SAN Mirroring

Soldato
Joined
5 Jul 2003
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Location
Atlanta, USA
Hi,
Can anyone suggest some cost effective SANs that would provide high availability to 4 ESXi Servers?

Basically i want two SANs to mirror each other, multiple routes from each host to each SAN, with each SAN having a connection between each other to mirror the data. In theory allowing one SAN to die, with the other one keeping the VMs running on the host ticking over, as its a mirror of the other SAN.

Thoughts & suggestions?

Thanks in advance all.
 
This thread had a pretty lengthy discussion on the same topic.

I still recommend the Overland SnapServers.

Overland Storage S2000's are cheap, and work well in a VM environment (they support Persistent Reservations which is a prerequisite for Hyper-V clustering), they have mirroring, or can have fully blown replication for additional licensing costs.

We've got two on site running our Hyper-V SCVMM cluster.
 
We have Netapp FAS2050's and they have be great..
1 mirrors to the other using netapp snapmirror, if you run exchange or sql they you should also look at snapmanager for exchange and sql :-)
 
Hey,

Have a look at NetApp, great support and consultants as well.

Stelly

Agreed! :D

Active / Active 2050 should be ok, if its low IOPS, then if you have a DR site you can snapmirror the volume to DR.

Another reason for going with a 2050 is it can run the latest version of OnTap, which allows aggregates above 16TB.

If you have any more NetApp related questions let me know. :D
 
What protocol? iSCSI, NFs, FC?
How many VMs?
What's your budget?
How much data total?
How far apart will the arrays be?
What link between the arrays?

Only an active / active array configuration (not active active constollers) will do what you want. Otherwise there will always be some kind of manual failover using VMotion, SRM, etc.
 
This thread had a pretty lengthy discussion on the same topic.

I still recommend the Overland SnapServers.
I'll give the thread a read this afternoon.
Just done a quick google search for that kit, looks a bit...amateur. :p

We have Netapp FAS2050's and they have be great..
1 mirrors to the other using netapp snapmirror, if you run exchange or sql they you should also look at snapmanager for exchange and sql :-)
a lot of love for NetApp here ive noticed.

What protocol? iSCSI, NFs, FC?
How many VMs?
What's your budget?
How much data total?
How far apart will the arrays be?
What link between the arrays?

Only an active / active array configuration (not active active constollers) will do what you want. Otherwise there will always be some kind of manual failover using VMotion, SRM, etc.
VM's: Growing, slowly, all the time, currently at around 50.
Budget: None at of yet, costing exercise at the moment.
Data: As with the VMs, growing slowly all the time. 2-4Tb per array should tide us over though.
Distance: A maximum of 2meters
Link: You tell me. Open to all the technologies.
 
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IBM XIV is the best SAN around for the lowest TCO.....comes with mirroring at no extra license cost
 
I'll give the thread a read this afternoon.
Just done a quick google search for that kit, looks a bit...amateur. :p


a lot of love for NetApp here ive noticed.


VM's: Growing, slowly, all the time, currently at around 50.
Budget: None at of yet, costing exercise at the moment.
Data: As with the VMs, growing slowly all the time. 2-4Tb per array should tide us over though.
Distance: A maximum of 2meters
Link: You tell me. Open to all the technologies.

Check out the EMC VNXe or VNX if you need to go slightly bigger

http://www.emc.com/storage/vnx/vnxe-series.htm
http://www.emc.com/storage/vnx/vnx-family.htm

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2011/05/vnxvnxe-updates-bigger-faster-stronger.html < Good blog & videos

Stick with NFS for now for the VMs
 
Completly depends on your budget and performace/storage goals.

I would recommend Dell EqualLogic as the software they come with is superb and my clients love them....but they are pricey.

PM me if you want some more info on them.
 
Another vote here for Netapp, we are running Two FAS2020HA with snap mirror. And soon to be running SQL snapmanager.

Great devices, and really easy to manage.
 
I've had nothing but good experiences with Hitachi AMS2100 gear for low end virtualisation. Mirroring is pain free and performance is good once it's set up optimally. Support has been pretty good too.

Netapp have lovely products but performance has never been their thing and they simply can't compete on price unless you need a whole heap of features.
 
Where I used to work used Dell EqualLogic SANS as they were reasonably cheap and seemed to work well.

Although we did have one that had a habit of it's disks failing quite frequently.
 
HP P4500 Lefhand's are good price/performance and do mirroring for no additional cost, plus you can set them up as a network raid array

Kimbie
 
From talking with suppliers, its looking like Equalogic or Lefthand at the moment.
With EMC being significantly more expensive...
 
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