Hey everyone! I'm new to this and working at a small company with pretty outdated data center infrastructure. I've suggested a project to modernize our setup, and I'm making some progress, but I've hit a few snags. I was hoping you guys could help me out with your expertise!
Here's a quick overview of our current setup: We have two Zyxel firewalls in high availability, with two ISP lines and two stacked 48-port 1G switches connected to the firewalls. We've got three NAS systems, management interfaces, and LACP linking to the servers.
We're running six servers of various brands, but I'm planning to focus on three Lenovo SR650 V1 servers, upgrading them to 256GB RAM and 2x24core CPUs each. I want to remove their local SSD storage and organize the virtual machines using XenCenter.
For the SAN, I need something that supports the three servers initially and can handle around 15-20 VMs, which include various Windows and Debian servers. Moving forward, I hope to add up to three more servers over the next few years, totaling six.
Given our budget constraints, I'm leaning towards iSCSI with 10Gb NICs and multipath configurations.
My main questions:
1. Does my architecture sound reasonable?
2. The Lenovo DE4000F fits our budget; it has two active controllers and offers SSD storage. Will it suffice for six servers and potentially 20-30 VMs in terms of IOPS? How can I accurately calculate that, or am I stressing over nothing?
3. I'm considering using two Zyxel XS3800-28 switches just for storage. Is 10Gb sufficient, especially with multipath support?
I'd really appreciate any guidance, resources, or insights. Thanks in advance for your help!
1 Answer
Honestly, with such a low number of Windows VMs, you might not even need a SAN. Virtualization solutions like Hyper-V with SSDs for a HCI configuration could be way more cost-effective. If you're set on centralized storage, daisy chaining some 40GbE NICs between your servers might be a clever way to save money.
I understand where you’re coming from! But my goal is to build a tidy and centralized system for all VMs, both Windows and Linux. I'm aiming for a future-proof solution since we want to keep growing.