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Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Thursday, August 14, 2008 12:01 PM
Posts: 4,
Visits: 7
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I currently have two Dell 2950s running 10+ VMs which are stored on an EMC AX150i 5x250gb SATA, 750gb usable) . It is a bit slow but works fine. I have a "spare" 2950 (6x143gb SAS) which is currently being used for testing. Our company has 65 users and two locations. I have Exchange, Sharepoint, DCs, file servers, SQL etc virtualized on ESX in one site and some servers in my secondary site virtually in VMWare VMServer 1.x.
I have been trying to come up with a plan for my infrastructure which will be expandable and redundant. Thing is the majority of SANs are out of my budget and I had to stretch for the AX150i a couple years back.
I was thinking of using my spare 2950 as a SAN by picking up a copy of ESX foundation (will the VSA work under Xen or virtual iron?), loading VSA on it and dedicating the entire unit as an iscsi SAN to replace my AX150i. Since ESX 3.5 does SATA I should be able to get enough disk space.
This would, in the future, allow me to setup another VSA in my second office for replication correct, correct (offices are connected by a fractionated T1)? The other advantage being that the VSA can be moved to new hardware when the current hardware goes out of warranty.
Have I got the right idea?
It is a bit difficult to get a grip on how best to use VSA unless one can afford multiple copies.
Thanks,
Bob
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Supreme Being
Group: Moderators
Last Login: Yesterday @ 2:22 PM
Posts: 101,
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| You are very much on the right track. The VSA is intended for smaller installations of ESX that require a SAN. Similar to what you described. A big advantage to SAN/iQ and the VSA is that you can add more nodes later; for more redundancy, performance, and capacity. You can even swap out the VSA for real LeftHand hardware if you outgrow the VSA someday without requiring any downtime for the migration. I'd encourage you to try out the eval on your spare 2950 if you have not already started to.
Adam C
Product Manager
LeftHand Networks
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