TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

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willemsej
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TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by willemsej »

Ok new start. I want to use a TS-439 on VSphere and on iSCSI. I want to use the device filled with 4 disks and create a RAID5 and format the device and create a EXT4 partition, after that I create the whole disk into a iSCSI device.

After that I disable the 'write cache for EXT4'. I will use the firmware Version 3.2.3 Build0209 (2010/2/9).
Then I follow the 'How to use QNAP NAS as a VMWare datastore using iSCSI' PDF.

I will use a Port trunk on the device with Balance-alb (Adaptive Load Balancing) as I will use a non managed Netgear GS116 16-Poort Gigabit Switch.

Hope this project will have a positive outcome, please comment?

What I read on the firmware Update date 2010/2/9 Version 3.2.3 Build0209 for the QNAP TS-439 Pro II Turbo NAS,
http://www.qnap.com/download_detail.asp ... ame=Latest

I want to create of all the 4 disks a RAID 5 and a full iSCI volume. Will this cause any problems as I read,
[Known Issues]
- Free disk szie UI error when creating an iSCSI Target with less than 1GB free size.

Strange?

Regards John

How to use QNAP NAS as a VMWare datastore using iSCSI
http://www.qnap.com/pro_features.asp
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petur
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by petur »

The known issue is only a userinterface bug (display), nothing functional. What you are going to do should work. Note that for the moment there is no way (yet) to backup iSCSI volumes, I think they are working on this...
Praat je liever over QNAP in het Nederlands?
Liever een community bij jou in de buurt?

Kom naar QNAPclub België/Nederland
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willemsej
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by willemsej »

petur wrote:The known issue is only a userinterface bug (display), nothing functional. What you are going to do should work. Note that for the moment there is no way (yet) to backup iSCSI volumes, I think they are working on this...
Thanks I will go forward and let you know the outcome.

Regards John
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by willemsej »

Switching and testing with the TS-439 Pro II did the trick.

Regards John
didier3001
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by didier3001 »

Hi Willemsej,

I would like to buy a TS-439 Pro II in order to create a small lab at home with several other colleagues. Can you tell me how many Virtual Machines that are installed on the iSCSI hard drive you are running at the same time?

Thank you in advance,
Didier
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by willemsej »

I switched back to NFS.
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by didier3001 »

Actually, the most important for me is more to know if this NAS will be able to handle multiple VMs and what is the maximum of simultaneous VM's

This is what I would like to do:
The workload per VM will be low because this is not a production environment.
Do you thing the following configuration will be possible with all machines running at the same time?
-8 Servers 2008 R2: 3 Domain Controller, 1 WSUS, 1 SQL 2008, 1 SharePoint Server 2007, 2 Exchange server 2010
-3 Servers 2003 R2:
-3 Win 7
-2 Win XP

Other important information:
Two PCs will be connected to the QNAP, each of them with a Gigabit connection.
The Hypervisor will be Hyper-V on both computers.

Thank you in advance,
Didier
PiroNet
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by PiroNet »

didier3001 wrote: Do you thing the following configuration will be possible with all machines running at the same time?
-8 Servers 2008 R2: 3 Domain Controller, 1 WSUS, 1 SQL 2008, 1 SharePoint Server 2007, 2 Exchange server 2010
-3 Servers 2003 R2:
-3 Win 7
-2 Win XP
Nope that won't work!

Only QNAP with SSDs can largely sustain the IO load you have here (with thin disk provisioning thought)
You should look at SAN devices with disk controller with R/W cache.
NAS+NFS won't work on Hyper-V.
NAS+iSCSI won't work neither, too much overhead for so many VMs.
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by willemsej »

Wow more then 10 Servers. I use it here with 5 Servers, low load just for test.

Regards John.
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by didier3001 »

Thank you for sharing your experience.

If this number of virtual machines won't work. Do you know what could be the maximum supported? Remember that this is just a test network. All VMs have really low workload.

Didier
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by PiroNet »

didier3001 wrote:Do you know what could be the maximum supported? Remember that this is just a test network. All VMs have really low workload.
To calculate that you need formulas... Read these 3 posts
->http://deinoscloud.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... disk-iops/
->http://deinoscloud.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... your-iops/
->http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=199&t=27843

First one will tell you what you can expect in terms of raw performance of your disks.
The second one will tell how to calculate the maximum IOPS you can achieve with your current virtual environment. Compare that number to what you got with the disk IOPS formula.
Third one, there is a trade-off using RAID volumes. It has a serious impact on IOPS. Again depending of your choices (disk types, RAID types, ESX queue depth, IOPS produced by VMs) and with the formulas you can get an clear idea of what you can expect from your QNAP device and virtual environment.
didier3001
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by didier3001 »

Hi PiroNet,

Thank you very much for your advices. I read everything and it's interesting. I found another interesting document from VMware:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware_ ... 120508.pdf

I just launched some performance counters on my existing Virtual Machines and I will collect some data during a few days and then I will try to estimate what I really need in term of HDD performance.

Thank you again,
Didier
oma
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by oma »

PiroNet wrote: You should look at SAN devices with disk controller with R/W cache.
What can you recommend that is closest to the ts-459 in price?
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Re: TS-439 Pro II iSCSI and vSphere/VMware

Post by PiroNet »

oma wrote:What can you recommend that is closest to the ts-459 in price?
Within the SOHO market I'm afraid there is none that I'm aware off. Alone the iSCSI HBA + a R/W cache module of 1GB backed up with batteries is the price of a TS-459!
If you can afford it, HP MSA2000i G2. Its a SAN device! And not a NAS device that has a software based iSCSI with definitely some overhead. That's why you won''t find iSCSI HBAs in a NAS device.
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