This document summarizes a brownbag session on SMB storage design considerations. It discusses common misconceptions about SMBs, factors that define an SMB, and considerations for SMB storage solutions. Local storage is compared to shared storage, and virtual storage appliances (VSAs) are compared to dedicated physical storage. Example design constraints and questions for a VSA implementation at a sample SMB, Crookston Farms, are also provided.

1. SMB Design Brownbag Sean Crookston http://www.seancrookston.com Twitter:seancrookston

2. Bill Hill Portland VMUG Leader, vExpert 2011, VCP http://virtualbill.wordpress.com Twitter:virtual_bill Chris Wahl http://www.wahlnetwork.com Twitter:chriswahl

4. VSA vs Dedicated PhysicalDesign Considerations for the VSA

5. What makes an organization a SMB?

6. Mixed definitions exist of what small and medium sizes business are. From the Vendor perspective, it may be based upon employee size, budgets, purchases, or other factors. From the organizations perspective it may be based upon their current size or future plans for growth. What makes an organization a SMB?

7. Common Misconceptions of SMB

9. SMB Specific Considerations

11. ROI

12. Design Changes during design phase

13. Design must be self sufficient

14. May not require some of the features

15. Closer relationship with C-level stakeholdersSMB Specific Considerations

18. HA

20. No need for VMotion or HA

21. Remote Sites

22. Less ComplexDoes company have a lot of data? Or high performing workloads? Local Storage vs. Shared Storage

23. VSA Openfiler (no hcl) Nexenta(no hcl) Freenas(no hcl) Starwind(iscsionly,hcl 4.1 only) Dedicated Physical Storage Ease of administration Expandability Cost vs Performance Dedicated Physical Storage vs Virtual Storage

24. Design Considerations for the VSA

26. They have purchased 2 brand new hosts that are on the HCL for vSphere 5

27. After talking further they like the idea of a shared storage model. They like the simplicity of HA in the event of a host failure if the price is right.

30. 4 NICs

31. Minimum of 4 disks and maximum of 8 per host(internal disks only, no DAS)

32. Disks must be configured in a RAID 1/0.

33. NFS ONLYNetwork Overhead for replication vSphere 5 ONLY vCenter cannot be part of the VSA cluster.