Lab Review
Report
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Storage Performance and Cost Analysis
By Mike Leone, ESG Lab Analyst, and Aviv Kaufmann, ESG Lab Analyst
July 2013
Contents
Executive Summary ... 3
Introduction ... 4
Background ... 4
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 ... 5
Storage Spaces ... 5
Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0 ... 5
ESG Lab Validation ... 6
Getting Started ... 6
Performance Analysis ... 7
Cost Analysis ... 9
Committed to Storage ... 12
ESG Lab Validation Highlights ... 13
Issues to Consider ... 13
The Bigger Truth ... 14
Appendix ... 15
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ESG Lab Reports
The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for
companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging
technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab's expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by Microsoft.
Executive Summary
Organizations of all sizes are constantly looking for ways do more with less. With IT spending budgets limited and data growing at rapid rates, it’s important for organizations to address the cost and management burdens introduced in complex storage environments. Microsoft looks to alleviate these concerns and more with its new Windows Server 2012 file server cluster with Storage Spaces over the SMB 3.0 protocol.
ESG Lab tested the performance readiness and cost-effectiveness of Microsoft’s new storage solution and
compared the results with two common storage solutions: an ISCSI and FC SAN. For performance testing, ESG Lab tested a tier-1 virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012 application workload and witnessed a negligible performance difference between all the tested storage configurations. In fact, when testing with as close to the exact same storage configuration as possible across each of the tested configurations, ESG Lab witnessed a slight performance benefit with Microsoft’s storage solution over iSCSI and FC SAN solutions.
ESG Lab also calculated what organizations could expect to spend when initially purchasing each storage configuration. The price difference was impressive. ESG Lab found that Microsoft’s storage solution can save organizations as much as 50% when compared with traditional iSCSI and FC SAN solutions. Another eye-opener for ESG Lab was around a features comparison between the storage configurations. With the upcoming release of Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft’s storage configuration is beginning to match traditional storage offerings feature for feature.
With similar performance, a matching feature set, less management complexity, and 50% cost-savings over a SAN, Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 file server cluster with Storage Spaces over SMB 3.0 introduces a potentially disruptive storage solution to address any customer’s needs.
Introduction
This ESG Lab review documents the results of independent, hands-on testing of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with a primary focus on the performance readiness and cost-effectiveness of the new and improved storage options. ESG Lab compared Microsoft’s Storage Spaces over the server message block (SMB) 3.0 protocol with two common storage solution configurations (FC and iSCSI) to confirm similar performance of a tier-1 virtualized
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 application workload. ESG Lab also compared these storage scenarios from an initial cost of acquisition standpoint to confirm the potential savings offered by Microsoft’s storage solutions.
Background
Today, organizations are under heavy financial scrutiny to make every dollar count. Administrators are constantly looking for solutions that solve tomorrow’s problems with today’s technology. In a recent 2013 ESG survey of IT decision-makers, 44% of respondents chose cost reduction initiatives as one of the business initiatives they believe will have the greatest impact on their organizations’ IT spending decisions over the next 12 months, far out-ranking the other responses (see Figure 1). Looking deeper into the numbers, 2013 represented the first increase in this concern after several years of decreases starting in 2009. The results also show a slightly larger concern in cost-reduction initiatives among enterprise organizations at 48% of respondents.1
Figure 1. Top-five Business Initiatives with the Greatest Impact on Technology Spending Decisions
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2013.
Respondents to the same research study indicated that return on investment (ROI) and reduction in operational expenditures were among their most important considerations in justifying 2013 IT investments to business management teams over the next 12 months, making these two considerations the two most popular responses. The data collected shows that organizations are clearly looking to make wiser investments in IT and will benefit greatly from technology that can continue to meet or exceed their business needs while lowering both capital and operational expenses.
As it has been since 2010, managing data growth continues to be a top IT priority in 2013. Because of this fact, one of the top areas of expected 2013 IT spending is in managing that data growth. It makes complete sense that more than half of respondent organizations expect to increase spending for storage infrastructure, while only 8% will spend below their 2013 levels.
1
Source: ESG Research Report, 2013 IT Spending Intentions Survey, January 2013.
24% 25% 31% 31% 44% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Providing our employees with the mobile devices and applications they need to maximize productivity
Regulatory compliance Business process improvement initiatives Security/risk management initiatives Cost reduction initiatives
Which of the following business initiatives do you believe will have the greatest impact on your organization’s technology spending decisions over the next 12
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2012 provides powerful new technologies that help transform an existing IT infrastructure into a modern data center that effectively addresses every available opportunity with agility and efficiency. New and improved features provide high performance and scalability that create a dynamic, multitenant infrastructure, which securely scales workloads to meet even the most complex SLAs, while offering the flexibility to adapt to ever-changing business needs.
Storage Spaces
Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 is designed to allow the creation of highly available, scalable, and performing storage solutions by virtualizing cost-effective storage. Storage Spaces is designed with key
technologies to meet the needs of enterprise workloads. Storage pools aggregate sets of physical disks into one or more units of management that can be expanded dynamically. Storage Spaces provides storage virtualization and resiliency with support for clustering. Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 provides the perfect foundation for SMB 3.0 file shares while offering a single point of management for storage, server, and network.
Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0
The SMB protocol is a network file sharing protocol that allows applications and IT end-users to access files or other resources from a remote file server, allowing applications to read, create, and update files on the remote file server. The SMB protocol can also communicate with any server program that is set up to receive an SMB client request. Windows Server 2012 introduces the new 3.0 version of the SMB protocol. New features to the SMB 3.0 protocol include:
SMB Transparent Failover – Allows clients to continue working when there is a failure in the SMB file server cluster node. Information is preserved on the server side while the client automatically reconnects to the same shares and files on the surviving cluster nodes. The functionality is enabled by default and the entire process is transparent to the application.
SMB Scale-out – Allows an SMB share to be presented by all nodes in a cluster in an active/active configuration within a single namespace. Access to files is automatically and transparently load balanced across all of the available cluster nodes with no additional management or setup necessary.
SMB Multichannel – Allows servers to use multiple network connections simultaneously to increase both performance and availability. Data is transmitted across multiple network connections on high-speed network adapters, or across multiple network adapters to aggregate the performance.
SMB Direct – Enables the use of remote direct memory access (RDMA) for supporting network adapters, which consumes fewer CPU cycles and lowers latency while increasing performance. This allows
applications access to SMB storage shares at speeds that rival direct attached storage.
SMB Encryption – Allows an administrator to encrypt data by simply checking a box. Because SMB Encryption generates a key derived from the existing session key, no keys or certificates must be coordinated and transmitted across the network. No client side activity is required, and the encryption method is designed to take advantage of built-in acceleration in Corei5 and Corei7 processors.
Volume ShadowCopy Services (VSS) for SMB Shares – Allows application consistent snapshots of data volumes for backup and recovery. The same familiar interface that was once available only for use with local block storage can now be leveraged for SMB file shares.
ESG Lab Validation
ESG Lab performed hands-on evaluation and testing in Redmond, Washington. Testing was designed to
demonstrate the performance readiness and cost-effectiveness of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces over SMB with remote direct memory access (RDMA) enabled SAS direct-attached storage versus two other common storage solution configurations (FC and iSCSI SANs).
Getting Started
ESG Lab selected and compared four storage configuration scenarios with a goal of showing how Microsoft Windows Server 2012 compares to two of today’s common storage configurations.
Configuration 1 - SMB 3.0 protocol over 10GbE host attach to Storage Spaces on 6Gb/s SAS JBOD.
Configuration 2 - SMB 3.0 protocol over RDMA enabled 10GbE host attach to Storage Spaces on 6Gb/s SAS JBOD.
Configurations 3 and 4 - 10GbE iSCSI or 8 Gbps FC host attach to hardware RAID provisioned storage. ESG Lab configured the hardware resources as similarly as possible with a goal of directly comparing the four configurations to one another. Each test case utilized the same storage array with 48 300GB 15K SAS drives; the same x86-based host server with 32 cores and 96GB of RAM; the same VM configuration with up to 8 SQL Server 2012 VMs, each with 4 vCPU and 12GB of RAM; and the same OLTP application workload with a database supporting up to 40,000 online brokerage users. An overview of the four test beds is shown in Figure 2 with configuration differences highlighted in red.
The differences between the first two configurations (Storage Spaces) and the last two configurations (hardware RAID) are described below.
A file server was required to present SMB shares in the two Storage Spaces scenarios, requiring an additional “hop” when accessing data. No file server was required for the two SAN scenarios.
The second configuration introduced the new SMB Direct feature (RDMA).
With Storage Spaces, ESG Lab created a two-way mirror, which stripes data over a mirrored data set. With the two hardware RAID configurations, ESG Lab utilized RAID10, serving as a direct comparison to the two-way mirrored storage space.
Connection speeds varied between each configuration, but played no role in the underlying performance outcome due to the avoidance of connection speed bottlenecks.
Performance Analysis
ESG Lab tested a virtualized tier-1 application workload that was designed to emulate the database activity of users in a typical online brokerage firm as they generated trades, performed account inquiries, and did market research. The workload was composed of ten transaction types with a defined ratio of execution. Four of the transactions performed database updates, and the rest were read-only.
The workload was deployed in two to eight SQL Server 2012 virtual machines and generated a high level of I/O activity with small access sizes. This, combined with a large cache resident working set, created a workload that was well suited for evaluating the efficiency and scalability of Microsoft’s storage solution. A 5,000 customer database was configured within each virtual machine with a goal of scaling up to 40,000 customers during the eight virtual machine test.
ESG Lab measured the performance of each of the four storage solution scenarios by monitoring the sum of the number of transactions processed per second for the ten transaction types as the virtual machines scaled from two to eight. The OLTP workload and concurrent user counts remained constant for each test and each configuration. The results are summarized in Figure 3 and Table 1.
Figure 3. Storage Configuration Performance Comparison – Transactions/sec
0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 2 4 6 8 Tr an sact io n s/se c Number of Hyper-V VMs
Storage Configuration Performance Comparison
(OLTP Workload, Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012)
Table 1. Storage Configuration Performance Comparison – Transactions/sec
Total Number of Transactions/sec
Virtual Machines
Storage Spaces
over SMB
Storage Spaces over
SMB with RDMA
iSCSI SAN
FC SAN
2 487 522 508 518
4 963 1,026 997 989
6 1,443 1,523 1,498 1,463
8 1,932 2,003 1,963 1,950
What the Numbers Mean
Performance scaled linearly as the number of VMs increased from two to eight.
Negligible performance differences were witnessed between each of the four storage configuration test scenarios.
The performance of Storage Spaces over SMB with RDMA was slightly higher (1-4%) when compared to iSCSI/FC SAN test scenarios.
Performance of Storage Spaces over SMB was nearly the same as iSCSI/FC SAN (3% average slower). ESG Lab also measured the average transaction response time of the ten transactions types for each of the four storage configuration scenarios. The results are summarized in Figure 4 and Table 2.
Figure 4. Storage Configuration Performance Comparison – Average Transaction Response Time
0.00 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.10 8
6 4 2
Average Transaction Response (s)
N u m b e r o f H yp e r-V VM s
Storage Configuration Performance Comparison
(OLTP Workload, Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012) (Less is better)
Table 2. Storage Configuration Performance Comparison – Average Transaction Response Time
Average Transaction Response Time (s)
Virtual Machines
Storage Spaces
over SMB
Storage Spaces over
SMB with RDMA
iSCSI SAN
FC SAN
2 0.031 0.027 0.030 0.031
4 0.042 0.039 0.041 0.040
6 0.050 0.046 0.047 0.048
8 0.065 0.060 0.062 0.061
What the Numbers Mean
Response times remained manageably low as the number of Hyper-V VMs scaled from two to eight.
Average transaction response times for Storage Spaces over SMB with RDMA were faster in all test cases.
Storage Spaces over SMB with RDMA response times were an average of 9% faster than the other three storage configurations.
Though Storage Spaces over SMB yielded the highest response times, the average difference when compared to both SAN solutions was under 5%.
Why This Matters
Maintaining cost-effective performance with efficient scalability is both a priority and a challenge for most scale-out NAS environments. ESG research indicates that improved scalability, improved performance, and lower cost of infrastructure rank as top drivers for considering implementing scale-out NAS solutions. When compared to SAN solutions, it’s commonly thought that NAS solutions cannot live up to the same performance expectations. What if a storage solution existed that disproved the misconception that block protocols always out-perform file protocols? ESG Lab validated that Microsoft’s Windows file server cluster storage solution, with Storage Spaces and SMB 3.0, performed as well as common iSCSI and FC SAN solutions when comparing an identical OLTP application workload. Specifically when utilizing new RDMA support over the SMB 3.0 protocol, the number of transactions/sec was slightly higher when compared to the two SAN solutions. Average transaction response times were also around 10% faster when utilizing SMB and RDMA.
Cost Analysis
With a goal of showing the cost-effectiveness of a Windows file server cluster with Storage Spaces versus an iSCSI or FC SAN solution, ESG Lab modeled and analyzed the initial cost of acquisition for each of the storage solutions used for testing. A theoretical customer was modeled requiring approximately 14.4TB of block-based storage capacity to meet the needs of common business applications. ESG Lab compared three industry-leading vendor storage solutions and averaged the estimated acquisition costs for both the iSCSI and FC SAN solutions.
The ESG Lab analysis was quantitative in that it compared the cost of acquisition for three different pieces of the storage infrastructure: hardware, networking, and software. Storage hardware costs include all costs associated with controllers, enclosures, drives, and connectors. Each hardware configuration included the cost of two host connections across two PCI adapters for high availability. Storage networking costs include all costs associated with host adapters, switches, and cables. Storage software costs include all costs associated with base storage software that is included in the storage system. It is important to note that there are no storage software costs for
configurations with Storage Spaces due to its being built into Windows Server 2012 at no additional cost. Though Windows Server 2012 is technically software, the license fees were factored in through the server hardware cost due to the fact that many vendors offer the operating system as part of their pre-built server packages.
The comparison of the total cost of acquisition is shown in Figure 5. The test scenario of Storage Spaces without RDMA was not included in the graph. This was because the cost of networking for RDMA support was minimal and yielded a less than 5% difference between the two Microsoft solutions.
Figure 5. Total Cost of Acquisition Comparison
Microsoft’s file-server cluster with Storage Spaces and RDMA support was impressively lower than the two SAN solutions, averaging a 50% reduction in price. The majority of the price difference was due to Microsoft’s ability to leverage inexpensive, industry-standard, commodity hardware and eliminate the cost of proprietary hardware and software from SAN solutions.
ESG Lab broke down the results further into a commonly viewed metric of $/GB. This was done by converting the raw capacity of TBs to GBs and dividing the total cost of acquisition by the GB value. The results are shown in Figure 6. Similarly to the overall cost of acquisition, iSCSI and FC SANs proved to be almost 2x the cost of Microsoft’s file-based storage offering with Storage Spaces and RDMA.
Figure 6. $/GB Cost of Acquisition Comparison
$0 $20,000 $40,000 $60,000 $80,000 $100,000 $120,000 $140,000
FC SAN iSCSI SAN File-based Storage with Spaces, SMB, RDMA, SAS JBOD
Co st o f A cq u isi tion
Total Cost of Acquisition Analysis
(14.4TB of raw capacity from 24 10K 600GB SAS drives)
Storage Hardware Storage Software Storage Connectivity
$6.65
$6.19
$3.33
$0 $2 $4 $6 $8 $10FC SAN iSCSI SAN File-based Storage with Spaces, SMB, RDMA, SAS JBOD
$/G
B
$/GB Cost of Acquisition Analysis
Though ESG Lab did not factor in the cost of management and maintenance, the advantage of using Microsoft’s storage solution approach compared to a SAN is quite clear. Many organizations have Microsoft and Windows experts, as well as storage experts. Many SAN IT vendors require vendor-specific storage specialists to provision, manage, and monitor the storage infrastructure. Microsoft eliminates that need by moving the storage
management to Windows Server 2012. With the easy storage management offered through Windows Server 2012, Microsoft and Windows experts can quickly and easily manage their applications and storage through the same interface. Though Windows Server 2012 includes thin provisioning so organizations can more efficiently utilize their existing storage, Microsoft’s storage solution also leverages commodity hardware, making the ability to scale the infrastructure, specifically from a compute and storage standpoint, extremely cost-effective.
Why This Matters
For the past three years, cost reduction has been the number one factor impacting IT spending decisions. Affordability remains a top priority in the decision process when implementing new technology solutions. The expenses of storage and management software are important cost-related factors and, when combining the high costs and complexity of a SAN, administrative headaches can quickly arise. Now, more than ever, there is a need for a solution specifically designed to lower costs while fulfilling the ever-growing, ever-changing needs of a business.
ESG Lab validated the cost-savings offered by a Microsoft file-based storage solution when compared to a common SAN solution. ESG Lab calculated the initial cost of acquisition and found that organizations could expect savings of up to 50% deploying a Microsoft file-based storage solution that leverages the new Windows Server 2012 features of Storage Spaces, SMB 3.0, and RDMA with SAS-attached JBOD storage. When combined with the elimination of storage maintenance and management complexities, it’s no surprise organizations are quickly changing to Microsoft’s new storage solution strategy.
Committed to Storage
Microsoft continues to invest in the storage space as they work to expand their current storage portfolio. Though ESG Lab focused testing on performance and cost, it is important to note that from a features standpoint, a storage system built around a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 file server cluster with Storage Spaces offers the same technologies as today's traditional SAN storage arrays . The announcement of Windows Server 2012 R2 brings the direct features comparison even closer, as shown in Table 3.
Table 3. Features Comparison - Microsoft vs. Traditional Storage Solutions
Traditional Storage
Storage tiering (new in R2)
Data deduplication (enhanced in R2) Flexible resiliency options (enhanced in R2) Pooling of disks
Continuous availability
Persistent write-back cache (new in R2) SMB copy offload
Snapshots
Storage tiering Data deduplication RAID resiliency groups Pooling of disks High availability
Persistent write-back cache Copy offload
Snapshots
At a high level, the deployment models of Microsoft’s storage solution and a traditional SAN are exactly the same; virtual or physical servers that host applications are connected to a controller or server that is then connected to storage. The major differences, aside from the obvious storage protocol (SMB – file and FC/iSCSI – block) lie in the back-ends of the solutions. For SAN deployments, embedded CPUs and controllers manage every request and direct those requests to and from the storage through proprietary hardware. Microsoft’s deployment model utilizes a cluster of file servers connected to a pool of shared storage, both of which leverage commodity hardware.
Why This Matters
Microsoft introduced several new features in the first release of Windows Server 2012 to start bridging the gap between NAS and SAN by making file storage as appealing as block storage. The R2 release of Windows Server 2012 continues on that course, adding new features like storage tiering and persistent write-back cache to an already robust file storage offering that includes Storage Spaces with SMB file shares. These storage capabilities continue to enhance Microsoft’s storage stack to deliver a highly available, highly scalable, highly performing storage solution that meets the mission-critical needs of tier-1 application workloads. With the added bonus of being able to leverage the cost-effectiveness of industry-standard, commodity servers and storage, it’s no surprise that organizations are adopting Microsoft’s approach for dealing with larger scale IT environments.
ESG Lab Validation Highlights
ESG Lab tested and compared the performance and initial cost of acquisition of a Microsoft Windows file server cluster with Storage Spaces over SMB to traditional iSCSI and FC SAN deployments.
The performance difference between Microsoft’s storage solution compared with a traditional SAN deployment was negligible.
When leveraging the new RDMA support over SMB, ESG Lab witnessed slightly higher OLTP application workload performance and faster average transactions response times when compared to traditional SAN configurations.
ESG Lab calculated a Microsoft file server cluster with Storage Spaces over SMB with RDMA support to cost approximately 50% less than a SAN solution designed to fit a small-sized organization.
Issues to Consider
Default server BIOS, operating systems, and application settings were used during ESG Lab testing. As expected, after any testing of this magnitude, analysis of the results indicates that tuning would most likely yield slightly higher absolute results. Given that the goal of this report was not to generate a big number, ESG Lab is confident that the results presented in this report meet the objective of demonstrating the negligible performance difference between a Microsoft clustered file-storage solution versus an iSCSI or FC SAN solution.
New and enhanced Windows Server 2012 R2 features were discussed in this paper, including storage tiering, persistent write-back cache, data deduplication, and flexible resiliency options. ESG Lab has not yet tested these new and enhanced features, but expects to in the future.
When configuring and provisioning storage, ESG Lab created a Storage Space that was a two-way mirror. This served as a direct comparison to a RAID10 configured LUN in a SAN environment. ESG Lab did not test other Storage Space types, such as parity, which directly compares to a RAID5 configured LUN.
ESG Lab deliberately avoided network bottlenecks throughout testing. This served as the best way to directly compare each of the storage scenarios without being concerned about the differences between 6Gb SAS, 10GbE iSCSI, and 8Gb FC.
The Bigger Truth
It is no surprise that in order to provide the greatest return on investment to their shareholders and employees, cost reduction initiatives are reported by IT organizations as one of the most influential factors in their IT spending decisions today. Any technology that can be shown to help reduce capital and operation expenditures will help to make the process of justifying IT investments far easier.
In reality, organizations are truly faced with a bittersweet challenge when it comes to making storage purchasing decisions. Never before have there been so many storage technologies to choose from that will meet or exceed their strict performance and cost requirements. However, once a decision is made on which storage technology to implement, organizations are often times locked in to a single vendor or technology for years to come. Expensive upgrades, service contracts, training, and licensing costs often prove to be unwelcome operational expenditures that are hard to avoid, and even harder to back out of.
For many organizations today, solving this performance and cost dilemma may be simpler than one may think. New and improved storage technologies are built into Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and they give organizations a game-changing option to solve an ever-growing list of business requirements. By choosing to implement storage using Windows Server 2012, capital and operation expenditures are greatly reduced, while also giving the
organization unparalleled flexibility in its hardware implementation and purchasing decisions. With these storage technologies like Storage Spaces and SMB 3.0, performance and cost can both be addressed simply and cost-effectively.
As the Windows Server 2012 features-list continues to grow with the upcoming release of R2, it’s no surprise Microsoft is gradually creating a one-for-one checklist that matches traditional SAN solutions. Looking past the list of features, ESG Lab validated that a cost-effective, easy-to-configure Microsoft file server cluster with Storage Spaces over SMB yielded similar performance to higher-priced, more complex storage configurations like iSCSI and FC SAN deployments. With the new SMB 3.0 feature SMB Direct, application performance was slightly higher and faster than the traditional storage options used by so many organizations today.
From an initial cost of acquisition standpoint, ESG Lab calculated the cost of Microsoft’s storage solution and was impressed with how it stacked up against SAN solutions. ESG Lab found cost-savings to be as large as 50%; that’s a 2x savings from a $/GB standpoint. With a familiar Windows interface that allows an organization’s existing Microsoft administrator to easily and effectively manage storage, the savings quickly spread to the management side of the organization as well. Organizations are also given the flexibility to easily scale an existing infrastructure and adjust to the constantly changing, ever-expanding business requirements through the purchase of cost-effective, commodity hardware.
With features and performance similar to that of a SAN, and dramatic cost-savings over a SAN, ESG Lab suggests taking a look at Microsoft’s new storage solution with a Windows Server 2012 file server cluster, Storage Spaces, and SMB.
Appendix
Table 4. ESG Lab Test Bed
Servers
Host Server 32 cores, 93GB of RAM
File Server 32 cores, 64GB of RAM
Workload Generator 8 cores, 12GB of RAM
Virtual Machines
Total of eight virtual machines 4 vCPUs per VM
12GB per VM
Storage
Drives 48 300GB 15K SAS
Storage Spaces Configuration Mirrored Space
SAN Configuration Hardware RAID10
LUNs Eight VM VHDs, 5,000 user databases, and log files across all drives
Networking
SAS 6 Gbps
iSCSI 10 GbE
FC 8 Gbps
