Small Hosting Virtualization Approach - Server Hardware

[erco]

Hello,

Right now we are working on a simple small hosting company virtualization approach.

We will be installing our servers in a virtual enviorenment for our future plans.

We believe that virtual solutions will be better way for hosting companies and we want to start with the beginning.

Let me sum up;

I have several questions regarding the virtualization but i will be asking all of them in a seperate discussion topic.

We are thinking on using 3 host machines for HA, security, lower initial investment and initial capacity.

From what we've read from several reviews and responds from communitiy experts we need to have 2 CPU with as much as core will be better. Also high amount of ram and hdd space.

What we've found are (as for host machines);

A) Dell PowerEdge R510

2x Intel Xeon Quad-Core E5620 12M L3, 5.86 GT/s Intel® QPI, Hyper-Threading

32768 MB RDimm

6x 450 GB 15K Hot-Plug DELL SAS, H700 HW RAID (512MB, Battery)

Dell iDrac IP KVM / IP Reboot Panel

Redundant UPS Source (APC Silcon & Newave N+1)

20 Mbit/s

B) Dell PowerEdge R410

2x Intel Xeon Quad-Core E5620 12M L3, 5.86 GT/s Intel® QPI, Hyper-Threading

32768 MB RDimm

2x 450 GB 15K Hot-Plug DELL SAS, Perc6i Hware RAID 1 (w/Battery)

Dell iDrac IP KVM / IP Reboot Panel

Redundant UPS Source (APC Silcon & Newave N+1)

20 Mbit/s

We will be installing Vmware ESXi x64 on these machines and we will be building our VM's over these (also vcenter)

Any comment on this ?

Thanks

[golddiggie]

Toss out the DAS option and get a SAN for the VM's... Going without any hard drives at all, having ESXi 5 on a flash drive is a better option. Also seriously reduces the power used by the host servers. To use HA, with vMotion, and Storage vMotion, you'll NEED to use a SAN for the VM's to reside upon. Look at the EqualLogic iSCSI devices. Removing the RAID controllers, and high speed drives, from the hosts will save a decent amount of money. Sure, the SAN won't be super cheap, BUT you need it for what you're talking about doing. Getting the 6k EqualLogic line means you can also stack additional units into the group as your needs increase, gaining both capacity and performance.

32GB of RAM is rather light.

Which license of ESXi 5 will you be going with? If at least Enterprise, then increase the RAM per host. I would get the minimum with the server (when you get it from Dell) but then max it out via another vendor. You can typically save a good amount of money that way, and still get high quality RAM in the box.

I would also opt for the R510 server. I would prefer the R710 though, due to it's greater capabilities. 18 memory slots is just one part (over the 8 in the two servers you picked).

Get the iDRAC6 Enterprise option.

Be sure to get the redundant power supplies in the servers too.

[erco]

Thank you very much for your reply.

Very helpful and valuable informations.

It seems community experts love 710 serie of the dell. My problem is; for lower initial investment and risk, we are not going with co-location. We are choosing from the possible dedicated server alternatives.

So, are you saying that I need to go with lower hdd spec on server but powerfull san solution. What will happen when we need to use 3 of these servers host? I am not sure if our datacenter provides iscsi from the same machines for its clients ... Is this a problem ? Our datacenter provides server based iscsi configuration but we have no idea about the configuration of these connections in detail ...

I need to solve the host configuration issue. Well configured high end machines or mid level machines with san connection like R410 serie or R210 II

As these machines are not owned by us, its hard to manage configuration in detail.

Waiting your further support on this issue.

Thanks.

AVEA BlackBerry® Servisi ile gönderildi.

[golddiggie]

In order to have HA, where a VM is picked up by another host, should the server the VM is running on goes dark, you MUST use a SAN. So having any drives inside the hosts is pointless.

It's getting more and more common to find hosts with ESXi installed onto flash media that's inside the box. These same hosts have NO other drives installed in them. You can purchase host servers with ESXi installed onto the flash media already, you just apply your license to it, and you're good to go.

I wouldn't allow a datacenter to dictate the virtual environment configuration to you. It should be the other way around. If they don't want to let you run servers spec'd out as you need, then either take your business someplace else, or get them to install servers YOU purchase.

You use a SAN as it's own entity so that when you need to take a host offline, you don't need to storage vMotion a bunch of VM's from one host to another. Or when they need to work on a server that's providing the iSCSI LUNs (IMO, not a good option) having your VM's go offline during that time. An actual SAN is a much better option. For one thing, they're designed to do that task, only. The EqualLogic arrays have dual RAID controllers as well as dual network controllers (either 4 Gb or 10Gb connections per controller) giving you better redundancy. Also, with the SAN, you don't need to worry about the OS that it's using either getting a virus, or a Windows update F'ing things up on you.

Honestly, your initial configuration, IMO/IME, is highly flawed. If this is due to the physical hosting company's policy or capabilities, then you should look to one that will do things right. It should be a very simple matter for them to give you the network connections you need, including an iSCSI VLAN (to keep that isolated from the rest of the traffic). As it stands, you'll want VLAN's for the Management Network and vMotion networks too. If this is going to run any kind of business servers, then doing it right, from the start, is beyond critical.

[erco]

Allright I will be reconfiguring the host and storage system with several different datacenters.

I will be using your guides but as you mentioned the problem is there are lots of limitations because of the datacenters. Dc workers are also another issue.

The main problem is predefined servers are strictly defined. We need select either entry level low profile servers or mid-high level machines that I listed before. So its really hard to find ideal machine like you mentioned.

AVEA BlackBerry® Servisi ile gönderildi.

[erco]

Here we go,

I've found another dc where it is possible to order the servers below;

a)

PowerEdge M610 Blade Server

Intel Xeon X5570 Processor (2.93GHz, 8M Cache, 6.40 GT/s QPI, Turbo, HT)

M610/M710 EMEA1 Ship Docs (English/French/German/Spanish/Russian/Hebrew)

PE M610 Shipping Material, Individual Blade

48GB Memory for 2CPU (6x8GB Dual Rank RDIMMs) 1333MHz

Additional Intel Xeon X5570 Processor (2.93GHz, 8M Cache, 6.40 GT/s QPI, Turbo, HT)

73GB SAS 15k 2.5" HD Hot Plug

Onboard Broadcom 5709 Dual Port 1GbE NIC with TOE

No Operating System

C3 ASS R1 using SAS 6/iR, Exactly 2 SAS or SATA Drives

PowerEdge Order - EDB

b)

DL360 G5

8 x 2GB DIMM PC2-5300

2 x Quad-Core Intel Xeon X5450 ( 3.00 GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 120W) Processor

HP Fibre Channel 1242SR 4 GB PCI-Express Dual Channel HBAm-Low

HP Smart Array P400i/256 Controller with battery

2 x HP 146 GB Hot Plug 2.5 SAS Dual Port 10,000 rpm Hard Drive

Also we can attach san storage to each server.

[mcowger]

Option A is much better, just for the memory aspect.

You'll want more NICs, if possible.