I do not mind discussing my infrastructure, the devil is in the details so here we go.
SERVERS
Currenlty I have an IBM H chassis Bladecenter with 4 blades devoted to ESXi. These blades are 4 years old with older processors and only 16GB of RAM each. I have three other blades housing windows servers, two of them used for my student information system and one used by Commvault to index email that I archive. Commvault, which is also my backup software, does not support running their index product under VMWare so it runs on a physical blade. My student information system is a heavy hitter and while supported to run under VMWare, I am running low on memory in my ESX environment so I have not pulled these two servers in. Once I upgrade, these two servers will be virtualized leaving me nearly 100% virtualized in the data center.
STORAGE
My storage is a Netapp FAS3020 using an NFS share to house all 30 windows VMs. Most of the Windows VMs run server 2008 R2, by the end of the summer all of them will. This Netapp filer also house three CIFS shares
NETWORKING
I have a Cisco 6509 at the core of my network with gig connections to my edge switches (Cisco 3560s) delivering 100Mbps to the desktop. In the back of my Bladecenter I have 6 older Cisco switches providing 6 gig connections to my core per vSphere best practice (2 nics for VM network, 2 nics for storage network, 2 nics for vmotion/service console). I have 4 gig connections from my main data closet to my DR site so I can do backup/replication. My Netapp filer has gig connections to my core.
Basically the servers, storage, and networking equipment was all put in at the same time 4 years ago. Next summer I can replace it all and am starting to work my way through the various choices. Out of the three pieces above the only one I have decided on is the Netapp. We are very happy with the product and will be just pulling out our controllers and putting in new ones, probably FAS31xx or FAS32xx series. The servers and networking I am open to looking at different solutions. For networking, I will be replacing all of my edge switches to get gig to the desktop and deploying 10 gig connections in three spots:
- Between storage and core
- Between servers and core
- Between main site and DR site
If all I need to do is house 30-40 VMs I could purchase new blades for my Bladecenter with more memory, upgrade my Netapp, upgrade my edge switches, and put 10 gig in some key spots. I will be making a big push into virtualized desktops using VMWare View which needs lots of resources. For this reason, I am looking not only at getting new blades for my Bladecenter but questioning whether I should be just replacing my Bladecenter with Cisco UCS.
Dave