Hi,
I've been looking at moving our servers at work on to VMWare, and I've hit bit of a knowledge gap (I'm a developer who also does the IT) while i've been looking for some shared storage.
First some background: We run a mix of normal network services (ad, exchange etc) for 50 users, a development environment for our website (test servers & source control) and a "data warehouse" (replicated copy of our production database).
My end-game plan is about 12 virtual servers running on two servers attached to some shared storage; running on a version of VMWare (ESXi or vSphere Essentials).
The problem is we've got some existing storage hardware we'd like to reuse in the form of an HP MSA60 direct attached shelf loaded with 15k hard-drives. However I've been unable to find a replacement shelf that can be shared between servers, and accepts our existing hard disk drives. But the replacement for the MSA60 (the MSA2000) uses a different disk caddy. I've never been able to find a source of HP caddies for less than £50 each (which is a rip-off for plastic box...).
So I'm a little stuck as how to proceed, I don't know HP's product offering all that well so I'm unsure of other products we could use. There is some money available, however I have to justify every penny (grr) and anything over £10k total isn't going to happen. Am I stuck? having to replace all those disks? I'd like to use an HP product but another make would be OK (as long as the caddies are cheap
)
thanks!
akakjs
I've been looking at moving our servers at work on to VMWare, and I've hit bit of a knowledge gap (I'm a developer who also does the IT) while i've been looking for some shared storage.
First some background: We run a mix of normal network services (ad, exchange etc) for 50 users, a development environment for our website (test servers & source control) and a "data warehouse" (replicated copy of our production database).
My end-game plan is about 12 virtual servers running on two servers attached to some shared storage; running on a version of VMWare (ESXi or vSphere Essentials).
The problem is we've got some existing storage hardware we'd like to reuse in the form of an HP MSA60 direct attached shelf loaded with 15k hard-drives. However I've been unable to find a replacement shelf that can be shared between servers, and accepts our existing hard disk drives. But the replacement for the MSA60 (the MSA2000) uses a different disk caddy. I've never been able to find a source of HP caddies for less than £50 each (which is a rip-off for plastic box...).
So I'm a little stuck as how to proceed, I don't know HP's product offering all that well so I'm unsure of other products we could use. There is some money available, however I have to justify every penny (grr) and anything over £10k total isn't going to happen. Am I stuck? having to replace all those disks? I'd like to use an HP product but another make would be OK (as long as the caddies are cheap
)thanks!
akakjs
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