VCDX #181 Marc Huppert

Stage XXIII: Cohesity

The next big thing after the Stage XXII: NSX is now again Backup and Disaster Recovery.

Cohesity is a really awesome solution. It is a relative new startup from Santa Clara, Silicon Valley.

Cohesity_Small

I have written several postings on Twitter and on my blog.

Virtual Edition:

VE_Logo

I wanted to deploy the biggest possible option of the Virtual Edition. But 16 vCPUs, 64GB RAM, 400GB Flash and 8TB data disk was a huge thing. So it was time to invest again in my HomeLab….

New ESXi Host:

I was able to get a cheap HPe DL160 Gen8 Barebone. I added all missing components to build my own Cohesity Virtual Edition HomeLab Server:

DL160Gen8

2 x Intel Xeon E5-2650L (16 Cores and 32 Threads)

128 GB RAM DDR3-1600MHz

SmartArray P420 with 1GB Cache

2 x SanDisk X400M 1TB SSDs

2 x Seagate 8TB HDDs

1 x LSI External SAS Card with LTO-4 Autoloader attached

1 x 10GbE LOM Card

After installing ESXi 6.5 and the final configuration I deployed the Cohesity Virtual Edition in Production size on it.

My DataPlatform Virtual Edition has the following configuration:

16 vCPUs

64GB RAM with 100% Reservation and Pinned Memory option

1st pvscsi controller with 62GB OS vmdk on SanDisk X400M SSDs in Raid 1

2nd pvscsi controller with 400GB MetaData vmdk on SanDisk X400M SSDs in Raid 1

3rd pvscsi controller with 7TB Data vmdk on 8TB Raid1 with Eager-Zeroed-Thick option (the creation took a while….)

vmxnet3 virtual NIC with RX Split and TX Split enabled

VE_Prod_Hardware

Secure the entire HomeLab:

I configured several Protection Jobs within my Cohesity Virtual Edition. I secured my entire HomeLab (VMs, Files, Physical Machines, Views and NetApp shares)

ProtectionJobs_1ProtectionJobs_2ProtectionJobs_3

I use the new ESXi host also as a witness host for my vSAN clusters, vCenter HA and for the second DC, as well as the TapeServer with PCI Passthrough of the LAS External SAS adapter with the LTO Autoloader attached.

esxcohesity_VMs

I also archived the Cohesity backups to my 10GbE All Flash NAS and also using the QStar Archive Manager VM onto my LTO4-Tapes.

It is really an awesome solution!!!!

Check out my newest episode: Stage XXIV: Infrastructure Upgrades with Network Controlled PDUs and Internet Connection Upgrade from 25Mbps to 450Mbps….