vmware setup on M1000e and M610 blades

2nd part :)
design a solution and , if needed, perform a storage check and discvoers needed cpu, memory , backup ,etc.... well its not for free, but you get a solution which s fits and you can grow with, ask your sales contact for an assessment. One thing regarding NFS; NFS is cheap easy to implement and supports many functions of vsphere , but its very important for you to get a solution which fits and so with these infos, I think no one can give you an exact advisement.

work togehter with SALES, ask, if necessary for an assessment , work out with a consultant a suitable solution which fits and is expandable, provide all necessary inofs and I`m very confident that you will get your goal.

If there are other opinions please post, every other opinion is recommend and welcome.

Best regards

Marcus

Hello,

I`ll start to pickup the ball , but I cannot give you a clear answer, this is caused by several missing infos; the 1st one is to consider how many esx severs do you want to to use ? Are there other server roles in the Chaissis or is the chassis exclusive for VMWARE only ? From my experience with costs of Blades, extensions (if considering to use iscsi instead NFS) you might get in trouble with nics (if providing full failover with all features of VSphere), the blade manamgent and possible changes in datacnter might also be a pickup to conider; power, suitable outage, air conditioning might be points, also the management of blade chassis, all points to reconsider. At least I recommend to use a Chassis when setting up an enviroment of 6 servers+ or a growing setup, which means you start with 3 servers, but you are planing to add 3 or more servers, but this is my personal opinion.. Next hing your thoguhts about using NFS on VSPHERE, with VSPHERE NFS goes alive (finally), but it has some limitiations, you cannot use the storage in case you want to add a raw device to a virtual machine, a block based storage is faster than a file based, a NFS one is very good for isos, backup to disk (Data recovery, vEEAM, VIZIONCORE love that :)) , also features like vmotion, HA, storage vmotion you can use it and you do not need to formart the NFS with VMFS, very good , but well, the main prob is , what kind of application do you want to virtualize ? Are there exchange or database applications do you want to virtualize ? How many servers shall be virtualized ? Are you planing to implement desktop virtualisation ? These are not all points to reconsider, there are some points...ä
If unsure I recomend to get in touch with your SALES Representative, ask for a a call with a technical expert or ask for an assessment, a technical vmware certified expert who is also experienced with several storage techniques will plan and 2nd part follows

Are you only going to be doing ethernet to ALL the servers in the chassis ?

If that's the case, you can get 6 nics on M610 and architect the solution as you did on the 2950's.

Nepharim, thanks for all the great info and thoughts. The chassis will not be VM only, other servers will reside there also. What we are doing in making the move is initially moving our current 4 VM host servers to blades plus add an additional 3 host servers. Besides that there will be just a couple of other servers. As we replace rack servers we will either virtualize or replace with blade. We currently have about 20 vm's. I am planning on virtualizing Exchange on 2010 and also a Citrix farm. We currently have about 50 servers total, including vm's. No plans for desktop virtualization.
Scott, we do not have any fiber involved so ethernet only. How do you get 6 nics, I thought those blades only had four? I do not want to use pass through so we can benefit from the cabling savings also.
Thanks,
Larry

Hello,

presently I`m thinking about to recommend a m810 instead of M610 due to more available nics (with failover), but this is a guess, also if NFS will meet your specification, did you ask your sales contact for a possible assessment yet ? A good point will also to verify what amount and speed of storage you need, NFS is a plus , but at this time I`m not sure to say "please take the NFS one, this will work without issues", I like the NFS storage for file access, backup to disk (very useful for data recovery), storage for isos , but ,if needed, you cant create raw device mappings, a versy good alternative might be a combination like a NX 4 or ns 120, for block based and file access, butthis is a guess, an assessment will hlep to liften up the fog aorund ....

Cheers

Marcus

Hi there again,

forgot to mention please check also the blade,storage and virtualisation section on this site, the articles will provide very very good infos to help you to decide if not lookin for a consultnat
You can find the sections on the left site link section

Cheers

Marcus

You've got A, B, and C fabrics on the chassis. With two of each so A1, A2, etc etc ... The onboard nics are routed to A1 and A2, with a B and C fabric option on the M610. An option being dual-port Ethernet Mezzanine adapters, so you can add 2 more ports of B and 2 more ports on C, for a total of 6.

It's your choice on the A,B,C switches in back .. could use passthroughs or switches.

But if you need more than that, the M710 (I'm sure that's what Marcus meant and he's not leaking a future product :-) .. like Marcus mentioned might be a good fit. Since it takes up two bays, you'll get double the amount of IO mezzanine connections.

And here's a great guide to all the IO options for the blades - http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/blade_io_solutions_guide_v1.2_jn.pdf

Oh, and don't forget about quad port options that are now available - http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pem/en/engbrief/Quadport.pdf