Phatsta wrote:
To run 12 simultanious guests you need either 1 high-end server in the range of 6k, 2 middleclass in the range of 2k or 3 low-end in the 1k range.
Running 12 guests on a single host isn't going to put you in the high-end server range. That's pretty run-of-the-mill consolidation.
Depending on how long I can count on the external storage, it might come down to a price issue. Every year I get from the external storage I save roughly 1k in saved investments. Every year I get from the external storage I save roughly 1k in saved investments. I'm not entirely convinced myself as it's kind of an unsure way of counting in my opinion, but still there might be a point there. One of the cons to this idea is that I don't even know how much juice I can squeeze out of a DL360...
I'm not very clear on the math you're using. Spending $6K on external storage saves $1K a year over a $6K on a host?
A reason I myself find interesting is the functions that come with the QNAP. Things like Rsync, cross platform support, iSCSI LUN snapshot feature and backup features for smartphones with an app that lets you reach pictures like a cloud service. All in all you get other features that can and will show useful, if using it for more than just external storage for vmware.
rsync gives you crash-consistent copies of your workloads, which isn't very attractive. In a DR situation, you don't want to have to cross your fingers and hope OS crash-recovery utilities clean everything up enough to use.
What kind of cross platform support does a QNAP have that a virtual appliance running on the host couldn't provide?
iSCSI LUN snapshots are like rsync: crash-consistent. Without hypervisor integration, you're getting an image of the storage as good as if you'd pulled the plug on the workload the instant you did the snapshot.
Backup features for smartphone with an app that lets you reach pictures like a cloud service? If that's important, get a small, cheap QNAP for that feature. It shouldn't drive the purchase of $6K in external storage for vSphere that you don't need.
At the same time I wouldn't mind having a little more juice in the host, and for 6k you get quite a lot. And as you point out, 4 or 6 hr support, although I'm actually more of a hardware tech myself and usually fix all of those problems myself. Only trouble is when you can't get spare parts within a reasonable amount of time. Then you're screwed either way
Enterprise support isn't about having cheap labor drive out to your location. It's about a supply chain of spare parts designed to reach you when you have a failure, along with skilled labor that's specifically trained to do the type of repair needed. I've built my own PCs from the ground up many times, but when it comes time to dig around in $5K of gear, I want a technician who's intimately familiar with the brand and it's specific quirks to do the job. With an entire company standing behind him to replace anything else that might happen to go wrong.