performance recommendations regarding SB600c

[mtupker]

We are looking at getting a HP SB600c strage blade to use as an iSCSI storaga area for vmware. Has anyone done this, if so what issue did you run into (performance, capacity, etc) It looks like it might be a good little device but I was a little concerned about the 10k drive that the SB600c comes with. Obviously 15k drives would be better but I was wondering if the 10k drives would be "good enough".

We are looking to put a number of VMed servers on the device. Most notably a couple sharepoint servers. Anything we put on there would have a low user count. Our campus only has about 500-600 employees total. Thanks.

[TomRFB]

Don't know about performance issues but please keep in mind that there is no failover support for the storage processor for the SB600c under ESX. In plain english, only a single iSCSI path (to a single storage controller) is supported. In case of a controller failure you would loose connectivity to the SB600c (even if you have a dual controller configuration). The same is true for the MSA1510i from HP. You can find this information in the ESX compatibility guide. Possible performance issues aside, I wouldn't rely on a single controller (path) setup supporting multiple VMs.

Tom

[TomRFB]

Let me correct my first reply. I was assuming you are thinking about to connect the SB600c to multiple ESX hosts (as all of the hosts' data connection depend on a single available path without redundancy). I'm by no way an ESX expert and have practical experience with VMserver only, but I was looking into bringing our infrastructure from physical to virtual with a central data store (iSCSI SAN) and ran into this issue mentioned above. Neither the AiO400, 600, 1200, SB600c, MSA1510i supports a redundant controller setup under ESX according to VMware's compatibility guide. After speaking to several HP engineers and confirming this (for the MSA1510i) I decided to take a different route in regards to virtualization.

In case you're planning for the SB600c to support only one ESX host this issue would be less crucial. But then a direct attach storage (e.g. SB40c) might be a simpler and cheaper option option

Tom