My first ESXi VM and iSCSI SAN question.

Stonedofmoo · 28 Oct 2008 at 16:07

Hi all

We've just bought our first SAN with the intention of virtualising servers and providing extra storage to my company.

We have a HP Proliant DL380G5 server with a Intel Quad PT 1000 adapter, connected to a Cisco 3650G switch and ending at a Equalogic PS5000-X SAS SAN.

Now with ESX/ESXi should I host the ESX kernal files on the server DAS or the Equalogic SAN? I can do it either way as the server has 8* 146Gb 10K SAS drives, but equally the Intel 1000PT can iSCSI boot to the SAN so I could host the files on there.

What's the best practise? We will likely move to full ESX server in future with Vmotion so this is only the start for us.

m4cc45 · 28 Oct 2008 at 16:18

I'd keep the ESX files on the server. It's only a tiny amount of space and if you have two drives in a RAID 1 mirror then this will offer redundancy.

I've always found that best practice and even in Blades I still use the same setup. As you're obviously using the network to run the ESX server (with the iSCSI setup) you are subject to latency, and, logically, you'd be using the network to access ESX, your virtual machines and then normal network access.

M.

morfmedia · 28 Oct 2008 at 17:29

Store locally else if you have issues you potentially won't be able to log the errors if its storage related.........

Stolly · 28 Oct 2008 at 21:10

never seen the advantage of boot from SAN.

The advantage is supposedly that you can boot the ESX servers from different hardware should you get a failure, but the whole point of the ESX servers is that you can have one or more out anyway without effecting service, so whats the point ?

mdjmcnally · 28 Oct 2008 at 22:54

I would keep my ESX on a DAS and locally boot.

Keep the SAN for the VMFS store.

Stonedofmoo · 29 Oct 2008 at 07:35

Thanks guys

morfmedia · 29 Oct 2008 at 22:16

Stolly said:
never seen the advantage of boot from SAN.

The advantage is supposedly that you can boot the ESX servers from different hardware should you get a failure, but the whole point of the ESX servers is that you can have one or more out anyway without effecting service, so whats the point ?

Main idea I know of is for SAN replication with identical hardware on the DR site, just bring everything up as it was before but not seen this / implemented it personally.

RSR · 30 Oct 2008 at 16:36

mdjmcnally said:
I would keep my ESX on a DAS and locally boot.

Keep the SAN for the VMFS store.

I agreed.

This is how i have just our new VMware servers up and its pretty nippy :cool:

Andy