I've usually created 500gb volumes for vmware to place my VM's onto. My VM's would only have the c:\ vdisk on this volume. Then for data volumes, I'd create ms iscsi software initiator iscsi attached volumes. Once the 500gb got about 75% full I'd create another for additional VM's. With my attached Equallogic SAN, I was thinking that if I created smaller volumes, say 60GB for each individual VM(instead of grouping them on larger ones) I could then easily replicate those volumes on the SAN so that I could fall back to them for disaster recovery of individual servers. Does anyone see any problems or limitations that vmware might have doing this? Can VMware handle all these smaller volumes or does it handle fewer/larger volumes. Would iscsi traffic be handled better over the nics? I have 20 pnics in my hosts right now to use, in case that makes any difference.
Why not just create a large sized lun, and use vCenter to store copies of any VM you want on it.
That can all be done via vCenter and not from within the SAN.
I keep clone copies of critial VM's on a 1TB LUN (datastore) that is seperate from where the operating VM's are.
That gives me disk independance incase the luns with the running VM crash.
From there I back the even MORE critical ones to tape.
VMware can handle also smaller volumer.
But you can also replicate entire VMFS volume (Equallogic works at block level, so it is independet by filesystem type).
And also Equallogic is compatible with VMware SRM.
Andre
I can't see any issue from VMware.
I would be concerned about overhead on I/O by having so many luns and datastores.
Fragmentation of the SAN would also play in more.
I wouldn't do it personally, more room for stuff to blow up in my opinion.
Thanks for the reply. Yes, I currently replicate the volumes, but since my current setup has multiple vdisks on the same volume, I can restore just one VM at a time. I have to restore them all. Unless I'm overlooking something.
Why not just create a large sized lun, and use vCenter to store copies of any VM you want on it.
That can all be done via vCenter and not from within the SAN.
I keep clone copies of critial VM's on a 1TB LUN (datastore) that is seperate from where the operating VM's are.
That gives me disk independance incase the luns with the running VM crash.
From there I back the even MORE critical ones to tape.
That's probably the easiest solution for me.
The only thing this really achieves is a lack of flexibility. What happens if you decide a certain disk needs to grow by 50%? Do you make another LUN and move it?
