iSCSI will work just fine for hosting a VM environment, as well as some other workloads.
If you already have a FC infrastructure, then that's not a bad reason to go there, but iSCSI is very mature and stable and good performance if you don't purchase the cheapest equipment you can find. First, as others have pointed out, you need to size up your needs... *ASB *(My Bio via About.Me <http://about.me/Andrew.S.Baker/bio>) *Exploiting Technology for Business Advantage...* * * On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Oliver Marshall < oliver.marsh...@g2support.com> wrote: > Well, there will be maybe 3 VMs running on each host, most likely VM will > have a redundant ‘spare’ running on the other physical host. The largest > will be about 400GB+ of space running Exchange 2010 for about 100 users. > Then perhaps a DC and a file server, and the latter will just be acting as a > witness server for the Exchange DAG servers. > > > > I like the idea of iSCSI franky but experience of the s*** end of the > market has put me off. Saying that the cost of the FC based setup puts me > off even more J > > > > Olly > > > > > > *From:* John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] > *Sent:* 31 January 2011 16:26 > > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* RE: iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs > > > > I have 3 MD3000/3200i SANs and they work wonderfully. That being said I > found that while the fiber has better throughput (we also have an old 2Gb > EMC AX150 fiber SAN) It was a lot more expensive to set up (Fiber switches > aren’t cheap) and of course you need some marginal capability in configuring > said switch. > > > > *John W. Cook* > > *System Administrator* > > *Partnership For Strong Families* > > *5950 NW 1st Place* > > *Gainesville, Fl 32607* > > *Office (352) 244-1610* > > *Cell (352) 215-6944* > > *MCSE, MCP+I, MCTS, CompTIA A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4* > > > > *From:* Richard Stovall [mailto:rich...@gmail.com] > *Sent:* Monday, January 31, 2011 11:22 AM > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* Re: iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs > > > > Not a direct answer, but another shared storage option you could consider > for that setup is an MD3XXX. > > On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Oliver Marshall < > oliver.marsh...@g2support.com> wrote: > > Hi Chaps > > > > We’re buying some bits to build a basic VM platform so that we can get rid > of some old rack servers here. > > Being new to decent SANs (we have some crappy iscsi hardware that we just > use for dumping scrap data on) what are peoples thoughts of iSCSI SANs vs > FibreChannel SANs? We are planning on having two physical hosts (probably > Dell PE710s running either Hyper-V or ESXi) with a lump of shared storage on > a SAN but we are at odds here as to whether we should go iSCSI or FC. > > > > Any comments or suggestions? > > > > Olly > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
