Moving to local storage?
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@jasonlow said:
We already have the VMware licensing for 2 hosts and according to VMware have HA so I'm not sure what the extra licensing costs would be if we stick with VMware.
It might not be any more money today, but VMware will continue to be more licensing overhead, fewer features and more money (even if very little) for forever. It's technical debt that you have an opportunity to shed, potentially.
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@jasonlow said:
We do have Unitrends if that changes anything with regards to replication.
No, Unitrends does not handle node replication, only backups.
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It should also be mentioned vis a vis the VMware vs. HyperV situation that in both cases with two nodes and going for HA, the only reasonable storage option today is Starwind (paging @kooler @StarWind_Software ) and Starwind is better on HyperV. So while not a strict VMware vs HyperV benefit, in practical real world functionality, HyperV has a storage advantage in the case where you have two nodes AND go for HA.
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@Dashrender said:
While Scott likes to harp on people being below standard availability, I consider these statements less than helpful. While not true, I'm willing to bet that many organizations *believe * they have HA because of their SAN. So it's fine to tell them that their belief is wrong, but not that that wasn't their intention.
For the record - I didn't read Scott's entire statement before jumping on the anti-Scott bandwagon for this particular statement.
@scottalanmiller said:
@jasonlow said:
We probably don't NEED HA.
You aren't even at "Standard Availability" today, you have low availability (quite a bit less reliable than just a single server) so if you need HA your current setup wouldn't have been an option. Even if you needed the reliability of a stand alone server what you have today is not there. So either you don't need either SA or HA, or your current situation is not meeting your needs and that needs to be addressed as well.
In the past statements like this, from my recollection, have been shorter, so much so that it left me with the feeling that he was implying that the OP didn't need HA, or clearly wasn't really trying to get it.
This current example of text shows a fully thought out process, allowing for much less personal interjection, and leads toward a path that will discover the need of the OP.
Sorry for jumping the gun, Scott.
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I know this is off topic - but reading Scott's post for what it really is now shows to me that he is definitely listening to our suggestions on how he posts, but at the same time, we - I mean me - need to make sure we read everything before just going off half cocked on what we think is being said.
One of the best things like like about this community, the ability to continuously grow.
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@gjacobse said:
@jasonlow said:
Our SAN has 7.2TB running RAID 10, so approximately 3.6TB usable. There is about 415GB free. I like VMware and we own it so I hate to move away from it.
We are a non-profitso our cost is feasible both on the VMware and Microsoft side.I would be interested in the cost to contract with NTG to run DPACK.
First question is have you used TechSoup?
Yes, we use Tech Soup as much as possible, especially for Microsoft licensing. I don't believe they carry any VMware products though.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@jasonlow said:
We already have the VMware licensing for 2 hosts and according to VMware have HA so I'm not sure what the extra licensing costs would be if we stick with VMware.
It might not be any more money today, but VMware will continue to be more licensing overhead, fewer features and more money (even if very little) for forever. It's technical debt that you have an opportunity to shed, potentially.
Gotcha, that's something I would consider but converting to local storage without having to learn Hyper-V is a big enough project at this point. I'm waiting on a quote for added capacity so will see where the numbers land. I'm hoping it's feasible and I don't have to look at third party hard drives, but I know they are much cheaper.
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Are you willing to look at non branded storage? Could save a bundle there.
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@Dashrender said:
Are you willing to look at non branded storage? Could save a bundle there.
If I need to cut costs, yes. I like the HP support and warranty but it may come to that. I will also shop around once I have CDW's proposal. The hard drives I want are listed over $800 each and I would like to get 32 of them ideally. I'm sure they will be less in the proposal but I also found the same HP brand drives on Amazon for less than half the cost.
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Check out refurbished parts. Often much cheaper while remaining fully supported and functional. Nearly all of our physical gear is refurbed.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It should also be mentioned vis a vis the VMware vs. HyperV situation that in both cases with two nodes and going for HA, the only reasonable storage option today is Starwind (paging @kooler @StarWind_Software ) and Starwind is better on HyperV. So while not a strict VMware vs HyperV benefit, in practical real world functionality, HyperV has a storage advantage in the case where you have two nodes AND go for HA.
Yes we can absolutely do that! Just in case OP can see:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san
We'll also extend our NFR program for free hyper converged version to cover Mangolassi guys soon. Just let me return from MVP Summit and kick web guys with a long long stick :)))
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@scottalanmiller said:
Check out refurbished parts. Often much cheaper while remaining fully supported and functional. Nearly all of our physical gear is refurbed.
+100500
xByte is a great source of refurb Dell hardware!
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@scottalanmiller said:
Check out refurbished parts. Often much cheaper while remaining fully supported and functional. Nearly all of our physical gear is refurbed.
Do you know of one for HP?
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Didn't ServerMonkey handle refurbished HP? And now that I look at their website, they do.
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@Reid-Cooper said:
Didn't ServerMonkey handle refurbished HP? And now that I look at their website, they do.
Yup, they do. They used to be in ML too but @MattKing is not with them anymore (or in IT at all, anymore.)
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@scottalanmiller said:
Check out refurbished parts. Often much cheaper while remaining fully supported and functional. Nearly all of our physical gear is refurbed.
Thanks, I will do that once I have the part numbers from CDW.
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Apropos timing, this got published yesterday but I did not realize until today:
https://www.storagecraft.com/blog/making-the-best-of-your-inverted-pyramid-of-doom/
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Ok, so the plan is to purchase 16 1.2TB drives for the current servers (8 in each), run ESXi from USB drives, and continue to run 2 hosts for failover. This will more than double our current space, decrease our risk, and hopefully improve performance a little. I was able to cut the cost by about 3/4 by scaling it back slightly and using Amazon instead of CDW. Hopefully the parts are legit.....
With that said does anybody have a recommended USB drive for this set up? I read somewhere about this being a good one. http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-SDCZ33-008G-B3SanDisk-Cruzer-SDCZ33-008G-B35-Flash-Drive5-Flash-Drive/dp/B005FYNSUA
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Mostly we use "whatever is cheap" as far as the USB drive goes. No need for much of anything.
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I got the new drives which are sealed genuine HP drives. Never will I buy HP from the "big" vendors again. I'm planning to tackle this project next week. Here's the plan, please let me know if something doesn't make sense or if you think I'm missing the mark.
I have 2 hosts so I plan to move all of my VM's to one host. I believe I can then export the settings from the VMless host. I will then install ESXi on a USB drive connected to the server and import the settings from the old host. At that point I should be able to format all of the local hard drives and add the local storage as datastores. After that I should be able to move all of the current VM's to the new datastores. Power them on and test them. Then basically do the same thing on the other host but only moving some of the VM's to balance the load.
Any advice or suggestions are appreciated. I can't find a way in vSphere to export the host settings so I assume I have to use command line. One question is should I configure RAID before or after I install ESXi on the flash drive? I'm thinking it may have to be done at the same time? Would it be wise to run any ESXi updates on the current host before I export the settings or should I just run the updates on the new host after I've imported the settings?
Thanks in advance!
