VM Storage

[saratoga172]

Rebuilding my VM machine and have a bunch of storage configuration options to choose from. Looking for best speed and would like some redundancy or backup. This won't be production, primarily used for testing, but I'll pull back the virtual disk files to a storage drive periodically.

Old Setup:
4 x Western Digital Black 500GB 7200RPM HDD's in RAID 10 for 1TB of space.
2 x WD VelociRaptor 500GB 10k HDD non-raided.

The RAID 10 setup gave me some redundancy and speeds about 200 read/write.
Slightly higher than the Raptors if I recall from doing some tests when I initially built it.

I don't have any problems going back to the setup but was hoping to find a more optimal setup.

Other drives in my primary system I could use.

2 x 256gb M4 SSD
960gb Crucial M500 SSD
1.5 TB Seagate 7200RPM HDD


I was thinking if I didn't go back to the original config I'd throw in an SSD. Maybe the two M4 SSD's since I could hold about 3 VM's each. and have some space left over. They are only about 50-60gb when building and testing. Thing is I would need to migrate and reconfigure as they are both being used in my primary system as a boot + apps drive and the other for games. Plus I don't really need the SSD speed since I leave them running...was thinking more for when running multiples off the same drive.

Another thought was to RAID 0 the 4 drives and use the 1.5TB drive as a backup. Or RAID 0 3 of the drives and put the OS on the 4th or keep it as a spare.

Ultimately I don't need a ton of storage space. It'll give me some extra space as I'll leave it running for a bit and using it for testing for my SQL tests and such. Plus I may think about moving some of my network share stuff off my workstation since I don't need SSD speed and off setting it to another system would be more beneficial.

Thoughts on the optimal setup. I'll have the following VM's, never all at the same time. Only ever 5-6 tops running with some rare instances.

Exchange server: 5-10 mail accounts, mostly for testing and no heavy loads. May eventually load a Lync server and or SharePoint server for testing.
SQL Server: SQL 2012 with tools.
Domain Controller
Couple Windows 7 machines
Secondary SQL server

 

[Ketchup]

In my experience with traditional hard drives, speed really becomes a problem when having more than one VM on a drive. Separating them into their own partitions helps, but they still get slowed down from time to time. I am guessing this would be a non-issue on an SSD though.

 

[saratoga172]

On the RAID 10 I've had about 3-4 VM's going at once with no major slow-downs. Keep in mind there was nothing extremely read/write intensive. I had a domain controller and 2 Windows 7 desktops that were largely unused. I put my Exchange server on one of the 10k Raptor drives and my 2 SQL boxes were on the other.

I left the RAID 10, but decided to RAID 0 the Raptor's. No SSD's in this since I don't really need it currently. If so I'll swap it in for the Raptor array.

RAID 10 nets me about 200mb read/write
RAID 0 Raptors gets me about 370 read/write

Sufficient for my needs. I'll be working on SQL testing pretty soon so that'll push it a tad more.

 

[Ketchup]

Sounds like a good setup. I would be hesitant to put a Server on an SSD at this point.

 

[arunpanchariya2]

I have got a VM 800 Alcatel phone. I have USB connector, when i plug them together on my phone it popy up - Charging, Mass Storage, Webcam & COM port. I press Mass Storage but nothing comes up on my laptop! Step by step answers please.

 

[milee]

I would definitely repurpose that 960GB M500 and put all of those 5-6 VMs on it.
With ~20% OP there's still plenty of space for all of them and the performance is magnitudes better than the 4xBlack RAID (be it 10 or 0).

You could then use the 1.5TB for backing the M500 up IF you're backing up at the VHD level (enough seq. speed given your available hardware).

If you're backing up individual VMs, then you could benefit (a little) from those 4 Blacks in a RAID 0 (or even 10) array (assuming lots of smaller files and not using VSS aware backup software).

 

[saratoga172]

I thought about that. It would give a bit more speed for sure. My only thought was that since I'm only using about 100gb per VM I'd put about 8-10 on the drive and want to ensure it won't throttle or choke...granted my general use isn't that great as most sit idle except when I'm installing, configuring or testing something.

I also have to keep in mind this is a consumer level desktop with only 6 on board sata slots. So I've been keeping it to 6 drives currently.

I could do the M500, 1.5TB as backup and RAID 10 the WD Blacks though.

 

[milee]

How many SATA 6Gbps on board?

I would set it up like this (assuming you've got at least 2x SATA 6Gbps):

SATA 0: buy one Intel 520 60GB or Intel S3500 80GB
SATA 1: Crucial M500 960GB
SATA 2-5: 4x WD Black

USB 3: the 1.5TB HDD

I also assume you're using Windows Server 2012 w/ Hyper-V. So:

- use the small SSD for the host OS
- use the M500 for the VMs, but overprovision it to ~20% (I would create a 700GiB partition and store all of the VHD(x)s on it)
- use the Black RAID 10 array for eventual VHDs for the VMs
- use the 1.5TB for backing it up

Don't think in terms of seq. throughput of your previous RAID 10 or 0 arrays. That won't help when you'll be running more than 2 VMs at a time, but the IOPS of the SSD would!