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trink408
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Exchange 2007, raw disk or vmdk

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

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f10
Expert
Expert

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

Regards, Arun Pandey VCP 3,4,5 | VCAP-DCA | NCDA | HPUX-CSA | http://highoncloud.blogspot.in/ If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".
AntonVZhbankov
Immortal
Immortal

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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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

See also this document:

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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