Re: ESX volume design question

> Have you considered using NFS rather than FC?
>
> It would allow you to have larger volumes (as you're not constrained by
> the same VM/datastore limit due to ESX locking on block based devices)
> and you'll therefore no longer need fractional reserve and will get
> better dedup savings?
>
> If that's not a possibility, you'll have to consider whether 20 VM's per
> datastore is ideal; When I last used FC, best practice was less than
> that.
>
> Darren
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-toasters@... [mailto:owner-toasters@...]
> On Behalf Of steve klise
> Sent: 01 June 2009 21:39
> To: toasters@...
> Subject: ESX volume design question
>
>
> What would you do?
> ESX 3.5 running all windows servers; FCP with all fiber drives
> We have an existing 6030 with 1 aggr, 1 large volume with ~5 LUNS 500GB
> a
> piece; running DOT 7.24. (upgrading soon, so no dedupe running yet).  We
> have a new HA 6040 (PAM cards) =).  The existing volume on the 6030 is
> still
> at 100 percent fractional reserve.  
>
> We have SMVI running in our test environment, but not in prod yet.
> We wanted to snapmirror from the 6030 to the 6040 and visa versa.  The
> 6040
> is running 7.3.1.1 so I can only go from the 6030 to the 6040 for now.
> No
> vmware on the 6040 yet.
> Question:
> I have 3 shelves each for each head (6 300gb total for the 6040) and 1
> big
> aggr on the 6030, 11.5TB agr 4.97used in the volume on the 6030.
>
> I was thinking of having the volumes for the 6040 @ 750GB and 1 LUN.  I
> am
> averaging ~20 windows boxes.  I figured when SMVI runs, it is only 1
> snapmirror update vs running the job with allt he LUNS in 1 big aggr and
> multiple snapmirrors happening.  I will make the fractional reserve set
> to
> 50% on the 6040 with thin provisioning at the LUN level, and dedupe.
>
> Pros:
> I think its more granular.  Having to find a location for 6TB is a bit
> difficult
>
> Con:
> Not as much dedupe by having all VM's in 1 volume.
>
> Thoughts, experiences, gotchas.?
>