Hosting different guest OSs on the same SAN LUN - a good idea?

[JonRoderick]

I've been advised against hosting, say, Linux and Windows guests on the same SAN LUN.

Does anyone have any preferences/information either way?

[Ryan_Witschger]

We are hosting a variety of Windows / Linux VMs on the same LUN for some time now and have seen no performance degredation. I can think of no good reason to avoid doing this since VMWare is only taking over hardware calls. Linux and Windows make the same calls to write a sector to disk.

[oreeh]

This might be true for physical systems but not for virtual systems.

Just make sure to not "overload" your LUN with too much guests.

[BUGCHK]

We are talking about a SAN LUN that is holding a VMFS, right?

In that case I think it makes more sense to make sure the I/Os are balanced across multiple VMFS LUNs rather than, e.g. put 2 high I/O Linux VMs on one VMFS and a low I/O Windows VM on another VMFS.

I really like to hear the argument(s) ...

[esiebert7625]

Your LUN is not going to know the difference. As stated just make sure you do not group too many disk-intensive VM's all together.

These are good guides on SAN design and configuration....

SAN Configuration Guide - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_esx_san_cfg.pdf

SAN Conceptual and Design Basics - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx_san_cfg_technote.pdf

SAN System Design and Deployment Guide - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_san_design_deploy.pdf

Fyi…if you find this post helpful, please award points using the Helpful/Correct buttons.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Thanks, Eric

Visit my website: http://vmware-land.com

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-