Hardware advise

[elu]

Hello,

We are currently in the process of buying hardware on which we will probably use Starwind. We have the following on our list at this moment (2x for HA):

CSE-847E16-R1400LPB
X8DTi-LN4F
1x Xeon E5645 Six-Core
48GB ECC REG RAM
ADAPTEC MaxIQ 5805ZQ
17x SEAGATE Hard Drive 1TB SAS-600 7200RPM (1 hotspare)
1x OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD (read cache) (we might replace this with intel 320 SSD)
2 Ports X520-T2 Gigabit / 10 Gigabit

Using 2x Dell 8024 24x 10Gbit Base-T switches.

If you would recommend to change anything of the above, please let us know. One question we do have is if we should add 2 seperate disks for Windows/Starwind or if we could install this on a seperate volume on the RAID 10 array (which starts with 17 disks).

[Anatoly (staff)]

The configuration is good, as for me.

About your question: both options are good.

[elu]

Thanks for the reply. 1Gbit sync channel will be good enough (crosscable best option?)? Both 10gbit ports will be in use to connect to two switches for redundancy and some extra speed.

[anton (staff)]

That's extremely bad idea. Use 10 GbE to build a cross-link backbone and use 1 GbE uplinks for your clients.

Thanks for the reply. 1Gbit sync channel will be good enough (crosscable best option?)? Both 10gbit ports will be in use to connect to two switches for redundancy and some extra speed.

[elu]

Anton,

Could you send me an email (see profile)? We have 2x 10gbit switches and 2 10gbit ports per SAN available. Our idea was to connect both SANs to both switches. This results in 0 free 10gbit ports on the SANs.

Could we sync over the iscsi network? Of course we could connect 1 SAN to 1 switch, but i'd rather not lose a SAN when a switch goes down.

[elu]

Also, what kind of cable do you use to get a 10gbit crossover channel? I can't find any cat7 crossover cables, nor cat6a.

edit: it seems you don't need crossover cables with 10Gbit, but can simply use a straight cable. Could you confirm this?

[anton (staff)]

I did. Asked for interconnection diagram as I'm a bit lost in what you're trying to achieve. Thanks!

Anton,

Could you send me an email (see profile)? We have 2x 10gbit switches and 2 10gbit ports per SAN available. Our idea was to connect both SANs to both switches. This results in 0 free 10gbit ports on the SANs.

Could we sync over the iscsi network? Of course we could connect 1 SAN to 1 switch, but i'd rather not lose a SAN when a switch goes down.

[anton (staff)]

Absolutely! All modern NICs do pick up right Tx / Rx lane automagically.

Also, what kind of cable do you use to get a 10gbit crossover channel? I can't find any cat7 crossover cables, nor cat6a.

edit: it seems you don't need crossover cables with 10Gbit, but can simply use a straight cable. Could you confirm this?

[elu]

Anton,

I did not receive any mail. We have 2 switches and 2 SANs with 2x 10Gbit available. We were planning to connect every SAN to both switches, creating 4 paths. This way a switch can go down, but both SANs will still be reachable.

If we create a sync channel on 10Gbit, we will only have 1 10Gbit per SAN available. Then we can only connect every SAN to 1 switch, creating 2 paths. If 1 switch fails, 1 SAN will also be unreachable.

< ... >

[anton (staff)]

Replied to both provided e-mails (gmail and corporate one) and brought you in touch with techies and sales