[THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
- From: "Kelsey, John" <JCKelsey@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:18:10 -0500
If the system BSOD's...you're not copying anything over the
network...except maybe a DUMP file :)
-----Original Message-----
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Henry Sieff
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 14:56
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on EMC SAN
1. I didn't think we were confining the discussion to blades; of course,
nobody has sold me on the advantages of blades either, so I don't use
them. I don't think I like the idea of losing 14 servers if something
goes wrong with a chassis, which is after all just one device. But if
you can't have a local drive, than sure you're main alternative is to
boot from san.
Speedwise - well it depends on the SAN infrastructure, but I'd actually
say you run a bigger risk of longer disk queue's by putting your OS on a
SAN if you are looking at 50 or 60 servers. Although your storage switch
can run at 2 GB's point-to-point, there is going to be a maximum
capacity on the storage controllers on the diskarray itself. If you have
ultra320 local drives (320mbps) sure its not as fast as one server
connected to a 2gbps fc storage array, but if 50 servers share that
storage array, plus your data, well.
2. I don't know about this; if my system BSOD's and I want to copy other
drivers over then the lan will work just fine. Its not like we're
talking GB's of data here.
3. All of my citrix servers are HP DL360's with RAID 1 volumes. If one
drive goes down, I throw in another drive.
I am not saying it can't work well, I just don't think its worth it
unless its your onlu choice because the servers you have don't have
local storage.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kelsey, John
> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 10:58 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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