We are thinking about switching to local storage for VMware and need recommendations. We have 2 HP DL380P G8 servers, both running ESXi 5.0. Currently have 2 RAID 1 146GB drives running ESXi. Considering moving ESXi, if it's not too much of a job, to a USB drive and then putting high capacity drives in the servers for local storage. I then would like to migrate our current VMs from our SAN to the local storage. I am looking at going with 1TB or larger disks. Should I look at off-brand drives for the servers (any recommendations)? Cost is always a factor but I can sell the switch as long as it will boost performance of the VM's. We are bassically at capacity with our SAN and need to do something, which is the reason we are looking at making the change.

Is this a good idea? Pros and cons......Thanks!

@gjacobse said:

@jasonlow said:

Our SAN has 7.2TB running RAID 10, so approximately 3.6TB usable. There is about 415GB free. I like VMware and we own it so I hate to move away from it. We are a non-profit so our cost is feasible both on the VMware and Microsoft side.

I would be interested in the cost to contract with NTG to run DPACK.

First question is have you used TechSoup?

Yes, we use Tech Soup as much as possible, especially for Microsoft licensing. I don't believe they carry any VMware products though.

@scottalanmiller said:

Check out refurbished parts. Often much cheaper while remaining fully supported and functional. Nearly all of our physical gear is refurbed.

Thanks, I will do that once I have the part numbers from CDW.

When we've seen this issue it's usually been saved credentials in Windows credential manager. For some reason they can authenticate but then Outlook randomly tries the credentials in credential manager. If the credentials are old you will get a login prompt. That's always the first thing I check.

Our SAN has 7.2TB running RAID 10, so approximately 3.6TB usable. There is about 415GB free. I like VMware and we own it so I hate to move away from it. We are a non-profit so our cost is feasible both on the VMware and Microsoft side.

We have these servers now:
2 DCs
1 Exchange Server - hoping to move to 365 in future
1 File Server
6 Application Servers - 2 for our EHR software, 1 Spiceworks, 1 for our old EHR software, and 2 for smaller applications
2 Terminal Servers - Will be adding a 3rd once we have the capacity
1 vCenter Server
1 WSUS Server
1 SEP Server

We probably don't NEED HA. We do have two decent servers so could probably drop down to one and use the second as a backup in case the first one goes down. I don't know the answer on the IOPs.

I would be interested in the cost to contract with NTG to run DPACK.

Currently there are 8 drive bays, but if I remove the optical drive I can expand to 16.

Ok, so the plan is to purchase 16 1.2TB drives for the current servers (8 in each), run ESXi from USB drives, and continue to run 2 hosts for failover. This will more than double our current space, decrease our risk, and hopefully improve performance a little. I was able to cut the cost by about 3/4 by scaling it back slightly and using Amazon instead of CDW. Hopefully the parts are legit.....

With that said does anybody have a recommended USB drive for this set up? I read somewhere about this being a good one. http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-SDCZ33-008G-B3SanDisk-Cruzer-SDCZ33-008G-B35-Flash-Drive5-Flash-Drive/dp/B005FYNSUA

@dafyre Yes, I believe you are right but we don't have the Storage vMotion licensing. It's still the same process but without the licensing the VMs have to be powered off before they can be moved.

@scottalanmiller said:

Which do I prefer? Well the one that works best for the situation at hand, of course

I have an emotional bias for XenServer. It is open source, comes from the Linux Foundation and I've been using Xen for a dozen years. I love it. I also find it by far the easiest to use and I like Xen-based clouds like Amazon and Rackspace.

But for tons of customers I know that Hyper-V often makes more sense. It's a good solution, free and very robust. And it is advancing quickly and interfaces really well with Azure (big surprise.)

Hyper-V has a robust backup ecosystem that XenServer lacks. XS is far easier to use and scale and has more built in tools.

Ok, well I am completely unbiased. VMware is the only one I've ever used so I'm comfortable with it. We are all Windows, currently run Lync Online, and have plans to run Sharepoint and Exchange Online in the future. We also use Unitrends for our backup software. Based on that it makes sense to me to steer towards Hyper-V. I know nothing about XenServer or KVM. It's honestly been probably 5-6 years since I've looked at Hyper-V too so I'm sure it's come a long way.

@scottalanmiller said:

@jasonlow said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@jasonlow said:

I am looking into licensing Storage vMotion to accomplish this but I'm not sure it will do what I want even if I have it. Maybe they'll give me a trail so I can test it out. Thanks for all the suggestions!

That feature is so expensive, consider moving to another platform to get that rather than paying that much for it.

Yeah, that is something I need to look into. Is it an easy transition from VMware to Hyper V?

Relatively, yes. Check out XenServer, too. Both Hyper-V and XS are very good alternatives.

Which do you prefer? As far as performance I've heard that Hyper-V is inferior to VMware and XenServer, but that was a couple years ago. Is there any truth to that?

@scottalanmiller said:

@jasonlow said:

I am looking into licensing Storage vMotion to accomplish this but I'm not sure it will do what I want even if I have it. Maybe they'll give me a trail so I can test it out. Thanks for all the suggestions!

That feature is so expensive, consider moving to another platform to get that rather than paying that much for it.

Yeah, that is something I need to look into. Is it an easy transition from VMware to Hyper V?

@scottalanmiller I can do it if I power off the VM but not live. That basically means any maintenance I do on the host will have to be done outside business hours. The downfall is that it takes a decent amount of time to move the VMs since I have to move them to another datastore and host. Host 1 cannot see host 2's local storage. We are on 5.1 but could upgrade if you think it's different in a later version...

I was able to complete the project and the VMs seem to be performing better on the local storage. The only downfall I see is being able to live migrate VMs between hosts, but we don't do that very often anyways. I am looking into licensing Storage vMotion to accomplish this but I'm not sure it will do what I want even if I have it. Maybe they'll give me a trail so I can test it out. Thanks for all the suggestions!

@dafyre Yes, I believe you are right but we don't have the Storage vMotion licensing. It's still the same process but without the licensing the VMs have to be powered off before they can be moved.

@brianlittlejohn Thank you!

I appreciate that you aren't fans of VMware but that's what we own, what we are licensed for, and what we know. I'm not ruling out a change in the future but now is not the time.

If anyone has comments or suggestions about my plan besides scrapping VMware I would appreciate it.

I got the new drives which are sealed genuine HP drives. Never will I buy HP from the "big" vendors again. I'm planning to tackle this project next week. Here's the plan, please let me know if something doesn't make sense or if you think I'm missing the mark.

I have 2 hosts so I plan to move all of my VM's to one host. I believe I can then export the settings from the VMless host. I will then install ESXi on a USB drive connected to the server and import the settings from the old host. At that point I should be able to format all of the local hard drives and add the local storage as datastores. After that I should be able to move all of the current VM's to the new datastores. Power them on and test them. Then basically do the same thing on the other host but only moving some of the VM's to balance the load.

Any advice or suggestions are appreciated. I can't find a way in vSphere to export the host settings so I assume I have to use command line. One question is should I configure RAID before or after I install ESXi on the flash drive? I'm thinking it may have to be done at the same time? Would it be wise to run any ESXi updates on the current host before I export the settings or should I just run the updates on the new host after I've imported the settings?

Thanks in advance!

Ok, so the plan is to purchase 16 1.2TB drives for the current servers (8 in each), run ESXi from USB drives, and continue to run 2 hosts for failover. This will more than double our current space, decrease our risk, and hopefully improve performance a little. I was able to cut the cost by about 3/4 by scaling it back slightly and using Amazon instead of CDW. Hopefully the parts are legit.....

With that said does anybody have a recommended USB drive for this set up? I read somewhere about this being a good one. http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-SDCZ33-008G-B3SanDisk-Cruzer-SDCZ33-008G-B35-Flash-Drive5-Flash-Drive/dp/B005FYNSUA