SAN alternative for VMWare

Question

Has anyone utilized something aside from a SAN to run their VMWare images off? We are looking to drop in two HP Servers and VMWare on them and run them off a SAN. Due to the cost of SAN though our CFO and VP are wondering if there are any viable alternatives (I.e. NAS) that can effectively run a VMWare. I can't think of any off of the top of my head. IF anyone can provide one or a good article outlining why to stick to SAN that'd be great.

I can't help wondering how the price of vmware licenses doesn't make your CFO look for alternatives — dyasny, Mar 26 '12 at 13:51
A three server VMware essentials license gives you almost every feature for $3k... — SpacemanSpiff, Mar 26 '12 at 13:57
If all you need is vmotion and HA, then it's essentials+ for you, and it costs 4.5k, and support is extra. And HA+vmotion are very far from being "almost every feature". BTW, don't forget the vRAM tax, it's 192Gb overall for all 3 hosts, which nowadays is far from being a lot. — dyasny, Mar 26 '12 at 14:24

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 26 '12 at 13:45

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Just use the vSA

answered Mar 26 '12 at 13:45

Chopper3

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Some level of detail on why this very expensive, very beta-quality software appliance is the best option would make this post useful. – jgoldschrafe Mar 26 '12 at 14:19
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@jgoldschrafe, well - simply because it's **FREE** if you buy "Sphere Essentials Plus Storage" or have an ELA and it's **SUPPORTED** by VMWare themselves. So 'very expensive' becomes rather subjective and 'beta-quality' absolutely is. – Chopper3 Mar 26 '12 at 14:55
I have no doubt that VSA will be solid. But he's got a green field install thus it will seemingly be expensive and since they seem to be cash limited it might not be the best thing. – tony roth Mar 26 '12 at 15:09
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Just wanted the dude to be aware of it, no harm in that. – Chopper3 Mar 26 '12 at 15:48

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 26 '12 at 13:30

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I run a couple of virtual machines stored via NFS to a FreeNAS server and everything goes OK. You could use snapshots or HA independent from the VMWare Server.

answered Mar 26 '12 at 13:30

Mike B

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I'd agree that NFS is you next best option! – tony roth Mar 26 '12 at 13:37
I'm not really a fan of freeNAS though. – tony roth Mar 26 '12 at 14:22
Not a huge FreeNAS fan but NAS in geneeral is an option. How many VMs were stored? We're looking to run about 10 images right now and potentially are thinking about 20 Virtual Desktops as well – CogitoErgoSum Mar 26 '12 at 14:36
btw we run hundreds of vm's of nfs based datastores and nfs (and we don't even have 10gig networks yet, 4+ nics per team though) seems to be a non issue. – tony roth Mar 26 '12 at 15:33

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 26 '12 at 14:05

You are not making yourself totally clear. What do you mean by SAN (storage area network)? Fiber channel SAN? Then yes you are on the expensive side. What do you mean by NAS? Copper based ethernet storage? Also, NFS would require some storage server somewhere with an NFS server running. Not far different from a dedicated NAS.

Then why not do what we have done. Our storage elements are off the shelf systems with plenty of storage slots (ex. DELL R510). Installed CentOS (or your flavor of Linux), made it a iSCSI host. Ditch VMWare and run CentOS/KVM on your VM hosts attaching iSCSI devices on them using a good quality copper ethernet switch. Of course, depending on your budget/applications you can mix and match some of these. You could also start small and grow into fault tolerant systems (dual storage systems, several VMhosts etc etc).

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 26 '12 at 16:45

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It really depends on what level of performance and reliability you are trying to achieve. ESXi can happily run VMs using iSCSI or NFS, so any system which can expose its storage using one of these protocols will do.

answered Mar 26 '12 at 16:45

Massimo

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 27 '12 at 01:20

You can build a SAN on almost anything, the issues are reliability, stability, performance, support, and cost.

My suggestion would be to purchase reliable hardware (think server class) with a hardware RAID controller, purchase disks to meet your performance and capacity requirements, and use something like Open-E (DSS V6 Lite) or openfiler to create iSCSI targets for your VMware hosts.

I run an iSCSI SAN at home on a Dell Inspiron 545 workstation. I'm not saying that's what you should do, but I am saying that the options are almost limitless, constrained only by your budget and needs.

http://www.open-e.com/products/open-e-data-storage-software-v6-lite/

http://www.openfiler.com/

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 26 '12 at 16:33

VMWare runs perfectly happily on an NFS share. You don't absolutely need block storage (a SAN) to get all the storage-based features like vmotion and stuff. Any NFS share running a supported version of NFS will do, so that opens you up to anything from a homegrown NAS to a dedicated hardware NAS.

SAN alternative for VMWare

6 Answers6