[THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
- From: "Steve Greenberg" <steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 12:57:42 -0700
This sounds like an architecture/environment that warrants SAN boot- you
have all the resources required and are dealing with 30+ blades and the
budget to do it!!
Steve Greenberg
Thin Client Computing
34522 N. Scottsdale Rd D8453
Scottsdale, AZ 85262
(602) 432-8649
www.thinclient.net
steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Kelsey, John
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 11:58 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
All of our blades are boot from SAN (IBM FastT). There are a couple of
advantages to doing it.
1. IBM used to require an additional blade to hold local drives, so
instead of getting 14 blades in a chassis, you could only get 7 if you
wanted local drives. Newer blades allow you to have 2 local disks
without using an additional chassis slot, but I've heard they are quite
slow compared to the SAN disks
2. Troubleshooting is MUCH easier from a Windows standpoint. If a
system blue screens, I can easily attach that "disk" to another system
as the D:\ drive or whatever and copy/replace files, move data, whatever
the case may be.
3. Losing a SAN OS disk can be replaced without taking the system down,
since generally the lost disk is part of a bigger RAID 5 array. If they
disks were on the blade, you'd have to power the blade down, remove the
disk, replace, reboot.
We have 30+ blades using this configuration and its worked well for us
so far, but of course YMMV.
-----Original Message-----
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Henry Sieff
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 12:49
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
It's a waste of expensive disk space. DASD space cheaper than SANSpace
on a mid-range san. Its easy enough to image hard drives so using the
SAN-based imaging capabilities yields very little benefit.
There is absolutely no advantage that I can see and while we use a SAN
for all of our data we never saw a good reason to use it for any
server's boot partition.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Greenberg
> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 9:42 AM
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
>
> My 2 cents- most blades have the option for a redundant drive
> on board, use them instead. Have an imaging technology in
> place, the most direct way to address recover is extra hard
> drives and up to date images or build scripts.... To me SAN
> booting for Citrix just seems overly expensive and complicated.......
>
>
>
> Steve Greenberg
>
> Thin Client Computing
>
> 34522 N. Scottsdale Rd D8453
>
> Scottsdale, AZ 85262
>
> (602) 432-8649
>
> www.thinclient.net
>
> steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Landin, Mark
> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 9:23 AM
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
>
>
>
> Probably 4-5 blade servers at first. I don't know that we are
> actually going to boot from SAN for these boxes, although we
> are planning to do so for our Exchange and SQL servers and
> probably our DCs.
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of jgates@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 10:19 AM
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
>
>
> How large of a farm are you going to throw on it? Are
> you going to boot off iSCSI?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "Landin, Mark" <Mark.Landin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent by:
> thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> 02/16/2006 10:57 AM
> Please respond to thin
>
>
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> cc:
> Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
>
>
>
>
> No but we are going to. 1 GBit/sec = 125MB/sec. That's
> just slightly under Ultra160 spec speeds (and we all know
> Ultra160 devices never really hit 160 anyway) which is what
> is commonly provisioned in Citrix servers anyway. I wouldn't
> run a really really busy DB server on iSCSI (yet) but the
> industry pretty much accepts it as "good enough" for just
> about everything else. 10G iSCSI is just around the corner, too.
>
> I recommend provisioning your iSCSI on a gig switch
> with a nice fat backplane, and to VLAN that traffic off from
> your "regular" network. I also recommend utilizing Jumbo
> Frames on your iSCSI network. 9000-byte packets instead of
> the traditional 1500 cuts down on the packet overhead quite a
> bit ... you can expect gains of 10-20% with Jumbo. Also, make
> sure you get iSCSI adpaters with TCP Offload Engines (TOE).
> They do all the TCP packet checksumming and such and keep
> that load off the host CPU.
>
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of jgates@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 9:43 AM
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
>
>
> That was thrown out as an option. Are you using it?
> My concern with that would be network utilization.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "Landin, Mark" <Mark.Landin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent by:
> thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> 02/16/2006 10:31 AM
> Please respond to thin
>
>
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> cc:
> Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
>
>
>
>
>
> Use iSCSI.
>
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lee, David (ISD)
> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 2:51 AM
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
>
> I'd have thought the cost of HBAs / switch ports etc
> would make this an expensive option for normal Citrix servers
> - what are you hoping to gain?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of jgates@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: 15 February 2006 14:17
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [THIN] Citrix on EMC SAN
>
>
> Anyone running Citrix Servers on their EMC SAN using
> boot from SAN?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jobe
>
>
>
>
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