Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust
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@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@wrx7m said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@wrx7m said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
I have 2 Dell R720XD each with 10x1TB NLSAS in OBR10 and 1 older Dell R710 with 4 10K SAS drives in OBR10 running ESXi 6 (all installed on redundant SD card or USB flash).
Doing anything like Starwind between them?
I am not at this time. I was doing the now-defunct, overly-complicated, under-supported, vSphere Storage Appliance v5. It was great until it had issues with some of the services that were required to run and keep track of the heartbeat. Early this year, I basically tore the whole thing out and rebuilt my VI in stages. Much simpler and elegant and since I have added 10Ge, live vmotion only takes a couple minutes for each VM (minus my big ass file server).
It's a good way to go. Not sure how much of a pain it will be to retrofit, though.
Yeah, I did look into it. Especially, since 2 nodes was (is?) free. I was and am still wary from the VSA debacle.
Edit - Obviously, it is a totally different solution but I needed to get off of VSA and it was just too much to handle at that time. Once I get a bearing on our goals for the next couple of years, here, I will see how it fits into what is needed. -
@NerdyDad said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@wrx7m We have a couple of Synology's around our enterprise and am currently using Veeam to backup VMs from their respective local hosts. But I would also have the same concern about the synology that I am also having with this current SAN. It will eventually be the bottom part of the pyramid.
I should point out that I also am using Veeam and have been since I put my VI into production. Can't wait for 9.5!
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@wrx7m said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@NerdyDad said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@wrx7m We have a couple of Synology's around our enterprise and am currently using Veeam to backup VMs from their respective local hosts. But I would also have the same concern about the synology that I am also having with this current SAN. It will eventually be the bottom part of the pyramid.
I should point out that I also am using Veeam and have been since I put my VI into production. Can't wait for 9.5!
Cool, are you using Veeam Replication then between hosts?
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I should mention that our Scale has built in backups, too. Just image based and nowhere as advanced as Veeam does, but free and inclusive.
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@wrx7m said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@wrx7m said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@wrx7m said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
I have 2 Dell R720XD each with 10x1TB NLSAS in OBR10 and 1 older Dell R710 with 4 10K SAS drives in OBR10 running ESXi 6 (all installed on redundant SD card or USB flash).
Doing anything like Starwind between them?
I am not at this time. I was doing the now-defunct, overly-complicated, under-supported, vSphere Storage Appliance v5. It was great until it had issues with some of the services that were required to run and keep track of the heartbeat. Early this year, I basically tore the whole thing out and rebuilt my VI in stages. Much simpler and elegant and since I have added 10Ge, live vmotion only takes a couple minutes for each VM (minus my big ass file server).
It's a good way to go. Not sure how much of a pain it will be to retrofit, though.
Yeah, I did look into it. Especially, since 2 nodes was (is?) free. I was and am still wary from the VSA debacle.
Yes, is free.
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@scottalanmiller not yet as we have a 10 Mbps MPLS circuit between locations with AT&T. That's another SPF as well, but we're dealing with that by looking at Time Warner Cable and using our Cisco firewalls to load balance between the 2.
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@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
I should mention that our Scale has built in backups, too. Just image based and nowhere as advanced as Veeam does, but free and inclusive.
Thanks for the mention, SAM. Also worth mentioning for Veeam fans that Veeam agent-based backups are available and work just fine on Scale HC3 solutions. So you can stick with Veeam, even if the methods change, if you were to move to Scale HC3.
Can't thank everyone enough for all of the love around here.
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@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@wrx7m said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@NerdyDad said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@wrx7m We have a couple of Synology's around our enterprise and am currently using Veeam to backup VMs from their respective local hosts. But I would also have the same concern about the synology that I am also having with this current SAN. It will eventually be the bottom part of the pyramid.
I should point out that I also am using Veeam and have been since I put my VI into production. Can't wait for 9.5!
Cool, are you using Veeam Replication then between hosts?
Not at this time. Each host has different VMs running on them. I really need to increase the RAM on both to make sure that I can migrate everything from one to the other. At this time, I power off some less/non-essential VMs and live migrate the others during patching, which doesn't occur all that often on ESXi.
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@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
Scale's entry level high availability cluster starts at $25K. That might actually be enough here, but I doubt it. But it gives you an idea of where things start.
Why do you do t it? Most of his VMs are running on RAID 6... That has to be slow as all get out.
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@Dashrender said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
Scale's entry level high availability cluster starts at $25K. That might actually be enough here, but I doubt it. But it gives you an idea of where things start.
Why do you do t it? Most of his VMs are running on RAID 6... That has to be slow as all get out.
Why do I do what?
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@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@Dashrender said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
Scale's entry level high availability cluster starts at $25K. That might actually be enough here, but I doubt it. But it gives you an idea of where things start.
Why do you do t it? Most of his VMs are running on RAID 6... That has to be slow as all get out.
Why do I do what?
Why do you say that a base line Scale won't work? RAID is so slow... I suppose there might not be enough RAM. So I suppose that would be a factor.
He could look at a star winds solution... Only 2 hosts required and they allow you to put in any amount of ram and disk you want.
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@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@Dashrender said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
Scale's entry level high availability cluster starts at $25K. That might actually be enough here, but I doubt it. But it gives you an idea of where things start.
Why do you do t it? Most of his VMs are running on RAID 6... That has to be slow as all get out.
Why do I do what?
I was going for doubt... Not do...
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@Dashrender said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@Dashrender said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
Scale's entry level high availability cluster starts at $25K. That might actually be enough here, but I doubt it. But it gives you an idea of where things start.
Why do you do t it? Most of his VMs are running on RAID 6... That has to be slow as all get out.
Why do I do what?
Why do you say that a base line Scale won't work?
Lack of disk capacity and RAM.
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Then the star winds solution should be right up their alley.
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@Dashrender said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
Then the star winds solution should be right up their alley.
All inclusive support might be a major factor.
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@DustinB3403 said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@dafyre said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
Why not RLS a la StarWind ?
Because the hosts aren't uniform.
In case they need a SAN replacement, they can consider going for StarWind Storage Appliance. That solution will give them a synchronous HA storage pull that can be shared via iSCSI to their existing hosts. StarWind crew will get those onsite fully preconfigured and will help with designing the migration plan as well as executing it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
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looking at this thread, I would say that a Scale 1150 cluster would fit the bill nicely, and even with a single node for second site dr, he would still likely be under $35k all-in
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I have put in an IPOD before at an SMB. Although nothing failed before I left, at least not that I know of (as it was years ago), I now have the knowledge to build better solutions anyway. So would not do that again. This was 4 hosts, 1 EQL SAN. An MSP I worked for always put them in, even once they were aware of the issues. Sometimes, you cannot teach people as 'it always worked'... pfft.
If I were the OP, I would work with the business to define if, and why,, a failover cluster is needed. If not, things get so simple. Two hosts using replica to each other and great (tested) backups, is likely more than enough. If host A fails, start the replicas on B. If B fails, start the replicas on A. Have each doing 50%). Then backup on and off site and test both. If a cluster is needed, defo a vSAN like starwind.
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@Aconboy said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
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looking at this thread, I would say that a Scale 1150 cluster would fit the bill nicely, and even with a single node for second site dr, he would still likely be under $35k all-in
That's what I was imagining. Might need slightly more than the baseline RAM, but even that might be enough with 2x 64GB nodes.
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@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@Aconboy said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
@scottalanmiller said in Replacing the Dead IPOD, SAN Bit the Dust:
25
looking at this thread, I would say that a Scale 1150 cluster would fit the bill nicely, and even with a single node for second site dr, he would still likely be under $35k all-in
That's what I was imagining. Might need slightly more than the baseline RAM, but even that might be enough with 2x 64GB nodes.
If they're not doing HA and all of that... why not get one beefier node rather than two smaller ones?
