The Lay-out

We chose this project because we could reduce the cost by selecting iSCSI over fiber

• The environment existed of a mix of Windows 2000, 2003 and 2008 servers.
• Big files and home folders of several GB to 4TB.
• The existing ERP Software had to keep working for the sales department.
• Network was divided over 3 buildings 50 meters apart.

Reasons

ERP Software needed a version upgrade and required more powerful hardware. Since the current hardware was inadequate for the ERP Software we provided new hardware for the customer. VDS Systems suggested to create a small virtual environment of 8 VM’s. To reduce cost we offered to implement iSCSI instead of fiber.

Solution

there was already a ESXi stand alone present, so we decided to virtualize all servers. This allowed us to add the ESXi server to the VMware cluster and move the existing VM’s to the new storage. The ERP software demanded new server OS and the new environment allowed to setup the new VM’s next to the existing servers. This way there were few interruptions for the sales, finance and production environment

The fun part of this project is that we could use the Cisco Catalyst series 2960. This is the backbone for the IBM V3700 Storage connections. Since the servers didn’t ask for high performance storage, we could use the RAID 5 storage configuration. Only the ERP software asked for high performance storage and so here we setup RAID 10. Big files storage was perfect for the RAID 5 NL SATA.

If you want to know more about the IBM/Lenovo V3700 Storewize then follow the link below.
https://www.ibm.com/storage/storwize

The use of the Cisco Catalyst 2960 allowed us to split up production, storage and management traffic in different VLANs. On the Storage VLAN we could setup MTU of 9000 for large packets iSCSI and also secure network traffic of the other segments. When the network configuration was finished we started the install of vCenter and the other Windows/Linux servers.

Challenges

The frustrating working with ERP software on Oracle database is that every CPU needed to be licensed. That’s why we limited the cluster to 2 hosts (2x 6core Xeon CPU in total)

This allowed the customer to comply with oracle license policy

VDS Systems had every knowledge in house to finish the project successfully

Do you have a project for us? Don’t hesitate to contact us.