VMware Cloud Community
WessexFan
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Using a Data Domain as a datastore

My company recently upgraded our enterprise backup solution so we have a data domain just sitting there spinning with no real purpose. I decided to mount this data domain to an ESXi host purposed for Development.

My question is: Has anyone out there done this before and how was the performace? I would have to imagine that the perfomance is terrible since the data domain must try and dedupe every block read/written. Not sure how that works..

Thanks!

VCP5-DCV, CCNA Data Center
Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
ChrisDearden
Expert
Expert

I can think of worse situations to be in , with a "free" DD appliance. I'm told you will just about get VM's to run on one , but I wouldn't expect much off it. perhaps it woudl be good for storing templates or ISO's or possibly the best use case as a Repository for backs form something like Veeam if you are currently not using VM level backups ? If you had SQL VM's ,they coudl use a datastore on the DD box for SQL backups ? I'm trying to think of other use case for low tier storage like that. I wonder what woud happen if you put something like an Avere FXT NFS allecerator infront of one ?

@chrisdearden

If this post has been useful , please consider awarding points. @chrisdearden http://jfvi.co.uk http://vsoup.net
WessexFan
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

So far, I have a couple vms actually running on it and am storing templates and .isos on it as well.. These are development servers so there is no need to be super performant. I am wondering about the accelerator. Sql backups are a good idea.

VCP5-DCV, CCNA Data Center
Reply
0 Kudos
sanmeetgalpalli
Contributor
Contributor

Can you tell me how you ended configuring it? Did you use it as NFS or something else? I have a DD670 lying around too. i am planning to use it for the same purpose.

Reply
0 Kudos
cfizz34vmware
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Did anyone get this working with NFS 4 and DD v OS: 7.1.0.10-646016

Reply
0 Kudos
meoli
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Did that because i wanted to know how worse the VM Performance can get, and obviously it wasn't nice as the data domain wants streamed data instead of random IOs.

Depending on what Data Domain you use (there are guides how much VMs can be "instant restored") you might wanna use an NFS-Export as a VM-Replication Target to park those VMs or a temp Datastore to migrate offline VMs to it.

Reply
0 Kudos