AX150 Specific Thread

[rbergin]

Hi,

I know there are a bunch of SAN threads but I was interested in hosting a thread specifically about the AX150 and VMWare.

I am a HP/EMC shop - HP Servers and EMC Storage, I have two Clariion's a CX700 and a CX340 but we have any production VMWare Server experience.

I have a few years of running Workstaion and Virtual Server but my guys are novices to virtualization.

My plan is to purchase a AX150i with 6 TB (RAW) and use RAID10 with two DL380's (12 GB RAM each) and v3i.

I would like to try and get 20 or so VM's on there (remove alot of legacy hardware running 9.1 GB drives mirrored and CPU's from 500 Mhz to 1.6 Ghz) so I think I can accomplish that.

I am planning to purchase Platespin Recon to get the sizing planned out.

My dilemna is pretty easy - AX150 is a low-end SAN, not alot of features but I am hoping to get it for some physical consolidation, use it for low-end VM's and then when a VM outgrows the AX150 (ISCSI), move it one of the CX boxes (FC).

It's ridiculously cheap ($13k) and thats because it has very little features. I compared it to a dedicated CX300 for this project and its $27k.

I am planning to use the VMotion and VCenter to give the VM's some HA features and if they require a secondary site then that would graduate them to the CX700 box which has a fully redundant DR partner - CX340.

I know Storevault and some others are in that price range (under $15k) and will be trying to check the performance thread about comparative perf numbers.

Thanks,

Rob

[SyverDude]

Hello,

We are running this in a remote location with success. While there is not a lot of features, we do not use and SAN Network, just direct attached to 2 vmware servers so we can vmotion and use drs and that kind of capability.

Pretty safe. I would say what you are talking about sounds reasonable, just start loading and moniter the applications and users to see if they are happy.

with SATA being the back end disk drives, you will not get fabulous io rates so if the applications do not have high expectations, you could get away with it.

Regards,

Jon

[glynnd1]

It will very much be a case of you get what you pay for, but you seem to be expecting that and adjusting your expectations accordingly.

From the cache you should be able to get 50k IOPs and 320 MB/s in bandwidth - I don't know if these numbers differ between the iSCSI & FC interfaces. The bandwidth drops off to 160MB/s when hitting the disks.

Given the VMs you are targeting for it I don't think you will have an issue.

FYI the CX300 will be EOL'd soon enough.

[rbergin]

Some AX150i posts:

iSCSI help with AX150i (Oct 29, 2006)

http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=504100#504100

Need Help with iSCSI (AX150i) vmotion (3/5/2007)

http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=590756#590756

Consolidated Backup and iSCSI

http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=459648

[rbergin]

Another link

Experiences with the Dell/EMC AX150i or CX300i (Feb 19, 2007)

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=72995&start=0&tstart=210

[femialpha]

I use the AX150i in the US and UK with no problems. The one in the US holds 20 low utilization vm's. It works just fine for low end vm's but is not scalable. We are now outgrowing it and moving to an equallogic san. You will just fine with that setup since you have the flexibility of moving them to FC if needed.

As for the storevault, i have never used it before but note that it doesn't have the redundant controllers like the Ax does and i believe it also has only 2 ethernet ports compared to the 4 on the AX.

[rbergin]

Femi,

Silly question - does the multiple ports support trunking or just additional pathing to the AX150.

I can see the 2 ports - redundant connections but am wondering the virtues of the 4 ports - except its more redundancy and then I thought - can they be trunked - 2 Gbps of IO then??

Thanks,

Rob

[CoreyIT]

just additional ports into the backplane. two paths / processor or 4 directly connected hosts no trunking.

[rbergin]

Ah I get it - so I could eliminate the need for a switch if I just had two hosts and then run dual paths to the server - wonder if I can do two connections per server into 2 ports - that would be idea for a small AX150 implementation with just two servers.

Plus eliminates the need for the switch.

[CoreyIT]

Yes you can do that. the Microsoft iscsi protocol will be aware of the different paths you will however have to assign a different static IP to each NIC connected to the SAN. If you are intending on seperating your SAN and network traffic into different subnets you are going to have to add an additional network port into the mix to achieve the same results if you intend on dual pathing a server directly into the san and retain network access to a different subnet. you could create static routes and vlan it but that is introducing more complexity then need be.

[rbergin]

Corey.

So if I have a DL380 with 4 interfaces.

Two built in GB Ethernets that would be for the local LAN

10.x.x.x

Teamed up

Then I would have two NC360T's which would then be

192.168.46.x but two IP's to talk to the ISCSI SAN.

Each could have one of the four ports but its only going to use one port at a time and then it would just failover (since its IP) sort of ranked by priority in the network stack or cost.

I wouldn't think that I would use Microsoft's ISCSI since its ESX - are you thinking thats inside the VM's?

Thanks for the help.

Rob

[CoreyIT]

Yup. Sorry I was thinking of VMWare Server for some reason. The principal is the same regardless using ESX's software initator.