I am just trying to get some opinions. I already know what was implemented is a bad design. Well, really just the choice of SAN that was a bad idea.
Customer has the c7000 blade system with a few 460c G8 blade servers and a few older 460c G6 blade servers. The blade system has 6Gb SAS switches for connectivity to the SAN. There are two SANs. One HP P2000 G3 MSA for the G8 blades and an old HP MSA2324sa for the G6 blades.
All the blade servers are running ESXi 5.5. There are a total of 15 VMs running, but my main concern is the two Exchange servers. Both Exchange servers have 3x 1 TB databases and are setup in DAG. So 6 TB total in databases running on the P2000 SAN. I don't know how 3PAR is setup, but these MSA's use vDisks and were setup in RAID 6 which I believe is limited to 16 disks per vDisk. So one vDisk is 6.5 TB with 1 TB free. The other vDisk is 3.8 TB with 1.35 TB free.
The Exchange server has about 2,000 users and is a healthcare company. Based on the past 2-3 months, they will be out of space in about 8 months at their current growth. Considering the amount of free space on the SAN, if a DB restore was required, I could barely fit one restored DB on the second vDisk.
You can add another disk enclosure to the P2000 SAN, but considering the size of Exchange and the growth, I don't think they should even be using a MSA (entry level) SAN.
Sticking with the 6Gb SAS switch, would you recommend using 3PAR? I would think at least 20 TB of capacity to accommodate for DB restores if required. And how do you feel about these MSA SANs?
Customer has the c7000 blade system with a few 460c G8 blade servers and a few older 460c G6 blade servers. The blade system has 6Gb SAS switches for connectivity to the SAN. There are two SANs. One HP P2000 G3 MSA for the G8 blades and an old HP MSA2324sa for the G6 blades.
All the blade servers are running ESXi 5.5. There are a total of 15 VMs running, but my main concern is the two Exchange servers. Both Exchange servers have 3x 1 TB databases and are setup in DAG. So 6 TB total in databases running on the P2000 SAN. I don't know how 3PAR is setup, but these MSA's use vDisks and were setup in RAID 6 which I believe is limited to 16 disks per vDisk. So one vDisk is 6.5 TB with 1 TB free. The other vDisk is 3.8 TB with 1.35 TB free.
The Exchange server has about 2,000 users and is a healthcare company. Based on the past 2-3 months, they will be out of space in about 8 months at their current growth. Considering the amount of free space on the SAN, if a DB restore was required, I could barely fit one restored DB on the second vDisk.
You can add another disk enclosure to the P2000 SAN, but considering the size of Exchange and the growth, I don't think they should even be using a MSA (entry level) SAN.
Sticking with the 6Gb SAS switch, would you recommend using 3PAR? I would think at least 20 TB of capacity to accommodate for DB restores if required. And how do you feel about these MSA SANs?