As this is a Dell forum, I'll stick with Dell offered options. Depending on your budget, I'd suggest to look at an MD32xx/34xx series via SAS, or look at an Equallogic array (but you'll need decent iSCSI switches). If neither of these fit your budget, you'll have to sacrifice support and then could look at a used MD3000/MD3000i, or at a used Equallogic array. Note that these systems are locked in in their drive support (they only support Dell branded/firmwared drives due to the raid controller firmware). The MD3000i was never supported with RHEL 6.5 (closest thing to a supported OS to your CentOS 6.5), but maybe with the latest MDSM ISO for the MD34xx-series it will work. Older (out of Dell warranty) Equallogic units are not eligible to download the latest firmware, and some of the older units already no longer support the latest firmware anyway. The MD3000i supports direct connect for iSCSI, if you cannot budget for decent switches, but Equallogic SANs will not function (properly (i.e. no failover or load balancing)) without at least 1 switch.
Hi, This covers a few different areas, so I threw this question in the general section. I have two PE C1100's, a PV220S, a Cisco 2950 switch, and a PE1850. The PE1850 isn't currently setup, but is available if I need it to fix my issue. I am trying to figure out the best solution for getting my C1100s connected to the PV220s so that I can have some centralized storage available for HA virtualization purposes. Now, I figure I have three options. First option would be directly connecting the C1100 to the PV220s through a raid controller card. I happen to have a "TD977 Perc 4E DC PCI-E" card (got it off ebay) that I can connect via SCSI cable, but I am not seeing the appropriate connector for the internal connector of the raid card on the motherboard of the C1100. From what I'm seeing online, only the PE*850 series have this connector. Second option is grabbing an 1850 or 2850, putting FreeNAS on it, connecting it to the PV220S, and connecting the C1100s to the FreeNAS box either via iSCSI or fibre channel. My only concern with going this route is storage speed. I was hoping to have maybe 10-20 VMs running off of the central storage alone (with another 70-80 on the local storage of each C1100), and I don't think my Cisco gear nor the 1850 can handle that amount of traffic. It would also limit the number of ethernet ports on the C1100s to just one for VM network traffic, so I wouldn't be able to do NIC teaming. Fibre channel may very well be able to handle the traffic (not entirely sure), and would be much faster than iSCSI if I buy a decent card for it. The third option is to buy better hardware to replace something in the above. For example, buying a better DAS that is directly compatible with the C1100. I am looking for suggestions on how to best go about this. Currently I am leaning towards the fibre channel route.
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