Our infrastructure consists of an Intel MFSYS25 modular server. There are three blades: 1 is the domain controller/file server/print server (2008 server, 8GB of RAM, Xeon E5240), 2nd is our Exchange server (2008 server, 16GB of RAM, Xeon E5240), and the 3rd is an ESXi 4.0.0 box that hosts our SQL server (2008 server & 16GB of RAM) and our backup server (2008 R2, 4GB of RAM, ShadowProtect). All connected to the integrated SAN which has ~2TB of usable space.

Nothing is really wrong with this. Speed is fine, we have enough storage. It's just old, and provides no failover/redundancy.

I do copy images of the servers nightly to a FreeNAS 9.1/ZFS box in a separate part of the facility, and cycle backup drives off site manually - but that's it. I know it's not ideal, but we're a young company so we haven't had time to do this right yet. That time is soon.

So for a company that has the need for ~4 servers (DC/Exchange/SQL/Backup), no more than 4TB of storage, and needs something to last ~5 years, where does someone start? I was thinking of having some local MSPs quote the project but want a good idea of what to expect first. There's not a budget for this just yet, but the obvious "best we can get for the money" thing comes up. I like simple = better. I think a SAN is not needed for this simple of an environment, but could be wrong.

My thought is to go with an HP ProLiant ML380 Gen8, lots of ram, dual quads, and a bunch of 900GB SAS drives. Run VMWare Essentials, and run all production servers on the 1 box. Then, get another one, exactly the same, and run my backup server there. If one box fails, I can migrate the VMs to the other and be back up shortly.

Being down for a few hours wouldn't be the end of us. I don't think we can justify the cost of a total HA environment. Not at this point anyway.

I'm also thinking about moving to Office 365 for Exchange, so that may be out of the picture.

If this sounds like a decent plan, what actual hardware would you go with? I don't need to stick with HP, but they are my preference for sure.

Thanks for any help you can provide, and if I left something out please feel free to ask.

- David
 
HP makes good stuff, so don't make this comment sway you by any means.

Have you considered Dell's DAS options? The MD3200 or such?

I think you would benefit from having two hosts with shared storage. Run everything across both of them, with all of your storage on the MD3200.

I think with drives and two hosts, you're probably looking at around 20k max for hardware. This is just one option, but it's one we utilize in many small offices. It gives you the flexibility to migrate VM's quickly in the cluster, and the setup is incredibly simple to do yourself.
 
Buy 3 smaller servers. Put disks in them. Buy Essentials Plus. Use the VSA.
 
Didn't VSA 1.0 have like a 75% storage overhead? Not sure on the latest version but that and the fact it wasn't free was a big minus.
 
VMware's current implementation of VSA sucks. Perhaps 5.5 will bring better changes with vSAN, but I wouldn't recommend VMware's current VSA product. Check into HP's VSA if you're looking for that configuration.
 
The VSA does the job fine for most SMB type installs and it's free with the lower licensing and supported.
 
Though..one downside is you can't run vCenter in the VSA so that may be a problem.
 
But with a single MD3200, I still have a SPOF and that's a problem. I want to mitigate risk of any 1 hardware failure causing downtime. With that said though, I'm not sure I can justify 2 SAN/DAS appliances .
Thoughts on Essentials Plus vs. Essentials + Veeam? From what I can tell Veeam does replication better than VMWare.
 
UncleDavid218 said:
But with a single MD3200, I still have a SPOF and that's a problem. I want to mitigate risk of any 1 hardware failure causing downtime. With that said though, I'm not sure I can justify 2 SAN/DAS appliances .
Thoughts on Essentials Plus vs. Essentials + Veeam? From what I can tell Veeam does replication better than VMWare.
Click to expand...

Get over it. Honestly. Most enterprise customers have single SANs. That's why you pay for fast response maintenance. There is no cheap solution to this problem.
 
Dell VRTX

My new favorite box. 4 servers, shared storage, networking all built into 1 - 5U box. Great box for SMB and virtualization.

Yes I work for Dell.
 
NetJunkie said:
Get over it. Honestly. Most enterprise customers have single SANs. That's why you pay for fast response maintenance. There is no cheap solution to this problem.
Click to expand...
This basically sums up my thoughts on this better than I can articulate.

http://www.smbitjournal.com/2013/06/when-to-consider-a-san/

I'd say I'm working with $20k-$40k for this project which includes licensing. I don't want to buy a SAN just because it's the easy way out. I feel like SAN is like Cloud in the mainstream, people like it just because it's trendy and hip, not that it necessarily solves a business need. If a SAN truly is the last resort for what I'm trying to do, then I'll do it.
 
Last edited:
QHalo said:
Who buys at list?
Click to expand...

Agreed. Send me a PM if you are interested in getting one, my company is a Dell Premier Partner and we get a pretty significant discount on hardware.

We also do VMware consulting / implementation.
 
UncleDavid218 said:
I don't want to buy a SAN just because it's the easy way out. I feel like SAN is like Cloud in the mainstream, people like it just because it's trendy and hip, not that it necessarily solves a business need.
Click to expand...

Uhhhhh....What? There is nothing trendy and hip about a SAN, they are insanely functional, and have been around for quite a while. Also, the easy way out? You realize you're going to have to administer this thing right? Why on earth would you choose the hard path, sys admins already have enough to deal with.
 
The point of a SAN is not "Trendy and Hip" or the "easy way out". It's centralized and shared data storage with way more redundancy and management features than a standard server with a RAID card and generic software can deliver. It's about the support when you get woken up at 3am and your homegrown solution has died while the nightshift is under a deadline.

The business case is the redundancy/support as well as the flexibility of shared storage. There's a reason that they exist in the SMB market. And if your budget is prohibitive, look into the re-certified market. But as 0V3RC10CK3D alluded to, at least engage a professional consultant for the help/advice on the design work. You'll be glad you did, especially if your first duty isn't IT.
 
The point of a SAN is not "Trendy and Hip" or the "easy way out". It's centralized and shared data storage with way more redundancy and management features than a standard server with a RAID card and generic software can deliver. It's about the support when you get woken up at 3am and your homegrown solution has died while the nightshift is under a deadline.

The business case is the redundancy/support as well as the flexibility of shared storage. There's a reason that they exist in the SMB market. And if your budget is prohibitive, look into the re-certified market.

Your scenario in my mind is more about need/desire for multiple hosts and the technical requirements of that implementation. And/or what acceptable Return-to-Operation timeframes are versus budget available.
 
I've spoken with many consultants about the configuration already, and not a single one recommended a SAN. One hosts over 80,000 servers, so I'm going to say his opinion carries a lot of weight.

I wouldn't call replicating 2 hosts with local storage via Veeam a "homegrown" solution, by the way. This is a solution that many SMBs implement. Yes, many SMBs also go via different routes which is why I'm asking. If you can tell me how a single SAN is going to be more reliable than 2 replicated hosts with local RAID10 storage, I want to hear it.

I've been told many times by people in the industry that use of a SAN should be the last option when designing a system architecture in the context of a small business, and I tend to agree with them based on sound logic.

And yes IT is my primary role, I'm just a picky little bitch sometimes :p
 
For two hosts you don't NEED a SAN. It gets more important as you scale out and want to take advantage of the cluster features of VMware. Nothing wrong with running on one and backing up with Veeam or something to another. Just consider growth and futures. We do a lot of VMware re-work when SMBs start to grow..that's all.
 
Nate7311 said:
It's about the support when you get woken up at 3am and your homegrown solution has died while the nightshift is under a deadline.
Click to expand...

UncleDavid218 said:
I wouldn't call replicating 2 hosts with local storage via Veeam a "homegrown" solution, by the way. This is a solution that many SMBs implement.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure the 'homegrown' thing isn't what he really meant. If you're comfortable doing two replicated hosts between each other and its an acceptable solution to you and you're getting the same thing from other consultants and your other research with SMBs, then go with that. Seems like a no-brainer.
 
Last edited:
Homegrown is people doing customer scripts and trying to copy VM files between hosts. This isn't homegrown.
 
My Apologies, I misread the original Post. I misread it as 2 hosts, rather than replication between redundant hosts.
 
I manage about 50 remote offices and have many setups. One of the solutions I've come up with offers pretty good failover ability and is pretty cheap.

1 HP Dl380 Gen8 with 24 disks slots. Enough RAM and disk to run whatever you need in one box.
1 Desktop with a iSCSI lun from a cheap NAS(we use QNAPs, cheap and easy)

Both running HyperV 2012, VMs are replicated to the desktop with the storage present to from the NAS, if you can tolerate 5 min average replication as it is Async.

You can even automate failover with powershell scripts,


if you want more robust automated failover DAS or iSCSI would be good options, There are plenty of cheap options there. iSCSI would give you the option for guest clustering as well that you won't be able to do with a DAS.
 
hyperv gets you the HA at a much lower starting cost than VMWare(tho they have made some server licensing changes since I last looked), as long as you dont need a feature it doesnt offer ETC

2 servers with shared storage via a small SAN or iscsi
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top