I've setup and installed both FC and iSCSI SANs. I think iSCSI is a great cost alternative to FC. Performance on iSCSI has been very good in my scenarios (generally running 15-20 VMs). FC provides better performanceonly when doing constant sequential reads which may eclipse the 1GB bandwidth limitation of iSCSI. However, during normal operations, this seems to be extremely rare.
Ive used HP23xxi G2 model iSCSI SANs, HP 23xxfc G2 fiber channel SANs, Dell MD3200i, and even IOmega iSCSI ix4-200d(crap performance and reliability but good for very CHEAP iSCSI storage). Performance-wise the Dell MD3200i provided the best real world IO of the SANs I've worked with. Controller caching seems pretty important. The more the merrier. JR Original Message: ----------------- From: Oliver Marshall [email protected] Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:05:11 +0000 To: [email protected] Subject: RE: iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs I think I just get stuck staring at the pretty line graphs....prettyyyyy coloursssssss....... -- G2 Support Network Support : Online Backups : Server Management Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Web: http://www.g2support.com<http://www.g2support.com/> From: Jonathan Link [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 31 January 2011 17:02 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs In my opinion, and my experience with ESXi, there's nothing to do in the console anywyay... What things are you thinking about? On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 11:54 AM, Oliver Marshall <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Yeah I really like ESXi but somehow the lack of a.....windows-like OS puts me off of it. Something about having a "real" desktop there to do things on in case we need it. Is that mad (or a sign of impending madness) ? -- G2 Support Network Support : Online Backups : Server Management Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Web: http://www.g2support.com<http://www.g2support.com/> From: Jim Holmgren [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: 31 January 2011 16:51 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs Bear in mind that Equalogic = Dell, so your source for the MD3220i should be the same as your source for EQL. Re: HyperV vs ESXi - can't say much for HyperV as I've no real experience with it, but I do know firsthand that EQL does work very nicely with ESXi. Jim From: Oliver Marshall [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 11:48 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs Thanks all. Good to know. I'll spec out the prices for the MD3220i (which appears to the be the UK model) and also speak to Equalogic too. Next up....HyperV or ESXi :) -- G2 Support Network Support : Online Backups : Server Management Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Web: http://www.g2support.com<http://www.g2support.com/> From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: 31 January 2011 16:44 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs iSCSI will work just fine for hosting a VM environment, as well as some other workloads. If you already have a FC infrastructure, then that's not a bad reason to go there, but iSCSI is very mature and stable and good performance if you don't purchase the cheapest equipment you can find. First, as others have pointed out, you need to size up your needs... ASB (My Bio via About.Me<http://about.me/Andrew.S.Baker/bio>) Exploiting Technology for Business Advantage... On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Oliver Marshall <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Well, there will be maybe 3 VMs running on each host, most likely VM will have a redundant 'spare' running on the other physical host. The largest will be about 400GB+ of space running Exchange 2010 for about 100 users. Then perhaps a DC and a file server, and the latter will just be acting as a witness server for the Exchange DAG servers. I like the idea of iSCSI franky but experience of the s*** end of the market has put me off. Saying that the cost of the FC based setup puts me off even more :) Olly From: John Cook [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: 31 January 2011 16:26 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs I have 3 MD3000/3200i SANs and they work wonderfully. That being said I found that while the fiber has better throughput (we also have an old 2Gb EMC AX150 fiber SAN) It was a lot more expensive to set up (Fiber switches aren't cheap) and of course you need some marginal capability in configuring said switch. John W. Cook System Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 5950 NW 1st Place Gainesville, Fl 32607 Office (352) 244-1610 Cell (352) 215-6944 MCSE, MCP+I, MCTS, CompTIA A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: Richard Stovall [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 11:22 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs Not a direct answer, but another shared storage option you could consider for that setup is an MD3XXX. On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Oliver Marshall <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi Chaps We're buying some bits to build a basic VM platform so that we can get rid of some old rack servers here. Being new to decent SANs (we have some crappy iscsi hardware that we just use for dumping scrap data on) what are peoples thoughts of iSCSI SANs vs FibreChannel SANs? We are planning on having two physical hosts (probably Dell PE710s running either Hyper-V or ESXi) with a lump of shared storage on a SAN but we are at odds here as to whether we should go iSCSI or FC. Any comments or suggestions? 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