A new Telecoms customer based in Africa approached Intelligent Servers 6-months ago looking to upgrade their ageing VMware ESXi vSphere Virtual Machine infrastructure. They needed a solution that would meet the following requirements:
- ESXi Host Server Redundancy
- Site to Site VMware Virtual Machine Migration
- SAN Storage Redundancy
- Site to Site SAN Replication over a 30Km 10Gbit Ethernet Dark Fibre Connection
Industry: Telecommunications
Hardware: HPE Synergy 12000 Frame, HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Compute Nodes, HPE 3PAR 8450 Array, Cisco Catalyst 3850 Stack, HPE BrocadeSn4000 Fabric Extender Switch Cluster
Location: West Africa
Objective: Upgrade ageing VMware ESXi vSphere Virtual Machine infrastructure
The Solution
The Intelligent Servers technical team built and tested the following solution across two sites.
Site A
- 1x HPE Synergy 12000 Frame with 4x HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Compute Nodes, comprised of 24-Core CPU’s and 512GB RAM in each Compute Node
- 1x HPE 3PAR 8450 “All-Flash” Array with 50TB Usable Storage comprised of 3.84TB SAS SSD Hard Drives
- 1x Cisco Catalyst 3850 1Gbit/10Gbit Ethernet Switch Stack, comprised of SFP+ and RJ45 Media Types with 10Gbit Uplink Modules
- 1x HPE Brocade SN4000 Fabric Extender Switch Cluster
Site B
- 1x HPE Synergy 12000 Frame with 4x HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Compute Nodes, comprised of 24-Core CPU’s and 512GB RAM in each Compute Node
- 1x HPE 3PAR 8450 “All-Flash” Array with 50TB Usable Storage comprised of 3.84TB SAS SSD Hard Drives
- 1x Cisco Catalyst 3850 1Gbit/10Gbit Ethernet Switch Stack, comprised of SFP+ and RJ45 Media Types with 10Gbit Uplink Modules
- 1x HPE Brocade SN4000 Fabric Extender Switch Cluster
Both HPE Synergy 12000 Frames were configured with 2x HPE Synergy 40Gbit Virtual Connect Switches, giving the HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Compute Nodes at each site, 20Gbit Ethernet Downlink connectivity as well as 6x 40Gbit Ethernet Uplink connections using QSFP+ to 4x SFP+ Breakout Cables to their 10Gbit Cisco Catalyst Core Switch Stacks. 2x HPE Synergy 40Gbit Virtual Connect Switches were used in the back of each HPE Synergy 12000 Frame to give the VMWare ESXi Host Servers “Network Redundancy” using the HPE Synergy 3820C Dual Port 10/20Gb Converged Network Adapters in each HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Compute Node Server.
Each HPE Synergy 1200 Frame has 2x HPE Synergy Brocade 16Gbit Fibre Channel Switches, providing
16Gbit Fibre Channel Connectivity from each HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Compute Node Server, to the HPE 3PAR 8450 All-Flash SAN Storage Array.
This HPE 3PAR 8450 All-Flash SAN Storage Array provides the storage for the VMware ESXi 7.0 Virtual Machines that will be running on the HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Compute Node Servers. 2x HPE Synergy Brocade 16Gbit Fibre Channel Switches were used in the back of each HPE Synergy 12000 Frame to give the VMWare ESXi Host Servers “Fibre Channel SAN Storage Redundancy” using the HPE Synergy 3830C 16Gb Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters in each HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Compute Node Server.
For the SAN Storage, we recommend the HPE 3PAR 8450 “All-Flash” Array due to HPE 3PAR’s rich feature set and impressive IOPS performance compared with other midrange and enterprise-class SAN Storage Arrays.
A key requirement for the Telecoms company was SAN Replication, which the HPE 3PAR 8450 provides using the “HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence” SAN Replication feature. HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence will instantaneously replicate data written to the “Active” LUN volumes on the primary SAN at Site-A, over to the secondary SAN at Site-B, 30Km away using the 16Gbit RCFC (Remote Copy Fibre Channel) Ports on the back of each HPE 3PAR 8450 Node Controller.
If the primary HPE 3PAR 8450 failed at Site-A, “Peer Persistence” will detect the SAN Array failure at Site-A and automatically change the “Copy LUN” on the secondary SAN at Site-B from “Read-Only”, to “Read/Write”, allowing the VMWare ESXi Host Servers to carry on servicing I/O from Site-A, via the HPE Brocade SN4000 Fabric Extender Switch Cluster, over the single 30Km Site-to-Site 10Gbit Ethernet Dark Fibre link, using a very clever protocol called “FCIP – Fibre Channel over IP”.
The HPE Brocade SN4000 Fabric Extender Switch Cluster encapsulates Fibre Channel Frames using FCIP, into Ethernet Frames. These are then sent to the local Cisco Catalyst 3850 Switch Stack at Site-A and are sent over the Site-to-Site 10Gbit Ethernet Dark Fibre Link from Site-A to Site-B. They are then de-encapsulated by the HPE Brocade SN4000 Fabric Extender Switch Cluster at Site-B and then sent to the secondary HPE 3PAR 8450 SAN Storage Array, in their original Fibre Channel Frame state, allowing the HPE 3PAR 8450 at Site-B to service I/O requests from the VMware ESXi Host Servers at Site-A.
Once the primary HPE 3PAR 8450 SAN Storage Array at Site-A is fixed and brought back online, “Replication Synchronisation” automatically takes place for the replicated LUN’s, and I/O is then switched back to the primary HPE 3PAR 8450 SAN Storage Array at Site-A, automatically, with no interruption to the VMWare ESXi Host Servers or any active I/O taking place on the Host Servers and/or SAN Storage Array at either site.
The solution had a total cost of £300k, creating huge savings by choosing our quality refurbished hardware as opposed to new. All hardware was backed with a three year warranty, including remote set up and support, with our technical team on hand to provide support throughout the installation and configuration of the new infrastructure.
This setup was designed in house by our Pre-Sales technician Andy Hughes and can be visually studied in the below diagram. If you have an upcoming IT project with similar requirements, Andy would be happy to help.
Key Benefits
- Configured to exact technical requirements
- HP and Cisco hardware experts available to give professional technical advice
- Exceptional after-sales service from fully trained and experienced team
- Three year warranty including remote set up and support
Intelligent Servers is one of Europe’s leading refurbished Server, Storage, Networking and Component resellers, specialising in HPE, Dell and Cisco. All hardware comes with a three year warranty including remote setup and support. If you’re looking into your next IT infrastructure project, please get in touch with the team on 01423 223430.