New install: Large storage requirement. Configuration ideas, comments?

[Greggo]

Hello,

We are installing a system that requires a huge volume of storage for a single virtual machine. The connection method is iSCSI and the raw storage is 14TB.

The applcation typically sees a single storage path and all files fall below that root directory. It is an elobrate scheme to limit files in each directory to 1024 maximum. Works very well with large amounts of data but the volume of data on this project is enormous. Multiple storage paths can be created.

What I don't want to end up with is fourty-eight 250GB drives partitions to keep the block size down.

I am looking for ideas to work witht he 2TB LUN volume size and 2MB block size for the volume.

Maximum use of storage space is critical and average file size will be 100K.

Best practice, configuration layout and general experience with these limitations would be much appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your comments.

[AntonVZhbankov]

The best method I suppose is to create standard vmdk file for OS partition and connect 14TB LUN with software iSCSI form inside VM, or even redirect hardware iSCSI controller to VM via VMDirectPath.

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[VMmatty]

I have had good experience using the iSCSI initiator inside a virtual machine to connect to iSCSI LUNs. It allows you to continue using enterprise features like VMotion while getting around the 2TB limit in ESX/ESXi. You can achieve multipathing inside the guest by using multiple NICs, and you can configure load balancing (IP hash) at the vSwitch level.

[bulletprooffool]

Have a look at the configurations maximums doc:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_config_max.pdf

[Greggo]

Thanks.