For those running Exchange on Vsphere, wondering if you're using vmdk disks for your msg stores, or raw disks?
Ours was configured using raw iscsi maps from the Windows 2008 server for our msg stores. I'm not sure what the advantages or disadvantages may be to raw vs vmdk?
Thanks
Kevin
If a virtual disk is configured as an RDM the scsi commands are processed directly by the Guest O.S however if its configured as VMDK the VMkernel layer has to do all the processing.
Refer to this thread for a detailed discussion about using RDM or VMDK
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f10
VCP3,VCP4,HP UX CSA
There is no difference between vmdk and raw in terms of performance.
VMDK pros:
1) Truly dynamic - you can migrate it anywhere
2) You can hot-extend it without downtime
VMDK cons:
1) Once you lost VMFS - you lost data also
2) Can not be used for p-v clusters with shared storage
RAW pros:
1) You can connect LUN to any VM or physical machine and get access to data
2) The only solution for p-v shared storage cluster
RAW cons:
1) It's not that dynamic as vmdk
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MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert
See also this document:
Andre