I've got a server refresh coming up this year, and since I'm basically OCD, I like sorting through all the details before buying.


CURRENT SETUP = two Dell R720s as the main production cluster and a third older R710 as the "utility" host that has our Veeam VM and a few other odds and ends. All are on vSphere 5.5. The production hosts' storage is a 3PAR array and the utility host uses internal storage + a larger direct attached storage + HPE SAS tape library. The utility server also has a Fibre Channel connection to the 3PAR, but its FC HBAs are passed to the Veeam VM via DirectPath I/O. It may be goofy, but it really does work well for us.
NEW SETUP = Three "first class citizens" with 3 R730s. All three hosts will be configured the same except for one which will also include local storage to host Veeam and its repositories off the SAN again. I want to be able to use the third host with the 3PAR to help load balance our other VMs and give us more flexibility for things like a host failure, patching, etc...hence the "first class citizen" part.
That said...
*What should I do about my direct SAN access to Veeam? Have an additional HBA card in that host dedicated to DirectPath I/O?
*If not, what would performance potentially look like with using Hot-Add instead?
*Buy a 4th new host and dedicate it to Windows Server on bare metal to Veeam?
I don't really want to keep the R710 because even with my third new host "multi-tasking", the R730 will be so much faster than the almost 8-yr-old server it'd be replacing.
Thoughts? Did I ramble enough?!
Thanks!
-Jim