5 Designing a virtual SAN

The VSA enables full featured use of the LeftHand OS software in a virtualized environment. When deployed correctly, HP LeftHand SANs are scalable, highly available, and fully redundant.

Figure 4 Example of a virtual SAN using the VSA

Designing your virtual SAN

The design of your virtual SAN affects both its performance and its reliability for production use. Use the concepts and practices in this manual when installing and managing your virtual SAN to ensure optimal performance and reliability.

Configuration requirements

The following configuration requirements are prerequisites for HP to support your virtual SAN for production use.

•A qualified server running VMware ESX Server. Qualified servers are listed in VMware ESX Server systems compatibility guide, which can be found at

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php.

•A qualified server running Microsoft Hyper-V Server. To verify the server is listed and qualified for Hyper-V Server, go to http://windowsservercatalog.com/results.aspx?&bCatID=1283& cpID=0&avc=11&ava=0&OR=1&PGS=25, and then search for “Hyper-V” as an additional qualification. See supported Windows versions.

•Reserved memory based on total disk capacity, as listed in Table 9 (page 20). Table 9 Memory requirements for VSA disks

Total capacity of all installed disks

Requires at least this much memory

 

 

 

5

GB to 500 GB

3 GB

 

 

500 GB to 5 TB

4 GB

 

 

 

5

TB to 10 TB

5 GB

 

 

 

•Two virtual CPUs with at least 2000 MHz reserved.

NOTE: The Hyper-V installer assigns 1000 MHz by default.

•A connection to a virtual switch or virtual network with at least a Gigabit network connection.

•Virtual disk(s) with 5 GB to 2 TB (2047 GB for ESX, 2040 GB for Hyper-V Server virtual machines) of space per disk located on internal disk storage, or direct attached storage that

20 Designing a virtual SAN