I am going to be implmenting a VMware vSphere 4 setup in our company. At first I had the plans of using a Netgear ReadyNAS business applicance for VM storage via iSCSI. But as I was looking around for parts for my VMware server (license 2/3) I was thinking of a different approach.
I was thinking what if I just loaded 6 WD Scorpio Black 500GB SATA drives into the server and ran a DAS setup rather than investing in a NAS.
The reason I was thinking we need more space than anything. We are most likely never going go beyond 1 VMware server because we are so small (my server does not count) We only will be running 4 VMs max. Also we do not have licenses for the VMware HA components.
What would be downsides to have the storage with the VM server in small setup like this?
Any advantages?
Backups would be handled by the vCenter server which is a separate server. So getting to the storage in either regard is not a problem.
Best Answer
I ran a VMWare attached to a NFS shared storage in a ReadyNas 1100 and the result was awful. The ESXi had to reconnect several times a day to the storage (I have to say it was all in the same LAN as the rest of the workers computers). Also, the write latency was awful (50-60ms, even 100ms with load in the server).
I tried with a FreeNAS mounted in an old server with a couple of disks (also some disks that were unused in a shelf, zero invest) in RAID-1 in a separate LAN connected via iSCSI and I have to say it's perfect. The FreeNAS server has required none attention in 3 months, and even it's not a heavy loaded server, the speed of the reading/writing is similar to a DAS, or even better than a normal (not enterprise-class) disk.