One or 2 storage pools?

[johnnoakes]

Hi

About to configure my first MSA 2052 that will be connected to 3 vmware hosts 10 Gbe iscsi

Its a sff 2052 with 6 800gb ssd and 12 4tb MDL 4tb in an enclosure.

So. One storage pool only with 6 ssd raid6 and 12 (or 10) hdd raid 6 (+spare)

Or 2 storage pools with 3 ssd raid 5 and 6 hdd raid 6 per pool?

About 60 vm. ad, fileservers, mailservers, rdp servers, websites...

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1]

It's always suggested and recommended by HPE to configure two Storage Pools.  Pool balancing will leverage both controllers and balance the workload across the two pools. For example, both Controller means more CPU to process the data but if single Pool then single Controller will be in use and that will lead to Performance issue.

I would suggest to configure two pools and configure tiering in both Pools to get Performance benefit. You can consider configuring read cache in one pool if you have plan to run application where you need good read performance.

You can also go through the below best practice guides,

https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/Getdocument.aspx?docname=a00015961enw

https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/4aa4-7060enw.pdf

Best option would be to involve Solution Consultant who will understand your business requirement from Application point of view and design your solution.

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!

***********************************************************************************

[Cali]

I think, with only 3 Hosts you can not Stress one Controller, but you will loose to many Disk Drives by using 2 Pools.

This will reduce the Capacity and Performance (for the MDL).

If you have a smal config with only 3 Hosts and a few Drives, I would prefer to configure 1 Pool.

And I'm going away from using Raid 5, and never use R5 for big MDL Drives.

So, two People, two answers, you need to ask a third Person., or use a Dice. :-)

[johnnoakes]

I roll the dice. 1 storage pool 6xssd raid6 and 10 or 12 mdl raid6.

What about "the power of 2"? Can I use all 12 mdl raid6 or should I use 10 and have 2 spare?

Thank you!

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1]

If your requirement is Capacity then I wouldn't suggest to go for SSD with RAID6 because no point in wasting SSD space but MDL drives you should go for RAID6

Yes Power of 2 is imp as well

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!

***********************************************************************************