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Re: VMWARE Planning for disk sub system.

 
Chris Coston
Occasional Advisor

VMWARE Planning for disk sub system.

I am working on the design of my first VMWare server. I am concerned about the underlying drive design. My first implementation will consist of 3 Virtual Machines. VM1 SQL server with 2 ded CPU's via VM SMP. VM2 will be a apps server and VM3 will be a WEB server. I plan to use a ML530. A SAN would be preferred, however, I do not have funding for a SAN. Can anyone point me to some disk array planning documents?
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5 REPLIES 5
hari jayaram_1
Frequent Advisor

Re: VMWARE Planning for disk sub system.

Chris,

Are you planning on using ESX or GSX ?

Thanks
Derek_31
Valued Contributor

Re: VMWARE Planning for disk sub system.

How do you specify a LUN in the Eva or MSA to go to a particular VM? Does each VM have a unique WWN that is different from the physical HBA WWN? I'm looking at ESX.
Chris Coston
Occasional Advisor

Re: VMWARE Planning for disk sub system.

We are looking at ESX. From what little I know, ESX appears to be more robust.

By the way, I have found some information by IBM with drive configs in the IBM Red Books posted on the IBM site. They actually have alot of info, unfortunately, IBM does not use HP HW, but the info is good.

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Chris Coston
Occasional Advisor

Re: VMWARE Planning for disk sub system.

In my config, I am not using a SAN. My config at present is to purchase an Array card and the optional 2-day bay for the tape drive slots on the ML570. I plan to mirror two drives for the ESX Virtual System. For the VM's, I plan on having a Dual channel array card. One channel will have 6x142GB drives in a RL 5 + HS config. The Data size will be 600GB's. The other channel will have the same. I am trying to reduce drive contention as much as possible. My intent is to match CPU1-2 with VM's that use only the A channel of RL5 and CPU3-4 to use the B channel of the RL5 storage.
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Andy McCreath
Frequent Advisor

Re: VMWARE Planning for disk sub system.

From experience of the ESX product, there is no real performance gain/loss in any array configuration for the above apps. Run RAID 5.

If you were trying to run Oracle I would suggest you use 0+1 on the array, you will find that SCSI disk arrays will do the job nicely as all the access occurs on the local cache anyway.

If you REALLY want to spend some money on a fancy array go buy a MSA1000 and use 72GB disks rather than 146GB ones (this will spread your load across more spindals for your required capacity and thereby increase performance)

Hope this helps,
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