Friday, September 26, 2008

[THIN] Re: Storage recommendations/tips for Hper-V-based XenApp and other virtual servers

50k is very low for the capabilities you are describing, you may want to look at Datacore SAN melody software it will give you high performance for the iSCSI needs using standard i386 hardware and software.

 

There are cases where one iSCSI NIC is enough but a number of designs where more would be ideal. I would plan on extra nics, when you consider a management network, a production LAN network, possibly DMZ or other LAN segments, iSCSI, etc. it is pretty common to have at least 4 or more NICS in a virtualization host…

 

 

 

 

 

Steve Greenberg

Thin Client Computing

34522 N. Scottsdale Rd D8453

Scottsdale, AZ 85266

(602) 432-8649

www.thinclient.net

steveg@thinclient.net

 


From: thin-bounce@freelists.org [mailto:thin-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Richard Waters
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2008 1:08 PM
To: thin@freelists.org
Subject: [THIN] Storage recommendations/tips for Hper-V-based XenApp and other virtual servers

 

I am going to be upgrading and moving all of my systems to virtual servers running on a Windows 2008 Hyper-V platform.  All of my servers are running Windows OS's.  After the move, all servers will be running either Windows 2003 R2 or Windows Server 2008.  Being new to virtualization and needing to make this change as soon as possible, I really could use some help figuring out some aspects of what to purchase.  This will be somehwere in the neighborhood of a $50,000 purchase.

 

My biggest questions relate to the best method for storing the VHD's for best performance and best cost.  I am looking at purchasing 4-5 servers with 8 processor cores and 32-64 GB's RAM.  I am looking at going with iSCSI for storage but am not sure how it would need to be configured for best performance.  I will be running one XenApp server on three physical boxes to start with and will be running Exchange 2007 in some kind of failsafe configuration.  I have started running Communications Server 2007 and hope to be able to implement full-blown Unified Communications some time in the near future.  These 3 services are where I am most concerned about getting great operating performance.

 

What kind of iSCSI storage system would work the best, and on the Hyper-V hosts, do I only need 1 iSCSI adapter or do I need to plan for multiple iSCSI adapters for performance reasons.

 

Does anyone know about the 3.6 or 5.4 terabyte HP Storageworks 1200r.  Would this provide great performance for a smaller operation such as mine and be able to host all of my VHD's with no noticeable performance hit, especially for the Citrix servers?

 

Anyone have an opinion on blade systems vs. traditional servers for a small operations such as mine?

 

Any insight regarding any aspect of this upgrade would be most helpful and greatly appreciated.

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