Sharing LUNS between VMware Clusters

[hurdle]

Currently we have some 3.5 host devided up into farms.

In the farms they are further broken up into clusters

Is there any issues with sharing the Luns between clusters in the same farm.

I do not believe that this is a good idea, but I can't seem to find any documentation that says one or the other.

[dkfbp]

Hi,

Sharing luns between clusters makes vmotion possible.

Things to be aware of when sharing luns:

1. Are all esx hosts on both clusters configiered using the same path (storage processor) to the lun? Especially important on Active/passive sans.

2. Monitor the number of virtual machines on a given lun. Normally people try to keep it down to 10 virtual machines pr. lun.

Best regards

Frank Brix Pedersen

[JonRoderick]

Hi

the number of VMs per LUN is a hard thing to qualify - it depends on the disk I/O, the number of vmdks on the LUN etc - we run our PROD servers at around 15 per LUN but our VDI estate is running at around 20 per LUN so it varies.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I do not believe that this is a good idea, but I can't seem to find any documentation that says one or the other.

It is a great idea to share LUNs between all ESX hosts within the same cluster. This makes it much easier to manage (move VMs around), employ VMotion, SVMotion, etc.

Most infrastructures have a goal of sharing LUNs not restricting them to individual hosts.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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[espi3030]

I agree it is a great idea, that is what I do now for a LUN that contains all my templates. That way I can deploy to any cluster quickly, one very important thing to keep in mind (this will prevent data loss) this shared LUN must me presented to all hosts with the same LUN ID. That is something your SAN team should do.

Hope this helps!

[juchestyle · Accepted solution]

Obviously you must have shared luns within the cluster. But it sounds like you are asking if you should share luns between clusters. Yes atleast one lun. In this way if you need to move vms between clusters you can. And you mentioned of course your template lun.

Matthew

Kaizen!