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TerranovaVM
Contributor
Contributor
‎01-05-2022 12:04 PM

Adding a new Raid 1 array as a mapped drive to an existing VM

Here is my current situation:

My company runs a single ESXI host with 2 VM's. 1 DC01, and 1 Terminal server.

The DC is currently hosting QuickBooks off a share drive that's backend was the original RAID - RAID 5. But QB recommended an SSD Raid 1 configuration and they moved forward with Purchasing the disks. I installed them and configured the new RAID 1 array as a new logical drive. 

My question is, what would I need to do to get a mapped drive on DC01 with the new logical drive? I was planning on creating a new datastore, however with a little more research it almost looks like I would want to just edit the DC01 with a new Raw disk and see if it picks up the new logical drive. Any down side to that or better way of approaching this?

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership
‎01-05-2022 01:31 PM

Assuming that you have a supported RAID controller, both options will be possible.

Some thought:

  • using the SSD-RAID1 as a datastore, will allow you to use the datastore space for different work loads
  • physical RDMs are exlcuded from snapshots, so it will not be possible to do a VM based backup, i.e. you need an agent based backup
  • virtual RDMs will create their snapshots in the VM's base folder (by default) which I assume is not SSD based, so the snapshots will be backed by a slower tier than the RDM. Just keep this in mind.

My preferred option - assuming that you don't need the whole SSD capacity for the DC - is to create a datastore on the SSD-RAID LUN, and work with virtual disks.

André

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