General Netapp 2650 Design

[Shawn-0]

I'm seeking some advice with the setup of one NETAPP2650 and two selves (Never touched Netapp).   While I've tried to research the differences between Switched vs Switchelss ONTAB, I've not been presented anything with a firm understanding of concepts/term. 

What I'm looking for is some insight on basic design from a switched perspective to actual configuration of the Netapp storage; I will be supplied Juniper switches and HP Blades hosting VMware.  Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[AlexDawson]

Hi Shawn,

On the matter of switched vs switchless clusters - inside an ONTAP cluster, volumes and IP addresses for NAS access can be easily moved between High Availability pairs. If you think you might outgrow the capacity of your first HA pair, you can either install a switch as part of initial configuration, or install a switch non-disruptively when you add the next HA pair.

On the matter of design - what are you going to be using the system for? VMware storage, hyperV storage, general purpose NAS, iSCSI LUNs for exchange, SQL Server, etc? These all lead to some different configuration choices.

[Shawn-0]

Hi Alex

Thanks for replying to my post.

FAS2605 (1), DS4246, DS4243

In relation to a cluster, I only have one controller so a cluster doesn't pertain (or does it)?  In relation to the switches, we have two Juniper SX that will be utilized to remove single points of failure.  

In relation to the second question, we have HP Blaedes (BL60c/C3000).  On these systems we'll be running VMware ESXi; my effort is to configure this in the best possible way (Datastores) and to share some data repos between Linux and Windows (SPLUNK).  Our enviornment consists of Linux and Windows.

Hope I've answered your questions