Cost-Effective, Scalable Storage for the Enterprise

Audience and Purpose

This solutions blueprint provides reference architecture information for those striving to address and scale with tomorrow's enterprise application and storage requirements utilizing existing infrastructure along with cost-effective, off-the-shelf Intel® components. This document outlines Intel's reference architecture joined with VMware Virtual SAN* (VMware's software-defined storage) optimized for high performance and capacity-driven workloads. The workload is made up of multiple active virtual machines (VMs) reading and writing storage in a completely random fashion. Intel's reference architecture, based on Intel® processors, Intel® Network Adapters, and Intel® Solid-State Drives, creates a hyper-converged, multi-host, resilient, and distributed storage environment. This paper describes the topology, hardware, software, best practices, and performance metrology intended to simplify the deployment and management of cost-effective scalable storage.

Please note that application requirements can vary significantly and it is up to the reader to design a storage environment to best suit their needs.

This document assumes the reader has a basic knowledge of VMware ESXi* and vCenter Server*.