NAS/iSCSI

[uxbod]

Just thought I would ask for peoples different experiences of these technologies in combination with ZCS. I am looking to build a filter for my home network and would like to serve LUNs to all my VMs using it. I believe that it would be best to use iSCSI with a giga-network, and then use Open Filer as the appliance software.

What are your thoughts ? I know a couple of other mods are using this software so I would be very grateful for their feedback aswell.

[bdial]

We are in the process of deploying zimbra using vmware esx server wtih a lefthand iscsi san as the storage. so far so good but we only have a dozen users on it so far. I'll wait until we have a few hundred and it's working well before declaring it a good move

[gmsmith]

I saw your post over on OpenFiler.com's forums...I was kind of wondering the same thing. I have been toying around with openfiler for HSM and for backups.

[uxbod]

really considering one of these :- Chenbro Micom Co., Ltd.

[Bill Brock]

OK, so now I'm jealous. I looked at the storage solution you mentioned. I need it. :-)

If you have a separate box with your scsi solution installed. Would you mount this solution in the /opt directory and the install ZCS? I need to do a little more reading obviously.

[gmsmith]

I was kinda thinking something like this (in black of course): Supermicro, Inc. - Products | SuperServers | 3U | 6035B-8R+V / 6035B-8R+B

[uxbod]

Personally, I would present a LUN to the ZCS server and use this storage for the mailstore. I would leave the ZCS installation on the local disks to avoid additional loading time latency.

The SuperMicro box looks nice - loads of disks

[gmsmith]

Anyone running their mailstore on iSCSI? Or are folks just using it for backups and such?

[uxbod]

I'm interested in that aswell. I would imagine that if you are using a dedicated giga-switch for the filer and have a separate NIC in the ZCS for the storage all should be okay. Just remember to keep the length of CAT6e cables as short as possible.

[Klug]

AFAIR, I read in the forum a zimbroïd telling to avoid iSCSI for the main storage because of "iSCSI not being able to handle enough IOPS".
However, I can not find this post again...

But it was a couple of years ago, with the "new" iSCSI hardware/software, I too wonder if iSCSI is still to be avoided.