Real life experiences with large file servers

[Gabrie1]

Hi

Customer has a large file server, with a SAN volume of 1.7TB and holds about 3,4 milion files.

I would like to know if others have experiences virtualizing such servers and if there is much performance drain. Accept from user point of view on speed (loading 1 file) they are concerned about backup time. They fear not being able to backup everything in one night.

Lookin forward to your experiences....

Gabrie

[dominic7]

lol, your customer wouldn't happen to be Russ Givens would it?

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=90125&tstart=0

[Gabrie1]

hahahaha no he isn't

[outbacker]

Our file servers are similar in size and on vm's. What we did was seperate the data onto multiple virtual disks. Each one is backed up full on a different night, and then differential backups in between. Yes, it takes a while, but not a day and a half. It works.

[outbacker]

And performance is fine.

[boydd]

How many users on the FS? Any other roles for the FS (AD etc....)? I have one that's got over 3TB of disk (Mix of RDM and vmdk's - long story). Works fine.

DB