I'm looking to use ZFS to store about 6-10 live virtual machine images (served via VMWare Server on Linux) and network file storage for ~50 Windows clients. I'll probably start at about 1TB of storage and want to be able to scale to at least 4TB. Cost and reliability are my two greatest concerns. I'd like to send daily snapshots across a WAN to a backup box offsite as well.
I'm looking at something like this for hardware: http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i6091/dual-xeon-server.php?cat=393 which the vendor has confirmed will be OpenSolaris friendly. I'm not sure about whether to connect this to the VMWare Server and a Windows server via iSCSI or to use NFS/Samba to get the files to where they need to be. I'm leaning towards iSCSI right now because I have concerns about configuring and supporting NFS and Samba on OpenSolaris. The main drawback is that I would still need to use the filesystem/disk management on Linux and Windows that would make growing/shrinking filesystems more difficult than a ZFS only solution. If I do go iSCSI, I am thinking I would do direct connect GigE to each server, saving money and complexity over buying a gigabit switch. I'm new to Solaris and SANs, but have a fair amount of Linux and Windows admin experience. Any feedback or wisdom you can pass my way is appreciated. -- Pete
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