sergeadam wrote:
RParker wrote:
sergeadam wrote:
I'm in the same boat. I have 2 servers that I want to virtualize. One has a 4TB datastore and the other a 8TB datastore. I have folders that are larger than 2TB and they can't be broken up. I also want to use VEEAM to backup. Is there a time frame for VMWare to support VMDKs larger than 2TB?
Seems to me that supporting large LUNs is almost worthless if I can't use them.
so what were you doing for the last 5 years?!? This isn't new, and the limitation is for files. I am sure there is some technical problem with files that big, just like ZIP files can't be over a certain size either. It's probably an addressable space problem in memory or the file system. Other than virtualization, where else do you see 2TB files? Databases MAYBE... but those are no on block level storage either, so I think you are forgetting this isn't limited to VM Ware.
They give you RDM and NFS, why the insistance to use VMDK on BLOCK datastores, when there ARE alternatives. The pressure should be on Veeam, Quest to allow backups for RDM.. Since there ARE people like you that seem to want this functionality.
The past 5 years, I've been using physical servers with large RAID arrays. It's not individual files, it's entire folders. I have a business application where it is not unusual to have a single folder over 2TB with 10s of thousand of files.
The pressure also needs to be on VMWare to remove limitations that seem to be there for no reason.
I agree, the 2TB limit is pretty weak for modern filesystems (16TB+ seems to be the norm now).
