[Xen-users] Xen storage, Server with iSCSI or dedicated SAN?

[Ivan Porro <pivan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I'm trying to configuring a setup where I will have 1 DELL PE1950 with 2 
QC Xeon 5335, 8GB ram and a HP DL380G3 with 2 Xeon 3GHz and 2GB ram and 
Xen OSS or XenExpress v4, hosting RHEL4 and Windows VMs.
The problem is on the storage side. Since I'm really low on budget, I've 
to skip fiber channel and go for one of this two reasonable iSCSI options:
1)
SAN solution:  with a DELL/EMC2 AX150 iSCSI, single controller

2)
NAS solution:  another server, a PE2950 configured with 2 QC Xeon 5320, 
8GB ram and Xeon OSS or XenExpress v4 again, acting as a iSCSI target 
for himself and the other server. It will host also a LTO2 backup 
library, probably DELL PV124T

What are the real performance benefits of the SAN in this case? The SAN 
was intended to be not entirely dedicated to XEN.  If I go for a server 
based SAN, it will (directly or via a VM) provide storage via NFS/SAMBA 
to other hosts
Well, of course, you may have also option (3) and (4)... that probably I 
missed... any help is appreciated
thank you in advance

        ivan





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