high loaded (iops) VM inside ESX - recommended or not?

[mlubinski]

Hello,

I would like to ask such question. Is it recommended or not (or advised) to put such VM, that would be for example mail server, that is pretty highly loaded with thousands of very small files, such VM would generate much iops on "disk side". Maybe VMware does not recomment putting such server as VM inside ESX, and recommends separating it on physical box for better performance? OS is some linux based.

What do You think?

[Gerrit_Lehr]

That should not be a problem if the system is designed properly. VMware actually advertieses being able to run even high load servers, sometimes with better performance than physical systems. However, what is most important, is a proper configuration and planing regarding the storage.

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

[Ken_Cline]

ESX will not be your bottleneck for IOPS. You will hit the limits of your physical server or your storage infrastructure long before you hit the I/O limits of ESX. You will need to plan carefully to ensure that you provide adequate physical infrastructure, but otherwise, no worries.

Ken Cline

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blogging at: http://KensVirtualReality.wordpress.com/

[JohnADCO]

If at all possible, I really suggest putting such servers on a dedicated lun. Very large numbers of mail boxes / users on exchange servers really start taxing the drive where the exchange logging is located. So that drive is the one that I reccomend having a dedicated lun.

Now in a datacenter this probably is not really feasable. This assumes a SAN is being used for storage. On direct attached? I'd have to let other comment.

[AndreTheGiant]

With ESX4 you can also do "pass-through" to bind you VM directly to a HBA to have "native" performance.

Or in ESX3 (and 4) you can use iSCSI inside VM or RDM or similar solution to map a VM with a LUN.

But vitualization could be more.

Is better a big Exchange with a huge storage, or more Exchange with "lite" storage?

You can design your service to have more performance in virtual using more virtual servers.

(ok... there also the trade-off with software license problem )

Andre

**if you found this or any other answer useful please consider allocating points for helpful or correct answers

[jayctd]

We have been virtualizing hundreds SQL and Exchange boxes for about 2 years now, the performance is more then acceptable for high IOPS

Like was already stated if you are not using 4.0 yet and doing ISCSI I would recomend using the MSISCSI initiator directly on the virtual for the data store itself as MPIO is not supported for iscsi on 3. Other then that you should be good to go.

The flexability given from this archetecture pays for itself over and over again

##If you have found my post has answered your question or helpful please mark it as such##