Internet VC 1/10 and VC Flex-10?

[JonathanT]

Just to provide an update. I've got the PowerConnect 6448 stack working with the VC 1/10 nicely. I had some issues with a firmware reload on one of the switches, but I've been able to work through that. It does a fairly graceful failover if one of the core 6448 goes down.

I'm still having some issues with the TLB vs NFT on some of the FlexNIC teams with a Cisco RVS4000 device, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get that solved. Probably going to have to stick with NFT for now.

[Revantha Udugampola]

Hi Jonathan,

I've seen from your posts that you are an expert in the The Virtual connect arena for the HP blade solutions.

I am putting together a Blade config based on the c7000 chassis, BL460C blades and a LeftHand iSCSI SAN solution. The clinets is primarily into the media business (he is a major news paper publisher) and the key agenada is for Server Consolidation...most of the Servers are on Windows 2003 and I am planning for around 12 BL460'c.

Also we are planning to to migrate the Blade and the storage network into 10GigE with Brocade.. I would like to hear check from you wether you would be in a position to share your expereience with us and also to take a look on the c7000 config as well which we are hopeing to propose...


Many Thanks,

Revantha Udugampola
E-W Information Systems
Sri Lanka

skype - revanthau

[Adrian Clint]

Revantha

How are linking Lefthand with 10G and Brocade?

Lefthand is 1Gb RJ45 Networking, apparently if you put the Copper 10Gb connections in there it becomes so expensive you might as well buy a 4Gb Fibre Channel SAN.
Which is Brocade technology. So much in your statement is non compatible/no cost effective.
Start a new thread

[JonathanT]

Hi Revantha,

I don't mind giving you my two cents of advise, but I'm definitely not a guru when it comes to Flex-10. I'm new to it and learning like a sponge. I'm trying to document what I'm learning here so that others may gain knowledge.

I will tell you that I'm planning to use Datacore's Sanmelody on two of the BL490C G6 blades for my iSCSI SAN. With the 3.0 version you can do some obscenely large mega caches. As for storage to drive the 10Gb ethernet I'm planning to have the blades access a hybrid setup:

* SSDs in a SB40C storage blade.
* SAS drives in a MSA or MDS SAS storage enclosure.
* Later on option (Fusion-IO/HP IO Accelerator Mez Card)

The SanMelody turns the normal storage that will be attached to these blades into a high performance, high availability, iSCSI SAN. Maybe you should consider a similar thing instead of the Lefthand equipment. I agree with Adrian that you probably can't cost effectively drive the 10GB ethernet with an external iSCSI SAN.

[Revantha Udugampola]

Hi Adrian,

I am actually looking at the New Brocade CX- 624S

http://www.brocade.com/products-solutions/products/ethernet-switches-routers/enterprise-mobility/product-details/fastiron-cx-series/specifications.page


Your point is well taken.. I will shortly come back to you...

revantha

[Uy U.]

We are also considering the same exact solution:

* DataCore SANMelody 3.x
* MDS600
* FusionIO
* C7000 with Blade TBD

Did you get this solution to work? We are also looking at creating 2 SANMelody SANs for redundancy. Any pitfalls? Any gotchas?

[JonathanT]

At the time that config could not do redundant mirror networks between the SDS servers over iSCSI. With the nature of the network modules in a C7000 this left a single point of failure that would definitely be tripped if the module reset for anything like a firmware upgrade, etc. I don't know if they have fixed that issue since then.

We opted instead for an MSA2324 with an additional MSA disk shelf attached. We put SAS RAID cards in all our servers and used the shared SAS of the MSA. It works AWESOME and is super simple to setup. The best part is the performance with the maximum redundant cable configuration is awesome. It absolutely blows the pants off the previous EMC CX3 equipment that was in use. If you're in a VMWare environment this all HP solution is an incredibly cost effective way to have a good basic SAN.