We currently have 3 ESX 4.1 servers managed by vSphere. For our 2014 budget we are going to add 2 more servers. We are also going to upgrade everything to ESXi 5.5 once I get a new server at our DR site that can handle it (runs VMWare SRM).
At our HQ, currently we have a Cisco 3750g and an EMC Celerra NX4.
Going to upgrade to an EMC VNX most likely and get the 10gig option for that.
Looking at possibly installing Intel X540-T2 nics in each of the 5 ESXi 5.5 servers.
Looking at possibly installing Cisco 4500-X 10gbe switch (because a Nexus is so darn expensive).
This is going to be pricey so possibly the following year, 2015, maybe we can purchase another Cisco 4500-X and use it for redundancy.
Basically I was thinking of using the 10 gig soley isolated for storage. We use NFS now because Celerra replicator is much more efficient replicated NFS and change blocks, deduplication, etc. rather than block iscsi (too much overhead they say).
So what if each vmware host had a 10gig for storage and vmotion, then used existing 1gig trunks for the lan (production, dmz, voice network, etc..).
Would this work well for us?
What do you think would be the best plan of action. Upgrade vSphere and the hosts to 5.5 first, then install the 10gbe server adapters and do networking?
Thanks for the insight.