New Server and Install

[CLPRSN]

Just purchased a new dell server with 8 1tb drives configured in a raid.  We are running vmware EXSi 5.1 and vSphere 5.  By default dell had configured the drives into 4 virtual drives at 1.80 tb for 3 and 937 gig for one.  When we go to create a virtual machine our datastores are broken into the same ammounts.  We were curious what is the best way to handle this?  Deleting all of  the virtual drives and creating just one big virtual drive?  and also whether to keep all data stores seperate or just create one big datastore and work off of that?  Thanks for any help in advance!

[admin]

creating one big data store is not i think best practice .According to me create small small data store and add them to ESX host.

Also you can read best practice for this..

[CLPRSN]

Googled for the best practice for this and found really no good information.

[a_p_]

Whether it is possible to use logical volumes larger than 2TB basically depends on the ESXi version you use (5.0 and newer support LUNs > 2TB) as well as on the controller. I'm not 100% sure whether local (i.e. not shared) LUNs with a size larger than 2TB are officially supported by VMware!?

Anyway, I guess Dell broke the RAID into logical volumes <2TB, because not all operating systems can handle larger LUNs.

André

[Gortee]

I agree with most of these comments.  I would raid 5 these disks and throw them into a single datastore if possible since your using a single server.  Greater performance and redundancy.   I see no benefit to smaller mirror type raid sets.. or breaking them into partitions.  In this case larger is better.. unless you plan on running a database or something as the sole virtual machine... then you might want database and logs separate etc...

Can you tell us more about what you plan to run on this server?

[CLPRSN]

Our vmware supports the bigger data stores.  We are planning running to begin with 2 windows 2008 servers,  One will be a login/file/dhcp server, one a domino server, and possibly a web server running Fedora. 

Thanks!

[Gortee]

Ok so that is a pretty mixed load.  You may want to consider IBM's best practices  IBM Notes and Domino wiki: Domino disk management: Best practices for Storage layouts for VMware and...

around the file setup.  That being said I would still vote make them a RAID 5 and then present.    With something like this:

Windows 2008 R2 Server - login/file/dhcp setup any way you like

Domino Server - Follow seperation of files as per IBM but put on same datastore... (I know that voids IBM's suggestion but the performance of RAID 5 is so much better than Mirrors.)

Fedora Web server - Assuming apache ... just follow linux best practices around partitioning and install on same drive

If you have more questions let me know.

And as always this is jsut my vote... really with the apps your talking about I would really consider a cluster...

Thanks,

J

[OscarDavey]

I would recommend that you create a RAID 1 + 0 also known as RAID 10 from the 8 drives, leaving you with excellent protection and performance from your datastore.

Yours, Oscar

[Josh26]

Numerous experiences in these scenarios always ends up with, no matter how well you think you planned, one datastore hitting capacity limits, and one almost empty.

There's certainly no best practice I've ever seen suggesting breaking things down like this, unless, as per a.p., the 2TB limit is relevant to this platform. In this case, you have three servers, what are you going to do, dedicate a 937GB datastore to a web server? You'll probably use 30GB of that..

I would use one large drive.

It's been a long time since I've heard of a new Domino server though.

[admin]

Delete all the virtual drives and crate one big virtual drive is not a safe way.

if the one big virtual drive will corrupt, there would be huge data loss. So it is highly recommended to always create multiple virtual drive with Small space and use them for store data.