I've recently taken over a 2-node VMWare vSphere cluster that runs on an old MD3220 SAN, which has been around for 11 years and offers 10TB of storage. The hosts are R650 machines with no local storage. I'm considering replacing the outdated SAN with a newer model, like the ME5024, but I also have the option to switch to Proxmox. My experience with Proxmox has been limited to local storage, so I'm not sure how to handle it with shared storage options. I'd love to hear some suggestions from anyone who's been in a similar situation!
5 Answers
Why not just buy all new hardware, install Hyper-V, and migrate the VMs? It could simplify things in the long run!
If your SAN supports iSCSI or NFS, you might want to look into Proxmox or even Hyper-V if it has SMB support. This could give you flexibility in terms of storage management!
The current nodes just have SAS12 HBAs, but this could definitely be a viable option.
Consider checking out XCP-NG with Xen Orchestra. It's similar to ESX and vCenter, plus it has built-in backup options and can import your existing ESXi VMs. Pair it with an NFS-capable storage solution like a Dell PowerStore for better performance.
You might want to try LiveOptics to determine how well your current setup will fit with OVH VCF. For Proxmox, there are guides available for using NetApp storage; we’re using it ourselves and it works well for us!
This specific workload needs to stay on-prem. Does NetApp offer SAN solutions in the 10-15 TB range?
Do you have Windows Datacenter Licensing for your guest VMs? In a similar scenario, I moved everything to one host over a weekend, added some drives, and installed Hyper-V on bare metal. I also converted VMWare VMs to Hyper-V VMs to clear the other host for the same process.
What hardware do you recommend for this setup?