Question(s) about combining SSD and 15k SAS in a 12-bay DL380

[Tom Lyczko]

I am spec'ing two DL380 servers with 12 bay LFF drives and StoreVirtual 10TB option and NR 10 (mirroring).

Which is the best way to go??

Must operate within a tight budget for two servers, whicn includes RAM, NICs, LH/SV software...can't go overboard on the SSDs...

1) One 600 GB SSD drive and 11 15k 600 GB SAS drives in RAID 5 in each server, the two servers mirrored in NR 10

2) Two 300 or 480 GB SSD drives and fewer 11 or fewer 15k 600 GB SAS drives in RAID 5 in each server, the two servers mirrored in NR 10

3) ALL 15k SAS drives in RAID 5, NR 10 -- the easiest cheapest option

Would the SSDs in #1 and #2 make enough difference to the VMs' data operating in Tier 0 of the SSD(s)??

The two servers are vSphere host servers containing various VMs, two of which are expected to be database servers.

Thank you, Tom

[BK_HPE]

Hi @Tom Lyczko 

Just wanted to check in, have you found the answers you were looking for?  I am researching this information and reaching out to some colleagues in case you still need help.  Please let me know if you still need my assistance. 

[David_Tocker]

You have a number of options. If your database is mostly read performance limited you could use HP's SmartCache with the 600GB drives and a single SSD and present a pre optimised volume to the VSA's. It should give you a nice read-only boost and its probably the cheapest option. (good for web server type workloads)

If you have a more general purpose workload I would just run a big raid-whatever over the spinning disks and use this as my slower tier. You probably dont gain much from 15k vs 10k drives and are probably better to spend the money saved on the SSD tier instead. If you are running NR10 you can get away with a single SSD on each node - just make sure your backups are good, in the unlikely scenario of both SSDs saying 'goodnight' at the same time.

Keep in mind that the VSA does not care what is underneath. For instance, you could boot off a couple of 300gb sas drives then present some PCIE storage to it and it will not care. The new intel P3700 and P3600 PCIE SSD's are pretty cheap in comparison to HP SSD/HDD and I would say they would be just as reliable.... and big... and dont have the smart array in the way choking the performance...

[Tom Lyczko]

Hi David,

Thank you for responding.

I went with all 15k disks...durability compared to flash and cheaper than flash overall. Plus it's not that big a cluster, only 2 hosts.

Thank you, Tom