2 Proliant DL385p Gen 8 Clustered with a Shared SAN HP P2000 10 GB

[Leignard]

Hey Guys,

I wanted to share with you the environment I have setup, to make sure if that is correct and/or what are your suggestions, since this is the first time I have setup a SAN environment.

Basically, I have 2 HOSTs Proliant servers with Windows 2012 HyperV ( gui ). I created a NIC Team using the 4 ports to have a single 4 Gb bus to the Switch ( CISCO and added link aggreation to the 4 ports used ). So, both HOSTs servers have a 4 Gb bush to the cisco switch.

The SAN is setup with a single volume, 10 Gb Fiber link to the cisco Switch. SAN is attached to the HOSTs via iSCSI and no problems at this point, I have a single VM running on the HOST, with files on the SAN drive. Cluster environment is not created yet, so I am using the HOST B as a test with another VM. On HOST A, which has the production VM, if I move a sinlge 3 Gb file from the HOST c drive to the SAN attached drive, speeds are between 600 MB/s to 800 MB/s. Speed looks fast, not sure if it should hit the 1 Gb transfer. But the speed from HOST A to the production VM, copying from HOST c drive to VM c drive ( VM on that host ), speeds are up/down between 100 MB/s to 300 MB/s. Doing the same test, on the HOST B, which it has a test VM, so copying the same file from HOST B c drive to VM c drive, speed is pretty constant around 700 MB/s. The only difference, is that HOST B is not attached to the SAN, so its VM is running on the HOST B C drive ( just as a test )

Basically, my question is if I have the proper design in place. HOST A has 4 NICs, all teamed into a single Team with 4 Gb. So, I don't have a dedicated LAN for the iSCSI. SAN iSCSI is setup in the same IP range that my network and using a Fiber cable to the switch ( 10 Gb )

What are your recommendations? Should I create a team with 3 NICS and let the 4th NIC dedicated to iSCSI ? Have the same design, but create a VLAN on the switch ? Or..maybe better get a Fiber card for each HOST and connect HOSTs via Fiber directly to the SAN bypassing the physical Switch ?

Thanks a lot in advance.