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shoaibsuleman
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VMware view with VSA

Hi every One, we are planning to deploy vmware view 5 and we don't have SAN/SAN i come to know that vSphere Storage Appliance to achieve VMHA/DRS benefits any one suggest that will be ok if we deploy VSA instead of purchase dedicated SAN/NAS storage,

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gunnarb
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Glad I could help.  Please award points, I'm trying to get on the top 10 in the forums.  Thanks!

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com

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gunnarb
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VSA won't cut it.  As the VSA has dependancies, these dependencies would then need to be redundant.


Also, have you looked at the pricing for VSA?  You might as well get a low end SAN.

I'll give more input on the dependancies in a sec, I'm digging it all up.  (I've considered architecting with the VSA before and choose not to after I really looked into it.  Let me find my arguments and I'll post them.)

Gunnar

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
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gunnarb
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Okay the long and short of it is that you can't run vCenter as a VM if you are using VSA.  It's a chicken and egg thing.  So if I want to design a completely virtualized environment then I can't use VSA.  If I want to have vCenter as a physical machine, then VSA is doable, however I almost never setup vCenter as a physical server these days (its got to be a large environment).

Great write up here:

http://virtualeverything.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/a-closer-look-at-vmwares-virtual-storage-appliance...

Gunnar

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
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gunnarb
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Now in a larger environment that seperates the SI from the VDI, I'd considering using VSA on the VDI side.  But again I've seen the pricing and I know EMC can beat the pricing with a low end AX4.  And personally, I'd rather have a low end SAN than the VSA.

Gunnar

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
amandasmith
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Hi,

    Check the following information http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view_local_disk.pdf

Hope this information helps you.

Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else
mittim12
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I remember reading somewhere that the VSA wasn't supported with the user of View.  For the life of me I can't remember where I read it. 

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gunnarb
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Be interesting if you can find that.  I'd like to know the reasons behind it.  Again, I think VSA is over priced for what it does.  It doesn't solve any IO issues.  And if you are designing a View system you need to deal with IO.  If Atlantis ILIO could team up with VSA, and VSA could drop the vCenter requirements then we'd have something.

I keep recommending something else for these types of environments, I can't remember what it is...

*cough* Nutanix.

Smiley Happy

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
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shoaibsuleman
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Thanks Gunnarb, I think we have to purchase hardware Storage for VMware thanks for your response.

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gunnarb
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Glad I could help.  Please award points, I'm trying to get on the top 10 in the forums.  Thanks!

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
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shoaibsuleman
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Best of Luck

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gunnarb
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Thanks I'm extremely close! Smiley Happy

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
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mittim12
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It may have been this the link below where Linjo said they haven't tested it in house yet.  That typically means something isn't supported, though I'm have always felt it should work fine with no problem.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1823545

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Linjo
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There are some testing going on internally, can't share any results yet.

In theory its not a bad combination in some circumstances, for example in a robo-enviroment, but I have no experience by myself.

Maybe we can get Andre Lebovici to do some tests for us in the meantime...

I don't agree with Gunnar that its a ripoff for the price since its a replicated, highly available, storage solution that is extremly easy to setup and manage.

You don't get with any small NAS box out there. (I'm very biased here of course...)

// Linjo

Best regards, Linjo Please follow me on twitter: @viewgeek If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
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gunnarb
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I didn't say it was a rip off. I said it was priced too high (also I went back and cleaned it up so it was more PC).   Just want to be careful with how things are interrupted out there.  I priced out VSA for a customer and also priced out a low end SAN, the SAN ended up being cheaper.  Yet, on the back end they would use the same spindles and the physical IO should be identical minus whatever the penalty is based on how VSA or the SAN works.  They woudl both be highly available.  Also, VSA didn't scale past 3-nodes, my low end scaled to 8 nodes.  ANd in the end IO is the biggest issue, of course I could just throw SSD at it and probably solve the problem with both solutions but I just didn't like the VSA pricing model enough to go down that road.  If the VSA was more like 5k I'd consider it, or if the VSA added some ILIO like features I'd consider it (CBRC comes to mind).

But I'll tell you what, regardless, I'll do a full scale test of VSA and see how it holds up.  I'll post my results.

I would really like to fall in love with the VSA.  We all know Storage is the biggest bump to get over when it comes to VDI.  I'm just not in love with it yet.

Gunnar Berger http://www.gunnarberger.com http://www.endusercomputing.com
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Linjo
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Cool! Looking forward to hear the results!

// Linjo

Best regards, Linjo Please follow me on twitter: @viewgeek If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
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jansson81
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Anything new about View with VSA?

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Linjo
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There has been some more testing but nothing officially.

I think we will see some interesting things to follow since we recently acquired Virsto.

// Linjo

Best regards, Linjo Please follow me on twitter: @viewgeek If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
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