Thin Provisioning with ISCSI Luns and Netapp 2020

[robertor1981]

Is it possible to create thin vmdk files on ISCSI Datastores or are they all going to have to be thick?

Additionally, if i am migrating vms using vmware converted, how can i migrate the stores to ISCSI lun without making them thick?

[dilidolo]

Why do you have to use iSCSI? NFS is great and as fast as iSCSI, or even faster if you have many VMs.

[robertor1981]

SnapManager for Exchange and SQL has been purchased and i believe you need to present the LUN directed to VM with Snapdrive.

[robertor1981]

I figure your a fan of NFS, can you direct me to a best practice guide for netapp and esx using NFS

Additionally,

Lets say i have 500GB of space available on Volume

Is it better to create multiple exports for each VM utilizing thin provisioning or

create one export with the whole 500GB and put all vms on that

[thickclouds]

less exports on nfs is better. you can run into tcpip heap issues within the esx kernel if you present too many exports, even though the limit is 32.

check out this link to the best practice guide from netapp.

[dilidolo]

I'm not a NFS fan but we have hundreds ESX with NetApp NFS, work great. We do use iSCSI but inside VM using software iSCSI initiator.

How big your LUN should depend on you requirement, we dont make it too big to reduce backup window.