• 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.

Help me pick out correct data configuration

M

marley1

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 18, 2000
Messages
5,447
Hey guys -

This may my first deployment of ESXi in a business environment. We have a client that has plans to grow over SBS server size so we are going with multiple servers (1 for Exchange, 1 for File/App/DC, and 1 for legacy program).

We thought this would be a good idea for Virtualization.

What I am having problem with is picking out the correct drives and configuration.

Some are saying I can get away with just loading up the server with a bunch of drives, and put the 3 Server Guest and be done.

So I am a dell reseller so going with one of those products. Thinking a T710 or a rackmount.

But how would I configure the disks for 3 Server Guests, and storage for the network?

Thanks,
Dan
 
Is that really needed?

Honestly the price of that isn't bad, I didn't know if I needed a SAN or not.
 
Needed, heck no it isn't needed, I just think it is a pretty good value for what you are getting. I believe you could certainly get away with loading a machine, that is on the HCL, up with some fast drives, some ram, and going at it.

That is what I am doing for my QA lab.
 
Okay but what would I want the raid system to be?

Server can hold 8 drives.

Guest OS 1 - server08 - file server, dc, ap
Guest OS 2 - server08 and Exchange 2010
Guest OS 3 - server03 - legacy app
 
Well depending on how much space you need the drives will differ, but i would pick 15k SAS drives.
Just because VMs tend to create a lot of disk contention and you are running the whole network from this one array.

I would get 8 15k's and make a large RAID10 for the VMs
You should have plenty of space with large disks, if you need more space you could go RAID5, but RAID10 would provide better performance.

Is there room for internal drives?
You need something to run the ESXi but you could probably even put that on a tumbdrive internally and have it boot from flash. That way you could just keep the VMs on the array.
 
Would going with the SAN do anything for me? I figured its going to just add cost, as this is a smaller setup.

The dell servers maybe I can put one more drive internally, the os doens't need to be on raid for esxi??
 
marley1 said:
Would going with the SAN do anything for me? I figured its going to just add cost, as this is a smaller setup.

The dell servers maybe I can put one more drive internally, the os doens't need to be on raid for esxi??
Click to expand...

SAN would prob just make it more expensive, harder to manage, and just more complicated for a small setup.
 
so Raid 10 for the VM and DATA?

bad idea to put the ESXi OS on that same volume?

I was originally thinking Raid 1 for ESXi OS, then Raid 10 for the rest.

But not enough drives I dont think for that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top