" Once you have a SAN you will never go back to direct attached disk."
Until you see the price tag for a SAN HDD that needs replaced. At least for the SAN we have here as the price per GB is lousy compared to standard SAS drives. Don't get me wrong, we use a decent size SAN here (a few TB's IIRC), but if we had to replace a HDD off warranty...ouch. David Lum // SYSTEMS ENGINEER NORTHWEST EVALUATION ASSOCIATION (Desk) 971.222.1025 // (Cell) 503.267.9764 -----Original Message----- From: Eric E Eskam [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 4:32 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Virtualization Questions "Roger Wright" <[email protected]> wrote on 12/29/2008 09:30:01 AM: > Taking a look at the potential implementation of virtualization > and have several questions: > > 1. Does/should utilization of a SAN have a direct impact > on virtualization decisions? Is it better to go with local or > SAN storage? SAN! Once you have a SAN you will never go back to direct attached disk. SANs don't have to be expensive or hard to use, either. We have an Equallogic PS series iSCSI SAN and it works great and is a breeze to set up and configure. No degree required :) > 2. Do vendors who normally require a dedicated server > accept a virtualized server as equivalent? Depends on the vendor. > 3. What type of servers (DB, Oracle, F&P, etc.) don?t > make good candidates for virtualization? I would think that > SQL/Oracle would probably be least recommended. Depends on the application. There is very little that isn't a good candidate for virtualization. > 4. Is clustering still possible with VMs? Sure. Although with some solutions like VMware site recover manager, you may not need to do clustering any more. Depends on what you were trying to accomplish with clustering. > 5. What kind of logic determines the best combination of > host/guests? IOW, is it recommended to put all F&P servers > together on one host, or should it be a combination of F&P, DB, etc.? Generally you want to balance out your load. That's where VMware gets the big bucks - they have management tools that simplify monitoring and performing load balancing of virtual hosts across your server farm. Microsoft is playing catch up with HyperV and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Managerbut they have a ways to go. Even if you don't virtualize, SAN's still rock! Eric Eskam =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The contents of this message are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government "The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it." - P. B. Medawar ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
