Raid best practice for either esxi

phoeneous

I have a spare Dell T410 that I need to convert to a production box. It will host anywhere from 5-10 vm's max. It currently has dual xeon 3ghz and 16gb 1333. It also has four 250gb 7200 sata drives that I will be replacing with sas drives. According to Dell documentation I can use the following types of hard drives:

3.5" SAS (15K rpm) 146GB, 300GB, 450GB
3.5" SAS (10K rpm) 600GB

I can't really seem to find any newer best practice info for esxi when it comes to raid. So my only question is, when choosing these hard drives, should I consider raid 5 or raid 10? One of the hosts will be a production database and the rest will be either file servers or application servers. We currently do not own a san but are looking to get one next year. Thoughts?

RTmarc

RAID 10. If you need the space, go for the 10k 600 GB drives. If you don't, go with the 15ks drives that will work for you.

You could always boot from from flash for the OS if the server supports it.

jmritenour

The long and short of it is, it depends on the VMs and the I/O they will be supporting, but production DBs, you're definitely going to want RAID 10.

phoeneous

RTmarc wrote: »

RAID 10. If you need the space, go for the 10k 600 GB drives. If you don't, go with the 15ks drives that will work for you.

You could always boot from from flash for the OS if the server supports it.

Thanks.

And is it just me or is there very little information out there with regards to raid configurations for local storage for esxi?

TLeTourneau

phoeneous wrote: »

Thanks.

And is it just me or is there very little information out there with regards to raid configurations for local storage for esxi?

I think that's because VMWare recommends everyone use shared storage to get the advanced functions.

RTmarc

TLeTourneau wrote: »

I think that's because VMWare recommends everyone use shared storage to get the advanced functions.

Absolutely. VMware views using local storage on the same level of leprosy.

phoeneous

RTmarc wrote: »

Absolutely. VMware views using local storage on the same level of leprosy.

Yeah, but not everyone can afford sans

TLeTourneau

You can build them fairly inexpensively with things like Free iSCSI SAN Software for Windows with Deduplication or Openfiler — Openfiler - Open Source Storage Management Appliance using iSCSI.

RTmarc

phoeneous wrote: »

Yeah, but not everyone can afford sans

I know the feeling. If you have a little cash:

Drobo B1200i

TLeTourneau

There is also:

DSN-5210-10 xStack Storage® 8x1GbE H.A. Capable iSCSI SAN Array

jmritenour

RTmarc wrote: »

Absolutely. VMware views using local storage on the same level of leprosy.

Well, to be fair, VMware's bread and butter compared to their competitors are their HA/DRS features, and you can't take advantage of that with local storage, so it's no wonder they're indifferent toward local storage. I mean, you can run vSphere 5 with no local storage at all with autodeploy.

That said, they do support small scale deployment with local storage shared out to the other nodes and mounted through NFS, using the VMware storage appliance. It works fairly well, if you want HA on the cheap and can't shell out for a SAN & the infrastructure to support it.

ptilsen

RAID10. RAID5 is really only good for read-heavy or non-I/O heavy uses, such as an infrequently accessed file shared or a database (but not transaction log). For multiple VMDKs across multiple VMs serving general purposes, you'll definitely want RAID10.

If you looking at a "larger" deployment, say, ten VMs or more, multiple datastores serving different needs is advised. Those SATA drives might be good for a backup target, or an infrequently accessed file server or DB, while 15K RPM SAS drives might be a better spot for a transaction log or profile redirection share.

IMO SAN storage is the way to go if you can afford it and need it. It gives a lot more flexibility and usually provides a more available environment. That said, in a smaller environment of less than 10 servers on your virtual infrastructure, a SAN is probably an excessive solution that does not provide benefit commensurate with the complexity and cost it induces in the environment.

phoeneous

Looking good so far! Also have my eye on the Netapp Fas2040.

RTmarc wrote: »

I know the feeling. If you have a little cash:

Drobo B1200i

Forsaken_GA

RTmarc wrote: »

I know the feeling. If you have a little cash:

Drobo B1200i

Drobo's are nice, but I'll probably never buy anything but Synology from here on out. I have a DS1511+ loaded with 2TB drives, and it's been absolutely beautiful.

phoeneous

Looks similar to Qnap gear. What do you use yours for?

I need a solution that I can do replication across wan for ha/dr. Even though the drobo doesnt do this natively, I assume vsphere can?

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Drobo's are nice, but I'll probably never buy anything but Synology from here on out. I have a DS1511+ loaded with 2TB drives, and it's been absolutely beautiful.

TLeTourneau

phoeneous wrote: »

<SNIP>...
I need a solution that I can do replication across wan for ha/dr. Even though the drobo doesnt do this natively, I assume vsphere can?

You get vMotion and HA with the standard license but to automate vMotion and for fault tolerance you need the enterprise license.

QHalo

I've not heard good things about the drobo's and VMware. Lots of disconnects and shoddy performance. I have a qnap and it works flawlessly. I've alo heard very good things about the synology boxes as well. Can't go wrong with either.

RTmarc

phoeneous wrote: »

I need a solution that I can do replication across wan for ha/dr. Even though the drobo doesnt do this natively, I assume vsphere can?

Take a look at HP/LeftHand or Dell EqualLogic. vSphere won't be able to do any replication itself. It will tie into your back-end storage and hook into its replication capabilities.

Sounds like you need to take a look at Site Recovery Manager also.

meadIT

RTmarc wrote: »

Take a look at HP/LeftHand or Dell EqualLogic. vSphere won't be able to do any replication itself. It will tie into your back-end storage and hook into its replication capabilities.

Sounds like you need to take a look at Site Recovery Manager also.

Actually, version 5 of SRM (Site Recovery Manager) can do the replication by itself. It doesn't support synchronous replication, but if your RPO is 15 minutes or more, it may work for you.