Up to last year we have had 4 exsxi4 server, each with its own NFS-storage server (NexentaStor/ Core+napp-it), directly connected via 10Gbe CX4. The second CX4 Storage-Port was connected to our San (Hp 2910 10Gbe Switch) for backups. The second port of each ESXI Server was connected (tagged Vlan) to our Lan.
The 4 Serverpairs are building two redundant Groups each with backups of the other. While performance was ok, we had 8 physical servers with a lot of cabling and hardware that could fail. With our two new systems (since february), we are integrating the storageserver within our vmware machine by virtualizing Nexenta ZFS Server. (Nexenta VM is stored on local ESXI raid-1 datastore). SAS Controller and all ZFS Disks/ Pools are passed-through to Nexenta to have full ZFS-Disk control like on real hardware. (We use vti-d capabable Mainboards with Intel 5520 Chipset and >=36 GB RAM, 12 GB for Nexenta and SSD Pools) All networking is now managed via VLANS and ESXI-virtual switch. The Server is connected via 10 GBE to our 10GBe HP-Switch. Traffic betwween ESXi and Nexenta NFS Server is managd directly by Esxi. We are very satisfied about this solution and will move the rest of our systems in the next weeks. We hope to have only one OS someday for the storage and the virtualize-part. gea <br> napp-it.org -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
