thin vmdk and thin datstore or thick vmdk thick datastore

[tdubb123]

hi

what is a better option as far as setting up thin or thick vmdk

thin vmdk on thin datastore

thick vmdk on thick datastore?

[JPM300 · Accepted solution]

Hey tdubb123,

This is mainly a preference choice more then anything these days as vendors support both options.  I know some vendors even reccomend thin/thin to get the most out of your storage / ROI.  However everytime you do a thin provision you have another metric you have to watch for or setup alarms for.  Personally unless I'm strapped for space I use thick on the SAN, and thick on VMware.  However if i'm tight on space I will typically do a Thick Datastore from the SAN, and thin provision on VMware.  That way the only place to look for thin provisioning is in the vSphere Client/Web Client.  As more API's get released and plugins are available to tie into the VI client/web Client this will probably become easier to mange.

Do keep in mind if you do thin provision a VM and that datastore runs out of space, the next time that VM requests space it will go into a paused / shutdown state until there is space available, so its something you will deffiently want to have alarms setup for if you do go thin/thick, thick/thin, or thin/thin

I hope this has helped.

[a_p_]

There's not really a good or bad configuration. It depends on whether you need thin provisoning at all, i.e. due to over-provisioning. If you need to overprovision, I'd suggest you do this only on one side (I'd do this on the storage side), to eliminate confusion and the requirement to monitor both, storage and VMFS usage. Personally I'm more conservative and usually use thick provisioning on both sides whenever possible. Due to the available disk capacities and storage tiering which allows to use "slow" SATA/Nearline disks in production without much performance loss, capacity shouldn't be an issue (except for licensing costs).

André