Configure New SAN for ESX Cluster

[smokeNsqueal]

I'm running a ESX 4.0 cluster and have been lucky enough to get 10 TBs of storage on our new EMC VMax SAN. Be it that this is the first time I get to configure any new storage I want to know what's the best way to configure this? Is there a document or anything out there that can make general recommendations? This is my first time setting up storage on a new SAN for ESX so any guidance would be great.

Thanks

James

[bulletprooffool]

have a look at

http://www.techrepublic.com/whitepapers/vi-webstart-deep-dive-into-storage-and-network-configuration...

and

http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/virtual-storage/best-practices.html

[smokeNsqueal]

That web cast would be great but it's not downloadable and it happen it the past.

I'm looking into the other link.

[AndreTheGiant]

See also: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10990

Andre

[RaymondG]

What do you need to know?  the size to make each lun?  how to do a rescan and put vmdk on the lun?  how to push the lun to the host cluster?  Depending on what you are doing, it is pretty simple.

Storage guy zone the LUN, go to the storage location in vc and add storage.....rescan.  you can now start using your new storage.

[smokeNsqueal]

This looks helpful. I'm going to dig into this more.

[smokeNsqueal]

I'm looking for some general best practices on size and any other possible configurations that many need to be set like maybe block size.

[smokeNsqueal]

I've also just found this doc which seems helpful. These resources you've all provided should help me get going in the right direction. Sorry I was so vauge on my question but I've inherited this ESX cluster about 6 months ago and haven't had much experiance with ESX before.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40_u1/vsp_40_u1_san_cfg.pdf

[bulletprooffool · Accepted solution]

Firstly, this is one of those ‘how long is a piece of string’ type  questions.

It of course depends on the number of VMDKs you’ll be running, the  storage available, the type of storage, the i/o of the storage, type of  VMs etc etc etc,

Things to consider for example are, do you have storage that does  de-duplication and is cost of storage a major factor (and so on)
Of course . . pretty much always, a cost savings equals a performance  hit.

Anyway, as a very loose rule of thumb, I (in most cases) find that I  size LUNs somewhere between 400GB and 750GB and seldom (if ever) have  more than 30 vmdks per LUN.

Pretty much always, I redirect the request to the following  resources:

first of all, the configuration Maximums:
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_config_max.pdf

also, look at the following links

http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=68
http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1350469,00.html
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/104211
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/238199
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/06/23/vmfslun-size/

and of course the composite created by Andrethegiant on the VMware  communities

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10990

[smokeNsqueal]

Bulletprooffool, Thank. I know this is a very general question but you all have helped point me in the right direction. EMC has provide me some documentation that I'm also reading over. But to answer some of your questions.

1. How many VMKDs? We will be having a total of 400 VMs that we need to move to this new storage.

2. amount of storage? We are allocated about 10 Terabytes.

3. the storage is a EMC VMax

4. I'm not sure of the I/O of the storage. I do know that each VM Host will have a dual path using Emulex LP10000 cards (2 GB)

5. type of VMs? Mostly XP workstations, some 2003 server and 2008 x64 servers.

6. I'm not sure what de-duplication is but I'll ask our storage people. I know the VMax has some nice stuff that should help with cloning and templates. I've read something that it can do most of that on it's own disk and not have to send all of it back to the ESX server.

When you say LUNs are you talking about what storage is being presented or the data store it's self? I've been told by our storage people that the LUNs will be set to 272 GB each. So to create a data store I would just use 3 LUNs.

We currently have 3 data stores on our main cluster. One of them is 5.3 TB with 124 VMs, the second is 2.67 TB with 78 VMs, and the third 750 GB with 23 VMs. The first two were set up before I inherited the enviroment. The 3rd one I set up in a rush to find more space because we ran out.

Thanks again for the information and the links I'll be spending a lot of time trying to figure this one out.

[smokeNsqueal]

Ok I'm a little confused and maybe one of you can better clarify something for me. When I see most people start off with a general rule of thumb with 30 VMs per LUN. So does that mean if my storage team has already set up their SAN as 272GB LUNs then I can create one large datastore our of all these LUNs they will be giving me?

OR is it more like 30 VMs per data store? So I would take 4 of these 272GB LUNs and make a single 1TB data store and put around 30 VMs on that?

[RaymondG]

I never heard of a 30 VM rule of thumb.   I get my Lun and pack that baby till its full, no matter how many VMs it is......you have to leave room for expanding a VM or if thin provisioning is being used.   That be said, I doubt i could fit 30 vm on a 750 GB datastore....which is my max LUN size.

[smokeNsqueal]

Thanks but I don't have a choice of LUN sizes. These were pre configured by our SAN team and EMC and are set to 272GB. So my current question that I'm trying to figure out is How many LUNs do I put into a DataStore? Is the datastore going to have the scsi restrictions on it or is that only at the LUN level. There for I can create a larger datastore since my LUNs are smaller?

[smokeNsqueal]

I see where I was getting confused I was thinking that the datastore was more like a windows volume where you can use multiple LUNs to create it. But if you do that you are using extents which are not recommended. So I've worked with our SAN team to find out how they allocate their space to see if I can get anything larger then the 272 they were going to give me. What they've done to get the most drivespace out of the SAN was created 17GB Hypers then out of that used 16 of them to create the 272GB metas (or LUNs). So what we are going to do is instead of taking just 16 of the Hypers we are going to take 48 of them to create 816GB metas and present those to my ESX cluster. So I'll use those to create my datastores.