Hello,
I´m planning the infrastructure with VMWare ESXi and SAN .
I will create one LARGE volume for storage with VMFS 3. I will setup just one datastore.
In the future when I need to add more disks for storage, this new space is
not automatically added to the Datastore. He is known as "extent" and I
need to add it to the large volume VMFS 3, like the LVM partition.
So, if I lose this extent the virtual machines in the extent space will be automatically lost.
I would know what´s the usual way to add more space to storage when necessar.
For example, assuming that I have one Storage with one datastore with 30 disks and, later, I will need to add more 20 disks. It´s better to add one more datastore or add the 20 disks to the first datastore ? Or neither of the two ?
I want to use 6 physical hosts with 25 virtual machines and one SAN. The VMWare ESXi (free) can use SAN ( access, format the storage, etc) or I need to buy some product ?
I know that Virtual Center gives some advantages like backup and High availability but with just VMWare ESXi free I can have a production environment with SAN ?