I'm on a tight budget and can't afford a SAN.
I'm considering a Vmware Essentials Plus Kit deploy on 3 servers. This includes vSphere Storage Appliance. Vmware claims it will do what I need it to.. my questions to all you seasoned vets out there: will vSpehre Storage Appliance actually deliver? Is there a cheaper alternative for my use case?
My basic need: I need to be able to move VM's and virtual disks from machine to machine very occasionally. Example scenarios:
- Migrating an essential VM to a different physical host during serious, once-a-year type repairs or upgrades to a physical server
- Migrating a HD with a large Microsoft SQL database on it to a different physical server, and attaching it to a new VM.
- Shuffling VM's around because of capacity or configuration issues
Actual hardware involved:
- Dell R710 with 88GB of Ram, Dual Quad Core Xeon 5530's, Perc H700, 15k SAS Drives configured into a RAID 10 with 2TB of usable space, 1GB NICs
- Dell R720xd With 192GB of RAm, Dual Hex Core Xeon E5-2620's, Perc H710P, 8 600GB 15k SAS Drives, 1GB NICs
- Dell Poweredge 2850, Dual Xeon 5150's, 16GB RAM [Will Upgrade], Perc 51, 6 10K 146GB SAS Drives, Configured In RAID 10 [Will Upgrade], 1 GB NICs
- Dell PowerConnect 6248 1GB Switch
Again, the question is will vSphere Storage Appliance allow me to easily and quickly (but very occasionally) move VM's or virtual disks between these 3 servers? Are there cheaper alternatives for my situation (e.g. external USB drive, prosumer-grade NAS..)
Thanks!
Best Answer
The cheapest solution is to dedicate some of your server resources to a standalone storage unit and present it back to your hosts. I'm a proponent of software-defined storage solutions like NexentaStor and QuantaStor, which provide NAS and block (iSCSI/FC) functionality that can be used by VMware. They install on commodity server hardware and are a good entry-point into shared storage.
As for your real hardware, you're spanning five processor generations. That's an absolute mess for VMware (you'll have to use EVC (aka the least-common-denominator) for vMotion). For your purposes, the Intel X5150 system is worthless. It won't add much to your computing and RAM capacity. The E5530 system is acceptable and the E5-2620 server is going to be the most useful.
If I were in your situation, I would run local disk on the Dell R720xd until I had the resources or budget for a second of the same server, and then convert the E5530 system to a storage solution using the option listed above.