I approached the ESX-to-ZFS same problem by using 10-Gigabit iSCSI with a dedicated 6-port switch (HP 6400cl-6XG - $2200) and Intel dual-port CX4 NICs (Intel EXPX9502CX4 - $650). The cost per server came down to the NIC and a $100 CX4 cable. In this case, very little was needed to get drivers, etc. to work in a mixed Linux, Windows and OpenSolaris environment. The ESX nodes are HP Proliant ML370 G5 and the storage unit is a Sun x4540 Thor. I can get ~400 megabytes/second R/W speeds on a 22-disk striped-mirror from *within* the virtual machine.
-- Edmund White [email protected] 847-530-1605 On 11/12/10 8:47 AM, "Edward Ned Harvey" <[email protected]> wrote: >> From: Patrick Cable [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Friday, November 12, 2010 9:36 AM >> >> On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 6:19 AM, Edward Ned Harvey >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> > 1G Ether is so cheap, but not as fast as desired. 10G ether is fast >> > enough, but it?s overkill and why is it so bloody expensive? >> >> I find this observation interesting. While 10g is no gig-e on the price >scale, I >> recently put 20g of fiber into a dell blade chassis for >> $4500 (interface cards/optics for 2 junipers, 6 dell optics, 4 stacking >interfaces >> for the blade chassis, 4 10g interface cards for the blade chassis). I >expected >> the prices to be much higher, so I guess it's all about expectations. >> >> And, agreeing with another poster - why not use bonding or aggregation? > >See other email about lacp. > >Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places for 10G Ethernet adapters? When I >look around, I see ... 1G adapters for $10. And 10G adapters for $500. > >Even if the 10G adapters were ... say ... $90... I would happily just buy >it. But when we're talking $1000 just to connect computer A to computer B >via crossover cable, I think we're getting pretty crazy. > >_______________________________________________ >Tech mailing list >[email protected] >https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech >This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
