VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘storage’

Fluid Operations, owner of the eCloudManager Project, has open sourced it’s VMFS Driver Project. The driver is actually an application that can run on Linux, Windows or any operating system that supports Java. It apparently provides read only access to VMware VMFS volumes.

The VMFS driver has been developed for use in fluid Operations’ eCloudManager Storage Edition which is described as:

“… the industry’s first solution which allows for managing CPU and storage virtualization through a single pane of glass. This solution allows high-performance applications to be rolled out on an enterprise cloud utilizing multi-vendor server virtualization and storage technologies. This first release orchestrates VMware Virtual Infrastructure as server virtualization and NetApp filer technology as storage.”

eCloudManager is in beta, but is available both as a plugin for VirtualCenter or as a web interface.

The implications of the open source availability of the VMFS driver are huge in my opinion. For example, a VMFS driver could allow the creation of a liveCD that would be able to access virtual machines on a failed ESX host. Those stranded VMs could then be transferred to another working ESX host. There are also numerous other VM backup, disk analysis, and monitoring possibilities from a non VMware server.

Here’s some more information from the fluid Operations Community Page:

“This driver enables read-only access to files and folders on partitions formatted in the Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) by VMware. VMFS is a clustered file system that is used by the VMware ESX hosts to store virtual machines and virtual disk files. The VMFS driver is developed and maintained by fluid Operations and is included in upcoming releases of the eCloudManager product, where it is used to allow enhanced features like offloaded backups of virtual machines hosted on VMware ESX hosts. The VMFS driver comes with a command line interface (CLI) to mount and analyze VMFS volumes. The VMFS driver was tested on Linux and Windows based hosts, but should work on any platform that supports Java.”

The VMFS Driver Java application is available for download via it’s Google Code Project page. There is also a FAQ with the following additional information (and more – go check it out) about the VMFS driver. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are considering virtualizing SQL, check out a great post from vm0.blogspot.com. Running SQL Server on ESX makes some great suggestions for planning  CPU, RAM, and Disk I/O to allow for the highest performance possible of your database virtual machines (VM).

The section on disk I/O made me think – specifically about whether creating RDMs to raw disks was really a better choice than carefully planning VMFS LUNs. There is just too much convenience with using VMFS in my opinion, and I’ve never really been convinced that any report or testing has proven RDMs offer better performance than carefully planned VMFS. So, instead of a long comment on the vm0 post I decided to blog about it here at VM /ETC.

Be sure to read the entire post for the RAM and CPU recommendations, but here is the section that inspired me: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

I received notice today about a project implementing ESX on IBM Blades and using System i for shared storage. After first doing a double take to make sure I read the email right, I did some quick research and found the following from the VMTN Communities:

VMware Communities: ESX on the IBM System i

“So how does VMware fit in with the System i? Well in a nut shell – The System i (which a lot of big companies have) can act as an iSCSI SAN, and you can boot IBM BladeServers and IBM System x Servers from this SAN, and have your shared storage too! Why is that so great? Because the IBM System i is one of the most reliable pieces of hardware on the planet! Because your company probably already has one! Because you can have a great backup and recovery platform!”

In case you are wondering what IBM System i is exactly, Read the rest of this entry »

I attended the VMworld 2008 EMC Keynote session at 11:00 am today (Weds), but my battery was almost drained so I took manual notes. This post is a translation of those notes.

Chad Sakac, Senior Director and Mr. VMware at EMC, hosted this session titled Designing the Next Generation Data Center. The session was about how storage and networking vendors must work together to build upon the new features available in the new VDC-OS suite of technologies. Specifically, this session zeroed in on the vStorage group of features. Chad explained that EMC, Cisco, and VMware have been working together for a while and he would demo the results of this collaboration for us. Along with Chad onstage was Ed Bugnion, Cisco VP/CTO Virtualization, and Scott Davis, VMware Chief Architect.

Chad began by providing some opinion on how he felt vendors need to evolve their storage products for the next generation data center and the VMware VDC-OS. Some of the points he made were: Read the rest of this entry »

This session is moderated by Ron Oglesby, Service Director – Virtualization for Glass House Technologies. This is a Datadomain session that I anticipate to be a about the design and implementation issues faced by various Datadomain customers. No internet connection in this room so this will be a delayed post.

Like all the other sessions, the disclaimer slide is shown. I’ve learned from the last session not every session is going to have “forward looking” statements. Ron even commented that the slide was put in all the VMworld 2008 presentations by the VMware legal team.

Ron begins by discussing storage being the number one cost in a virtualization implementation. Snapshots, backups, and VM replication and cloning result in the need for large amounts of storage. Complicate this with the need for faster recovery, management automation, and increasing retention and compliance requirements help skyrocket the storage design footprint. Storage is implemented for virtualization too often as an afterthought.

Ron explains the session is about options for storing and replicating snapshots of VMs and the storage ramifications of server consolidation. The session will also illustrate how deduplication and virtualization complement each other.

The rest of the session was customer testimonials. The following are various comments from the customers that caught my attention. 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 »