OnApp OpenE Active/Passive Failover SAN Hardware

Hi Everyone,

I am ordering the following 2 units to be OnApp SAN (active/passive)

Anyone has experience with real time replication from Active to Passive and when it failover it is seamless to OnApp VMs?

Spec:

dual Intel Xeon Gulftown E5620, 8x 2.4Ghz cores, 16x HT cores, 2x 12M L3
Supermicro X8DTI-LN4F dual socket 1366 server board, 12x DDR3 DIMM slots
2x Supermicro SNK-P0037P passive heatsink
Supermicro 2U SC825 Air Shroud
12GB (3x 4GB) ECC Registered DDR3-1333, 9x open, 96GB Max
7x Western Digital 2TB RE4 RAID Edition 7200rpm, 64M buffer
Adaptec 5805ZQ 8-port hardware RAID-5/6/10 controller, 4GB NAND flash, MaxIO enabled
1x Intel X25-E 32GB SLC SSD cache for 5805ZQ
on-board Intel 82576 4x Gb NIC ports
on-board Matrox G200eW Video, 8M video RAM
on-board IPMI 2.0 w/KVM-over-IP & dedicated NIC
no optical disk, no floppy
SuperMicro SC825TQ-R720LPB 2U Rackmount Chassis, Black
8x Hot-swap SATA/SAS bays
Supermicro dual 720watt 80-plus Gold-Level Redundant Power Supplies
Supermicro 2U Rail Kit

failover is seemless....

only thing i see up front is the WD drives could be faster.
maybe someone else can give some input as well here.

I think you are overbuying on the CPUs. You really only need a single socket. I'd recommend that you buy storage up front. Growing your HA configuration will require downtime so don't go into production unless you know you have the storage you need at least until your next major maintenance window.
I'd try to get 10GB for replication traffic. The speed of your replication will limit your maximum throughput. In other words, you can't expect to write at the speed of light if you can only replicate a the speed of sound. The replication is synchronous. The FS isn't notified that the write is completed until it's done so on both nodes.

Thank you for the info guys.

Which 10G NIC is supported by opene?

Based on what has been recommended i could run a a direct cable between these 2 SANs on a 10G port for replication purpose.

ISCSI is done through 1G connection to a gigabit switch.

What do you guys think about the choice of the raid card? How often it failed?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kellogs

Thank you for the info guys.

Which 10G NIC is supported by opene?

Based on what has been recommended i could run a a direct cable between these 2 SANs on a 10G port for replication purpose.

ISCSI is done through 1G connection to a gigabit switch.

What do you guys think about the choice of the raid card? How often it failed?

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Please find the following links that can show you the supported 10G NIC cards and RAID cards too:
http://www.open-e.com/service-and-su...tibility-list/

http://www.open-e.com/service-and-su...vanced-search/

And just as a reminder, if you used a 10Gb NIC card with a 1Gb switch, then it will work as a 1Gb not a 10Gb.

About how often the RAID Card failed, well that depend on a lot of things, that no one can be sure. Always try to check that there is no more or less power came to the system, that will give your hardware in general a longer life.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kellogs

Thank you for the info guys.



What do you guys think about the choice of the raid card? How often it failed?

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You are welcome...
I personally like the Areca controllers. I think OOB management for RAID controllers is a must have feature.
I've had major problems with the Adaptec Storage Manager not sending email based alerts because you have to have the GUI running constantly on a node. In addition, on the Areca controllers I can schedule bi-weekly checks of my RAID5 volumes.

I have several Areca controllers and haven't had one failure yet.

Here is the updated spec :)

The 10G port is going to be directly connected to the other SAN unit for replication purpose.

please comment :)

Intel Xeon Sandy Bridge 3U OnApp SAN Server
Supermicro Dual Socket 1366 Server Board, Intel 5420 X9SCI-LN4
Intel Xeon Sandy Bridge E3-1230, 4x 3.2Ghz Cores E3-1230

Supertalent 16-Gig DDR3-1333 ECC unbuffered, 4x 4G

10x Western Digital 2TB RE4 RAID Edition 7200rpm WD2003FYYS
Adaptec 16-port SATA-II RAID Controller + BBU Module 51645+ABM800
Adaptec 64GB MaxCache Performance Kit

on-board Matrox G200eW Video Adapter, 8-Meg RAM

on-board Intel 82574 Quad Gigabit NIC Ports
On-board IPMI 2.0 Adapter w/KVM-over-IP & 3rd NIC

Intel 10GBE CX4 Dual-port Server Adapter, PCI-E 8-lane EXPX9502CX4
Supermicro 3U Rackmount Chassis, 3x hot-plug Chassis Fan SC836TQ-R800B

16x Hot-swap HDD Carriers & 1x16 SATA/SAS Backplane
Supermicro dual 800-Watt Redundant Power Supplies

3U Slide Rails/Brackets Mounting Kit

Looks good. One other piece of advice. I suggest you use something like DRBL or a live CD and run that to do some burn in/performance testing. Use iometer or your favorite tool and get all your benchmarks and performance numbers. This will give you a good idea of what you can reasonably expect when you install Open-E.

enealDC,

Thank you for the tips.

How about CentOS live CD and then use iometer?

It might not have the tool i need on CentOS for benchmarking.

So we test the I/O?

Find this KB, it's about performance testing for NIC and Volumes:

http://kb.open-e.com/Performance-Tes...umes_1313.html

When setting up Active / Standby unit of open-e using volume replication over 10G local link (inter connect), is there any option on the Open-E for Virtual IP?

The VM would be connecting to the ISCI initiator on virtual IP

So i would expect only active open-e san broadcast the ARP but once failover, the peer unit would take over the IP address by broadcasting its mac address for it.

Anyone has experience on how Open-e works?

I have read up on open-e docs and it can do what i need :)

cant wait for the hardware to arrive

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kellogs

When setting up Active / Standby unit of open-e using volume replication over 10G local link (inter connect), is there any option on the Open-E for Virtual IP?

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Yes, you can assign the VIP.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kellogs

The VM would be connecting to the ISCI initiator on virtual IP

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Correct.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kellogs

So i would expect only active open-e san broadcast the ARP but once failover, the peer unit would take over the IP address by broadcasting its mac address for it.

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Correct again, the passive node will take over all resources.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kellogs

Anyone has experience on how Open-e works?

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With over 25,000 installs, i would say YES!