SAN upgrade/Replacement

[Baki65]

Hi,

We are looking to upgrade our MSA 1040 by replacing it with MSA 1060, our existing environment is as follow;

VMWare ESXi 6.5, 2 Proliant hosts Gen 10, MSA 1040 with 6x1.2 Sas drives.

All connected via ethernet via a regular 1 GB HP switch, just simple setup, no fiber channel.

What we are looking to do is replace the MSA with the new MSA 1060 over a weekend, so we can shutdown servers if need be.

The new MSA has 18x1.2 GB Sas drives, hosts and SAN will be connected via SAS cables, so we are not doing ethernet anymore as we need more read time performance for our SAP b1 VM.

So, my questions are;

1-  what is your recommendation to configure this? 

2- Can I do 2 datastores, one for the SAP VM with 9 drives raid5 (what type of raid5, how many drives for the raid, and how many spares) and the other datastore for the rest of the VMs (about 5) ?

3- Should I use the HP DP raid to get a better re-build performance for the Raid?

4- if I can't get the project done before Monday for any reason, can I just disconnect the new MSA and turn everything else back as it was so users will have no interruptions or adding the SAS target, initiators will mess up the existing configs?

5-  After adding the new MSA to the VMware cluster, is it just a matter of moving the VMs to the new datastore, then retiring the old one?

thank you so much for all your help in advance.

[Navaneetha1]

Baki65 ,

I understand you are moving from MSA 1040 to MSA 1060 and you have few concerns.
Please find the answers to your queries here.

1- what is your recommendation to configure this?
Databackup
Install the hardware
Configure the new MSA
Present the new volumes to hosts. Move the VM's to this newly presented volumes.

2- Can I do 2 datastores, one for the SAP VM with 9 drives raid5 (what type of raid5, how many drives for the raid, and how many spares) and the other datastore for the rest of the VMs (about 5) ?
3- Should I use the HP DP raid to get a better re-build performance for the Raid?

Configuring seperate datastores for VM's is totally business requirement.
MSA DP+ does have better rebuild and performance. If you are choosing other RAID levels , we would suggest you configure as per best practices "Power of 2"

https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00105260enw?jumpId=in_psnow_e5e6fb6d-4eec-4877-8ffb-6650ec3c5bad_gaiw
Refer page 12

4- if I can't get the project done before Monday for any reason, can I just disconnect the new MSA and turn everything else back as it was so users will have no interruptions or adding the SAS target, initiators will mess up the existing configs?

If you have the existing MSA 1040 setup (environment) active , then you can switch to this MSA to avoid affecting the users.
However , we suggest to plan the activity and perform the necessary actions to avoid any unplanned scenarios.

5- After adding the new MSA to the VMware cluster, is it just a matter of moving the VMs to the new datastore, then retiring the old one?

Yes. You can move the Vm's to the new volumes presented from MSA 1060.
For further information regarding migrations of Vm's please do check with Vmware regarding the requirements and limitations.

While I am an HPE Employee, all of my comments (whether noted or not), are my own and are not any official representation of the company