I was looking at putting in the new HP StorageWorks 1510i as it is exactly
the level of kit that we want, priced at the right level for us.

Plenty of people have set up SQL SANs with the HP 1500 with fibre channel;
it's tried and tested kit.  I can't see that it is going to be any different
with iSCSI over Ethernet.  The only thing that is changing is the transport
mechanism.

I appreciate that there are differences between the physical and data link
mechanisms of fibre channel and Ethernet, not least being that if iSCSI if
run over Ethernet there is more chance of misconfiguring devices.  Fibre
channel switches tend to be less configurable that their Ethernet
counterparts.

Given that we will be using iSCSI adapters, Cisco switches with a 32Gbps
swicth fabric, all in a single VLAN in a single location and that iSCSI and
fibre channel compare on data throughput, I tend to lean towards the idea
that it should work fine.

The supplier we are using have offered to test the setup before we buy it so
we don't have to comit blindly, although there is always the uncertainty of
production levels of traffic.  We can simulate load with SQL I/O and compare
this to the benchmark figures gained from the same set up with fibre channel.
I guess this is as much of a pre-production stress test as it can be given.

AJ.

Hi Douglas,
Where do you have the error logs, like the VDI.log, is that on the local or
SAN storage?
Thanks,
-Steven D Cook.