How I like to build ‘Em - Vsphere5 - What ya think?

Just wanted to throw this together as my current environment goes a little like this. HP C7000, Flex-10 configured with two SUS Groups (Shared Uplink Sets) to carve bandwidth the way I need it into the 8 Flex-10 LOMS on each Blade, 10GB Fiber uplinks to Cisco Nexus 5k (x2) which uplinks to a Cisco Nexus 7K Core (x2), 4/8GB Virtual Connect FC connecting to Cisco MDS9509 (x2), BL490G7’s (2CPU,6-core/each), 200GB Ram, Hypervisor boots from internal USB 8GB Stick, VCEM (Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager) managed Virtual Connect domain (Move those profiles around), and all of this connecting to a brand new IBM XIV Gen-3 (FAST!!!), Storage Cluster built in vCenter with SDRS and SIOC enabled, IBM VASA Storage Provider and IBM vSMC. Vcenter5 virtualized on non-VDS VLAN (I Know….I have done both…I keep going back to this! :) ). All vm networks configured on VDS with “Route Based on Physical NIC Load” (LBT ***Only available with Enterprise+ license) with NIOC enabled. This setup is rocking for us….

How can it get better? That will be decided after next week at VMworld. :) Definitely looking forward to it….One thing I know is BL490’s are going away with Gen8 so I will be using BL460 Gen8’s. These blades kick it big-time.

Any feedback would be welcomed for sure. “It can always get better!” So I definitely look forward to others opinions.