Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?
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The biggest problem that you face there is going to be politics internally. Why were those servers purchased, why are there MSAs now, why weren't the servers fixed when they realized that they had the wrong ones, etc. So the logical and financial factors might not help here. In which case, there isn't much to go on for advice. I can tell you what "can" be done, and I can tell you what makes business sense. But if there is an irrational element, you might be stuck doing "whatever that element tells you to do."
Given that having one to one DAS just because a server is improperly purchased is irrational, we can't know from that if having a new MSA, a better device, a lesser device, support on the existing device or whatever will support the goal of the earlier irrationality. If that makes sense.
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Assuming HA isn't needed, you might be able to migrate all of your work loads from those two servers onto a single new server with DAS.
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@Shuey said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@Shuey said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@Shuey said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@Shuey what hypervisors do you use?
ESXi 6
Then NFS storage will work very well.
What's wrong with DAS?
Can you use DAS with a blade server? Most often you cannot. But I don't know this model for sure.
Sorry, I got side-tracked. I meant for our existing ESXi hosts. You told me that our existing DAS (MSA60 on each host) should be thrown out, but the hosts themselves don't have enough drive bays for internal storage. When I asked you for info about "new" storage earlier, I was talking in terms of our existing VMware infrastructure (because remember we had that near disaster when one of the MSA's suddenly wasn't visible at boot?)
Someone should also mention that DAS doesn't have to be inside the same chassis as the server. You can but a disk shelf and connect it to a RAID controller inside the server and it's still considered DAS.
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@Dashrender said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
Assuming HA isn't needed, you might be able to migrate all of your work loads from those two servers onto a single new server with DAS.
You mean local storage?
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@Dashrender said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
Someone should also mention that DAS doesn't have to be inside the same chassis as the server. You can but a disk shelf and connect it to a RAID controller inside the server and it's still considered DAS.
Local Storage = Inside the Chassis
DAS = Outside the Chassis, but directly attached -
MSA60 is a DAS (external SAS attached disk array) not a server.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
MSA60 is a DAS (external SAS attached disk array) not a server.
OH.. thanks didn't know that.
Then... what's the problem? Does the MSA60 have a flaw causing issues? -
@Dashrender said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
MSA60 is a DAS (external SAS attached disk array) not a server.
OH.. thanks didn't know that.
Then... what's the problem? Does the MSA60 have a flaw causing issues?One weekend when Hurricane Matthew was headed our way, we shut down all equipment for 2 days. When I came back in to power everything up, one of the MSAs that we have hooked up to one of our VM hosts was no longer recognized as having a logical drive. Scott was saying that we should get rid of them because they're old and no longer under support contract. They really shouldn't be part of this thread because we won't be connecting them to the new equipment (which we likely won't be getting now because I told HP that it's not a good fit for our environment). They're going to call me about a possible consolation prize and pick a new winner for the main package that we've all been conversing about.
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@Shuey said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@Dashrender said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
MSA60 is a DAS (external SAS attached disk array) not a server.
OH.. thanks didn't know that.
Then... what's the problem? Does the MSA60 have a flaw causing issues?One weekend when Hurricane Matthew was headed our way, we shut down all equipment for 2 days. When I came back in to power everything up, one of the MSAs that we have hooked up to one of our VM hosts was no longer recognized as having a logical drive. Scott was saying that we should get rid of them because they're old and no longer under support contract. They really shouldn't be part of this thread because we won't be connecting them to the new equipment (which we likely won't be getting now because I told HP that it's not a good fit for our environment). They're going to call me about a possible consolation prize and pick a new winner for the main package that we've all been conversing about.
Right - because MSA60's were never explained as a DAS box I made the stupid assumption that they were SAN or NAS boxes.
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@Dashrender said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
MSA60 is a DAS (external SAS attached disk array) not a server.
OH.. thanks didn't know that.
Then... what's the problem? Does the MSA60 have a flaw causing issues?Old, out of support and bad system design.
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@Shuey said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@Dashrender said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
MSA60 is a DAS (external SAS attached disk array) not a server.
OH.. thanks didn't know that.
Then... what's the problem? Does the MSA60 have a flaw causing issues?One weekend when Hurricane Matthew was headed our way, we shut down all equipment for 2 days. When I came back in to power everything up, one of the MSAs that we have hooked up to one of our VM hosts was no longer recognized as having a logical drive. Scott was saying that we should get rid of them because they're old and no longer under support contract. They really shouldn't be part of this thread because we won't be connecting them to the new equipment (which we likely won't be getting now because I told HP that it's not a good fit for our environment). They're going to call me about a possible consolation prize and pick a new winner for the main package that we've all been conversing about.
Worth a new thread, perhaps.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
So the good options are....
If you want high availability from your storage, which doesn't make a lot of sense since you have only one blade chassis, so no failover should it have any issue, you would likely get an HA SAN which would either be something like a 3PAR or something like a dual Proliant Starwind cluster. @KOOLER
If you don't want high availability, but are just going to add reasonable low cost storage to make the blades have some place to store VMs, then a single Proliant based SAM-SD running CentOS or FreeBSD is perfect.
Easy! I'm pushing really hard to release now pre-built ESXi, KVM and Xen Virtual Machine based appliances to get this done free of charge and with as small traction as possible!
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As already mentioned above, Starwind https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-free seems to be a good fit here. It is capable of using directly attached local drives in two (or more hosts) and turns them into a mirrored, highly-available storage pool that is accessible over iSCSI or can be used as a base for SMB or NFS share on top of Scale-Out File Server role.
For dedicated storage purposes you can do it with a free version and if you plan to run VMs on the same storage hardware (hyper-converged) you have to get a full license but it is not expensive at all.
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@KOOLER said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ideas for how to use new, free gear from HPE?:
So the good options are....
If you want high availability from your storage, which doesn't make a lot of sense since you have only one blade chassis, so no failover should it have any issue, you would likely get an HA SAN which would either be something like a 3PAR or something like a dual Proliant Starwind cluster. @KOOLER
If you don't want high availability, but are just going to add reasonable low cost storage to make the blades have some place to store VMs, then a single Proliant based SAM-SD running CentOS or FreeBSD is perfect.
Easy! I'm pushing really hard to release now pre-built ESXi, KVM and Xen Virtual Machine based appliances to get this done free of charge and with as small traction as possible!
That's awesome. Can't wait to see that in action.
