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iSCSI SAN server - RAID question

post #1 of 49
9/30/12 at 10:17pm
Thread Starter 
Hello all,

I'm building an iSCSI SAN server for a ESXi / Hyper-V lab. The SAN server will have 16 x 1TB Hitachi drives connected to a 3ware 9650SE-24M8 raid controller. I'll be using Starwind iSCSI SAN Free Edition for iSCSI.

Currently, the SAN server will connect to the Hyper-V server via 10GbE connection and ESXi server using quad 1GbE connections.

I am planning to configure the 16 drives in RAID 50 and wondering if this will provide enough performance for the VM servers.

Any thoughts or suggestions is appreciated. smile.gif
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post #2 of 49
10/1/12 at 2:16am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jibesh View Post

Hello all,
I'm building an iSCSI SAN server for a ESXi / Hyper-V lab. The SAN server will have 16 x 1TB Hitachi drives connected to a 3ware 9650SE-24M8 raid controller. I'll be using Starwind iSCSI SAN Free Edition for iSCSI.
Currently, the SAN server will connect to the Hyper-V server via 10GbE connection and ESXi server using quad 1GbE connections.
I am planning to configure the 16 drives in RAID 50 and wondering if this will provide enough performance for the VM servers.
Any thoughts or suggestions is appreciated. smile.gif

RAID 50 will definitely have adequate performance - although if space is not a primary concern and performance is more of an issue, you may consider going with RAID 10, however I have seen both RAID 50 and RAID 10 perform well with negligible difference.

Check this out: http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/perf_tests.html
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post #3 of 49
10/1/12 at 5:59am
Raid 50 will do great. By going with a Raid 10, you may have increased IOPS...but the performance increase won't be that massive. Raid 50 definitely shines for random read/write applications (such as SQL).

Network wise, you are also great.

The only thing I could complain on is the fact that you are using SATA drives (well, that is an assumption, so correct me if I am wrong). How many VMs do you plan to run? 14TBs for VM storage in a lab is a lot, and if you are planning the buy the drives, I would recommend getting SAS drives for increased performance. For my home lab, I will have 4 600GB Hitachi Ultrastar 15K RPM SAS drives in a Raid 5, which will give me ~1.8TB usable...and since most of my VMs are only 30-50GB, I should be able to have at least 30 VMs (which for a home lab is more than enough). Those 4 drives will be in my Norco RPC-4224 along with 20 Toshiba DT01ACA300 3TB SATA drives in a Raid 60 (this is purely for storage, media streaming, etc) all attached to my LSI MegaRaid 9261-8i and HP SAS Expander. I will also be using Starwinds iSCSI Target, along with their SMI-S Provider (assuming i can get it working) so I can manage my storage from System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager.

My last comment/question, do you plan to thin provision or full provision? I ALWAYS recommend full provisioning. There is no reason not too, since storage is cheap and plentiful, and over-provisioning is bad bad bad. With SATA drives, I definitely recommend full provisioning.
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post #4 of 49
10/1/12 at 6:04am
If he's got the money I would definitely go with SAS drives, also.
+1

Something tells me those Hitachi 1TB drives aren't SAS, so a fair assumption I'd say tongue.gif
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post #5 of 49
10/1/12 at 6:16am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tompsonn View Post

If he's got the money I would definitely go with SAS drives, also.
+1
Something tells me those Hitachi 1TB drives aren't SAS, so a fair assumption I'd say tongue.gif

No they are not SAS drives. I already have all 16 of those drives so not going to spend more for SAS drives. I'll probably provision a VM as a backup server and allocate most of the space for that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tycoonbob View Post

My last comment/question, do you plan to thin provision or full provision? I ALWAYS recommend full provisioning. There is no reason not too, since storage is cheap and plentiful, and over-provisioning is bad bad bad. With SATA drives, I definitely recommend full provisioning.

I plan to do full provisioning since space is not an issue. Probably going to run about 10 to 15 VMs. Don't think performance will be slow since none of these will be heavily used.
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post #6 of 49
10/1/12 at 6:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jibesh View Post

No they are not SAS drives. I already have all 16 of those drives so not going to spend more for SAS drives. I'll probably provision a VM as a backup server and allocate most of the space for that.
I plan to do full provisioning since space is not an issue. Probably going to run about 10 to 15 VMs. Don't think performance will be slow since none of these will be heavily used.

You're good to go then.
Sorry I totally forgot you already had the drives! tongue.gif
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post #7 of 49
10/1/12 at 1:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jibesh View Post

No they are not SAS drives. I already have all 16 of those drives so not going to spend more for SAS drives. I'll probably provision a VM as a backup server and allocate most of the space for that.
I plan to do full provisioning since space is not an issue. Probably going to run about 10 to 15 VMs. Don't think performance will be slow since none of these will be heavily used.

It's not about them being heavily used - it's about them being used simultaneously. Even if each VM only needed to read 10MB of data, when you've got 10 VMs doing it at the same time HDDs can struggle to keep up. Especially if you're trying to do a test deployment of something like a distributed VDI environment, where you'll be running like 20 VMs at the same time with even more VMs nested inside those.
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post #8 of 49
10/1/12 at 7:01pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Manyak View Post

It's not about them being heavily used - it's about them being used simultaneously. Even if each VM only needed to read 10MB of data, when you've got 10 VMs doing it at the same time HDDs can struggle to keep up. Especially if you're trying to do a test deployment of something like a distributed VDI environment, where you'll be running like 20 VMs at the same time with even more VMs nested inside those.

So you're saying 16 sata drives in RAID 50 will not be able to keep up with the workload you described above?

I'll look into SAS drives if I find the performance of the VMs are slow / sluggish. I did not have plans to branch out into VDI yet.
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post #9 of 49
10/1/12 at 7:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jibesh View Post

So you're saying 16 sata drives in RAID 50 will not be able to keep up with the workload you described above?
I'll look into SAS drives if I find the performance of the VMs are slow / sluggish. I did not have plans to branch out into VDI yet.

No actually I think it will be fine. Worst case, if you do have trouble, you can split it into two or more separate arrays and spread the VMs out across them.

Hell, in my home "lab" I only have four 1TB Caviar Blacks and an SSD, but they get me by smile.gif

I was just pointing out what sort of considerations should be taken into account, that's all!
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post #10 of 49
10/1/12 at 7:38pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Manyak View Post

No actually I think it will be fine. Worst case, if you do have trouble, you can split it into two or more separate arrays and spread the VMs out across them.
Hell, in my home "lab" I only have four 1TB Caviar Blacks and an SSD, but they get me by smile.gif
I was just pointing out what sort of considerations should be taken into account, that's all!

Ahh ok. thumb.gif

Wouldn't SSDs in RAID be faster and be more cost effective, not to mention take much less power? This is just for a home lab not an enterprise solution.
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