VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘design’

For my project, 5 TB of raw disk space on a NetApp FAS3020 resulted in roughly 2.5 TB of usable NFS volumes. Sacrificing half the storage as overhead (for both ESX and NetApp) might seem like a big hit to take at first, but when you consider what you are able to do in the remaining useable space it can change your opinion. In my recent experience, after combining the features of Flexclones, VirtualCenter (VC) templates, deduplication, and NFS the remaining 2.5 TB enabled a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) storage solution for over 80 virtual machines (VMs). Your results may vary, but the concepts discussed in this post provide for a scalable and flexible design.

Although this post discusses NetApp, I imagine any NFS filer with similar features could be used in this same fashion. I’m curious for feedback on not only this solution, but the pros and cons of other vendor’s features in a similar scenario.

Here’s a logical diagram illustrating a NFS volume strategy followed by some high level details of each volume. Read the rest of this entry »

This will be another live blog session. Look for updates to this post every 15 minutes. I’m curious if any new best practices or insights will be mentioned that compliment the new vNetworking and vStorage pieces of the VMware VDC-OS.

Well, starting the session with the same disclaimer about the forward looking statements confirms my hopes! On the other hand, the forward statements could be new NetApp technologies. Either case would be cool!

A disclaimer before you read my notes: I have limited storage administration experience. Take my notes for what they are and understand the source (me). Help me out if I state something wrong.

This talk will be primarily on the NFS storage protocol. “NFS might be the best kept secret for virtualization”. To support this claim the speaker is talking about areas to consider when comparing storage protocols. Performance, Ease of Management, and High Availability are the main categories to consider. Read the rest of this entry »

A critical piece of the migration to virtual infrastructure is the consideration of how to backup the new virtual machines and the data they contain. Although switching to a full VM backup strategy is desirable, the reality of the required tape or disk media needed to support the large backup file sizes causes companies to continue to use the existing physical environment’s agent based backup.

However, Vizioncore and Datadomain offer a feasible backup solution using commonly available IP based storage that should make IT departments with even the tightest budgets look twice. Combining deduplication with LAN based VM backups to CIFS shares or NFS mounts, this solution provides a cost effective transition to full VM backups with minimal storage space consumed. Datadomain and Vizioncore established a certified partnership for VMware infrastructure in September of 2007 and therefore provide established solutions with technologies proven to work well together.

The image to the right was taken from Vizioncore’s solution .pdf titled Cost Efective Backup & Recovery & Storage for Virtualized Environments with Vizioncore Solutions and Data Domain Deduplication Appliances. The .pdf provides an overview of the design as well as recommendations for ensuring performance. This diagram illustrates a solution for not only VMs but also physical servers backed up as VMs by vRanger Pro’s P2V-DR feature.

To provide more specifics about this solution’s possibilities Read the rest of this entry »

Updated 12.08.08 – The difference between free ESXi and licensed ESXi has been a very popular topic and one of my most read posts. Now with the release of ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 3 there have been some feature changes in the free ESXi that I want to point out. I have also made a few corrections. I have left my original text for reference. Thanks go to Mike Dipetrillo for asisstance with these updates.

update 12.15.08 – the ESXi 3.5 Update 3 RCLI API was unintentionally opened. The remote administration abilities will be locked down again in the next release. Please see my updated post on this new information.

In case you’ve been “holed up” in the data center for the last month (I don’t doubt that a few admins have) and maybe haven’t heard yet, VMware now offers a free version of ESXi. Yes, VMware has made a version of it’s enterprise class, bare metal installable hypervisor available for download at no charge. There is no trial period or demo license required. There are no guest limitations on the host. So, there has to be a “gotcha”, right? Not really, but you do need to understand the differences between the free ESXi and VI ESXi (licensed) versions.

Although ESXi runs the same code and is on the same distribution schedule as ESX, VMware’s intended usage is a little different than what VMware administrators are used to, and therefore the ESXi product has some functional differences that need to be understood – especially for the free ESXi version. This post explores some of the major differences, and can hopefully help VI administrators make the correct decisions about what version of ESX to implement. I concentrate most on the differences between the free and licensed versions of ESXi as they are the most likely versions to confuse administrators used to VMware’s full ESX 3.5 enterprise solution. Read the rest of this entry »

Chad Sakac has a great post on his Virtual Geek blog titled The Case For And Against Stretched ESX Clusters. In this post Chad discusses the possibilities of configuring ESX Clusters between 2 different physical data centers. That is, spanning the SAN across a wide area network so that VMs can be vmotioned between sites. The concept is a frequently discussed desire of many administrators, and Chad brings to light some great points for and against this design with specific configuration details about making it work with VMware ESX.

For example, the post explores several options: Read the rest of this entry »

Avoiding storage array snapshot pitfalls in a VMware environment is an article and tip published by Scott Lowe for Searchvmware.com. Scott discusses the design challenges and implications of combining the snapshot abilities of VMware ESX with the SAN based snapshot features of storage devices. The tip points out that incorrect configuration of VMware ESX with the storage device could lead to inconsistent and unusable images when trying to recover VMs.

“Because these snapshots are not, by default, integrated in any way with VMware ESX Server, we have to perform a few extra steps to ensure consistently reliable and usable storage array snapshots.”

Read all of Scott’s tip at the link to the article above.

My “2 cents” on this is that trying to configure the combination of the two snapshots manually might not Read the rest of this entry »

In the May 2008 edition of the VMware Partners email newsletter I received this week there is news of the official availability of the VMware Certified Design Expert certification or VCDX. From the email:

Advanced Certification for VMware Infrastructure Design
The VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) is an advanced certification developed for design architects of VMware enterprise deployments. There are four core validation components for achieving this certification.

1. Must be certified as a VMware Certified Professional (VCP) on VMware Infrastructure 3
2. Pass the VMware Enterprise Exam. This exam includes live lab items and will test a higher level of skill set than the VCP exam. Check out the blueprint for this exam.
3. Pass the VMware Design Exam. This exam focuses on actual design and contains and situational questions
4. Submit, present and defend a successful VMware Infrastructure design plan

The first exam required will be available Read the rest of this entry »