Re: FAO Geeks - SAN and NAS Combo-ish?
 

Correct, smart ar$e..... ;)

However...... we are now buying the EVA4400 starter kit (AJ697A) at £9673, retail is....gimme a minute....£13709. Includes 8 x 400GB FC Disks, disks are the best part of a grand a go though if you need to upgrade later.

Re: FAO Geeks - SAN and NAS Combo-ish?
 

I'm not really sure as I our DBA chucked a hissy fit about running his SQL DB's on Vmware so I didnt really look at it much after that :D

I think the best thing you can do is register on the vmware.com forum and ask anything specific on there, its got a really good user base on there and also the vmware support staff post on there as well, often its quicker to ask on there than it is to log a support call.

Re: FAO Geeks - SAN and NAS Combo-ish?
 

Unfortunately Ralph, I already have the switching infrastructure (from another project before I started here) that I have to work with. I don't have the money in the budget the buy the additional FC Switches which is a pity. The FC option is far better if I were starting from zero. I have £10k to do this, inc disks, support and installation.

Yes, the 4 of the machines will be P2V'd. I will run perfmon on them next week to get a better idea exactly what they are doing, but TBH, it's really not much. The others, I have to rely on what the suppliers say, which is rather generic I'm afraid.

This will run across 2 hosts at max, so with the FC option, I could buy two Dual Port HBA's (at c. £800 ea) which would get around the need for the FC switches.

Thanks for the help. I'll get in touch with my suppliers to requote for this and see what comes of it.

Re: FAO Geeks - SAN and NAS Combo-ish?
 

I am pretty sure you will be fine, especially with FC. VMware isn't about performance, it's about consolidation and cost saving, so thats why some DBA's can throw a hissy fit. I wouldn't virtualise a heavily utilised SQL cluster for instance, but saying you can't virtualise DB servers full stop is just a case of lack of knowledge and ignorance.

Re: FAO Geeks - SAN and NAS Combo-ish?
 

Well if you need a full kit list drop me a PM with what servers you want to use (DL360, DL380, etc) and I'll knock two together for you, one iSCSI, one FC. It'll be a five minute cut and paste job from recent kit lists I've put together for customers with the prices removed so no problem.

Re: FAO Geeks - SAN and NAS Combo-ish?
 

All our SQL its very heavily utilised and its clustered as well, which is why the DBA chucked a hissy fit, he's prone to doing it and he does it frequently :D

Re: FAO Geeks - SAN and NAS Combo-ish?
 

Bog standard DBA then.....;)

They don't like VMware in general, but as I said, lack of understanding, it's just 'cos they read somewhere it didn't go so they stick to it rigidly. You'd possibly find that 1/2 your databases could be migrated to simple VMware hosted server(s) and dramatically reduce the size and cost of your SQL clusters as they are then needed only to run the most demanding apps.