VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘netapp’

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 »

VMware announced officially today that Site Recovery Manager will be available for order next week and then generally available within 30 days. As I mentioned in my Site Recovery Manager Overview post last week, a requirement to using SRM will be a Site Recovery Agent (SRA) from the various storage vendors. VMware’s announcement reveals what vendors will provide SRAs initially:

“VMware Site Recovery Manager leverages customers’ investment in storage replication software from VMware’s leading storage partners including 3PAR, Dell, EMC, FalconStor, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, LeftHand Networks and NetApp. VMware is working with partners across its storage partner ecosystem to ensure that customers can use Site Recovery Manager with their storage system and software platform of choice.”

As expected, several reports surfaced on the Internet today Read the rest of this entry »

When planning P2V migrations there is always a handful of servers that have huge disk requirements. A network file share could be as large as several terabytes. User Home Directories can also cause large, cumbersome servers that present unique challenges when migrating to virtual infrastructure. Given that VMware VI3 has a 2 TB VMFS volume limitation as well as a 2 TB .vmdk limitation, there is a better option. Consolidate your shares to a Read the rest of this entry »

Another “ton of bricks” moment happened to me when I was talking about SAN replication with NetApp yesterday in the Solutions Exchange. Using your WAN, NetApp’s products can replicate block level data between each other, or they can replicate the data from your existing SAN.

So, this means that I can buy a single NetApp product and put it at my DR site and start replicating my VI for fail-over. I don’t even need to worry about building the ESX infrastructure right away. Although, the ability to test my DR fail-over requires I have ESX servers at my secondary site.

I asked for general pricing for a small office SAN. I guestimated about 3TB of data would be needed. Although they wouldn’t give me a firm quote I was told pricing should be somewhere in the $10k – $15K range.