VMotion and FC shared storage

[nealus]

Hi,

I'm looking at VMotion and shared storage, specifically a fiber channel SAN for VM storage, with blade servers at the host end running Qlogic QME2662 IO cards.

It's the first time I've put together something that uses FC shared storage - previously, using iSCSI or even having local storage for VMs I would designate a separate 1Gb NIC for VMotion as per VMware recommendations.  With FC, I'm doubting this approach as the storage network (FC) is separate from the copper network.  I am considering whether in this case, having the VMotion services running on the FC network would be a supported or a viable design?  The design is primarily for hosting a Horizon VDI infrastructure using linked clones and I don't foresee a large VMotion requirement during normal operation.  Has anyone experience of this configuration?

Many thanks

[vXav]

Why don't you stick your vMotion vmkernel in the same NIC teaming as your management ?

As in:

Mgt vmkernel         >> Portgroup Mgt        >> vSwitch1 >> NIC1/Nic3

vMotion vmkernel >> Portgroup vMotion >> vSwitch1 >> NIC1/Nic3

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VMs                         >>VM Portgroup          >> vSwitch2 >> NIC2/Nic4

[nealus]

So despite the FC network being a physically separate network (hosting the VM storage), I am able to implement the VMotion network over the copper network?

Seems strange to me to be sending VM storage data over the copper when VMotioning, but normal activity would see VM storage data and changes occur on the FC network

Apologies if this doesn't make sense - i'm trying to get my head around the differences with FC/iSCSI in terms of architecture 🙂

[vXav · Accepted solution]

The storage vMotion operations are performed internally by the vmkernel using the "Data Mover", there is no communication over the network.

If your hosts and your array have VAAI enabled and working these operations can even be offloaded to the storage array giving better copy times.

The vMotion network will copy the memory of your VMs which is significantly smaller than the disks (excpet maybe on some mad DB boxes).