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I will be ordering a c7000 server enclosure by HP and adding some BL460c G7 servers. This will be for a completely virtual environment. The G7's have the FlexFabric adapters built in and a pair of BLC VC FlexFabric 10GB 24port modules will be in the enclosure as well.

What would a good SAN for this setup be?

I would like to use LFF disks as we need quite a bit of storage and SFF disks aren't going to cut it. I am hoping to use FCoE. I have looked at the P4300 G2 series and adding the 10GBit adapter, but any advice other advice will be welcomed.

Martijn Heemels
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0bfus
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I have a couple of environments using exactly that setup, same blades, interconnects etc. and love the flexfabrics but be aware that they're not fully end to end FCoE compatible just yet. That said they're a great setup, the CNA functionality alone is superb and I would recommend sticking to FC over 10Gb iSCSI for the setup you have as I think iSCSI has become something of a dead end with FCoE gaining momentum. How about an EVA 4400? In particular the sub model with the 20 port switch is great value and it can scale out to meet 90% of users growth predictions, not a huge fan of the 1TB 7.2k FATA drives but the 600GB 15k ones are great, they do a 10k version if you don't need the speed. This way you can just string a couple of the flexfabric ports straight to the EVA and you're done. We use ESXi but I believe all these parts are supported by Hyper-V with the latest PSP.

Chopper3
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  • Holy crap, I almost drowned in all those TLAs... – Chris K Feb 08 '11 at 23:57
  • FCoE *requires* "Data Center Ethernet", a new form of Ethernet with better flow control, and an FCoE CNA/HBA. You could theoretically create a 100% FCoE-only HBA but that would be daft, if you make it a CNA you can push non-FC traffic over the same min-spec 10Gb controller. You can do iSCSI over a regular 10Gb NIC but you miss out on the benefits of DCE and FC for storage traffic. I can dig out the name of a great Cisco book on the subject if younlike, just drop me an email reminder. – Chopper3 Feb 08 '11 at 23:57
  • This comment was in response to a comment by another user that they've since deleted. – Chopper3 Feb 09 '11 at 00:02
  • @Chopper - yeah sorry I deleted the wrong comment by mistake, I meant to delte my "aaand breath" comment – Mark Henderson Feb 09 '11 at 00:10
  • Yeah, I didn't get that... Answering via iPad means less formatting generally. – Chopper3 Feb 09 '11 at 00:14
  • @Chopper3 Thanks for the advice! I have done a bit of research and I think I am going to go with the EVA 4400 but I have a question. As far as I can tell, the HDD interface in the drive enclosure is FC-AL. Can SAS drives be used in it instead or is there a model of the enclosure that can use SAS or SATA drives? – 0bfus Feb 09 '11 at 22:57
  • No, it's 100% FC, plus HP stuff only takes HP branded disks anyway, have a look at their P2000fc G2/G3 instead, that's a SAS/SATA box, still HP only but should be cheaper, not as flexible as the EVA but still a great box. – Chopper3 Feb 09 '11 at 23:26
  • @Chopper3 Thanks again for all your help! – 0bfus Feb 11 '11 at 20:44
  • FCoE is not "gaining momentum" desppite 4 years of availability. iSCSI is not a dead end - it's year-over-year growth is massive compared to FCoE and even plain FC. See http://datacenteroverlords.com/2011/09/19/fcoe-im-not-dead-arista-youll-be-stone-dead-in-a-moment/ and http://datacenteroverlords.com/2011/09/14/fibre-channel-and-ethernet-the-odd-couple/ – rmalayter Jan 13 '12 at 19:25