The Virtual Storage Guy

Updated: vSphere on NetApp Storage Best Practices v2.1

Quick heads up, our VMware vSphere on NetApp: Storage Best Practices Technical Report TR-3749 version 2.1 has been released.

Here's a quick summary of what's new in version 2.1:

vSphere 4.1 and vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)

What began in late 2005 with Vanderpool continued today with the release of vSphere 4.1…

Vanderpool was the code name of Intel’s Virtualization Technology of x86 (or VT-x), which introduced extended page tables and enabled multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on an x86 computer in a safe and efficient manner. VT-x was the first means of hardware acceleration for VMware and the other x86 hypervisor vendors.

With today’s release of vSphere 4.1 VMware has delivered the first set of vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). VMware and key storage partners, led by Dell, EMC, and NetApp, have continued the direction originally established by Intel to extend the scaling of virtual infrastructures by enabling hardware acceleration with storage arrays serving ESX/ESXi clusters.

Today’s post is on VAAI, which is merely one of the three primary vStorage constructs available with vSphere 4.1. The other two are:

• Storage I/O Control (SIOC) - Set storage quality-of-service priorities for each virtual machine to guarantee access to storage resources
• Performance Reporting - Deliver key storage performance statistics regardless of storage protocol

Either I or one from the vSolutions Engineering team will post more on SIOC and Performance Reporting later this week.

NetApp Releases Unified Adapter for VMware SRM

Last week I presented this topic at the VMware TechSummit, and today I am happy to share with all of that NetApp has released version 1.4.3 of our VMware Site Recovery Manager adapter (available for download here). The new adapter is our 'Unified Adapter' replaces the SAN & NAS adapters (versions 1.4.2 & 1.0.0.4 respectively) with a single adapter.

With this adapter we support NFS, iSCSI, FC, FCoE, FAS & vSeries 2000, 3000, 3100, 6000 series, IP & FC replication, and synchronous, a-synchronous, and semi-synchronous replication.

 

The Unified Adapter also supports replication of FAS to FAS, FAS to vFiler, vFiler to vFiler, FAS to vSeries, and vSeries to vFiler. Remember all NetApp arrays support bi-directional replication, so there's no need to provision single purpose arrays (as in one for production and another for DR).

In addition to all of the combinations shared above, one can also run a FC storage network in one datacenter and failover to an Ethernet storage network with SRM. With all of this flexibility I like to refer to this release as 'one adapter to rule them all.'

Poll Results - What is the Size of Your Average & Largest Datastores

You may recall on March 25th I shared that I have learned from a source what I believe to be the largest know VMware datastore. I suggested quid pro quo, you share the average size and the largest size of your datastores and in exchange I'd share what I've learned.

First, I'd like to thank everyone who participated, we had 326 share their averages and 253 share their largest. Without further adieu here's the results...

Average Datastore Size

81.4% of VMFS datastores range between 500GBs and up to 2TBs
80.2% of NFS datastores range between 1TBs and greater than 2TBs

Raising Awareness Around the Misalignment of Data

Today my good friend Duncan Epping surprised me by shooting me an IM notifying me that he was posting on the impact of partition misalignment and asked if I’d care to comment. Fortunately for me I had time to do just that and this post is an expanded version of what I shared in the comments section at YellowBricks.

I’d suggest that anyone interested begin at YellowBricks before proceeding.

Alignment of the data in a virtual infrastructure to the storage array is critical to performance, scaling, hardware life cycle, and storage efficiencies. The lack of alignment results in an array retrieving more data than what the VM is requesting. This results in inefficiencies on the array that leads to requiring more storage hw resources to serve a workload.

Quick Poll - What is the Size of Your Average & Largest Datastores

We commonly get asked for guidelines sizing VMFS and NFS datastores. I have learned from a source what I believe to be the largest deployed VMware datastore. I'll make you a deal, I'll share with you the size and type of datastore if you will share with me the average size of your datastores and the size of your largest datastores.

Fair enough?

 

What is the average size of your datastores?

• VMFS up to 200GB
• VMFS 200GB-500GB
• VMFS 500GB-1TB
• VMFS greater than 1TB
• NFS up to 200GB
• NFS 200GB-500GB
• NFS 500GB-1TB
• NFS greater than 1TB

view results
Free vote poll

 

 

 

What is the size of your largest datastores?

• VMFS less than 500GB
• VMFS 500GB-1TB
• VMFS 1TB-2TB
• VMFS greater than 2TB
• NFS less than 500GB
• NFS 500GB-1TB
• NFS 1TB - 2TB
• NFS greater than 2TB

view results
Free vote poll

 

Thanks for the input, I look forward to sharing the results and the size of the largest known datastore next week!

VCE-101 Thin Provisioning Part 2 – Going Beyond

This is the second installment of a two-part post focusing on the thin provisioning capabilities native to vSphere. If you haven’t read Part I - The Basics, I’d suggest you do so before proceeding. We've covered a lot of content which you really should have a solid grasp of before proceeding.

In part I, I covered the basics of thin provisioning and how it operates with any storage platform. In part II we are going to expand upon a number of the points introduced in part I with a focus on how the storage virtualization functionality in Data ONTAP enhances VMware's thin provisioning and the over arching goal to reduce both the CapEX and OpEx associated with storage in the virtualization space.

Anatomy of a Virtual Disk

Let’s begin where we started in part I, by reviewing different disk formats. This time let’s consider them with the virtual disks operating at 70% storage capacity.

- The Thick Virtual Disk

Again this is the traditional virtual disk format which we all know rather well. From this image you will notice do not receive any storage savings in the datastore, yet we do receive 30% savings on the storage array.

If you're asking, "how can a thick VMDK consume less storage on the array?"
You'll need to go back and read Part I

- The Thin Virtual Disk

In this image we have the thin provisioned virtual disk and as you can see we are receiving a 30% storage savings in both the datastore and on the array.

- The Eager Zeroed Thick Virtual Disk

In this last image we have an eager zeroed thick virtual disk which provides us no savings at either the datastore or on the array.

A “Multivendor Post” on using iSCSI with VMware vSphere

One of the most popular posts we’ve ever done was the original ‘Multivendor Post’ to help our mutual iSCSI customers using VMware that focused on the operation of the software iSCSI initiator in ESX 3.5 with several iSCSI targets from multiple vendors. There’s been a lot of demand for a follow-up, so without further ado, here’s a multivendor collaborative effort on an update, which leverages extensively content from VMworld 2009 sessions TA2467 and TA3264. The post was authored by the following vendors and people: VMware (Andy Banta), EMC (Chad Sakac), Dell/EqualLogic (Eric Schott), HP/Lefthand Networks (Adam Carter), and NetApp.

One important note – in this post (and going forward we’ll be trying to do this consistently) all commands, configurations and features noted apply to vSphere ESX and ESXi equally. Command line formats are those used in when using the VMware vMA, which can be used with both ESX and ESXi. Alternate command line variants are possible when using the remote CLI or service console, but we’re standardizing on the vMA.

This post covers a broad spectrum of topics surrounding the main point (changes in, and configuration of the iSCSI software initiator in vSphere ESX/ESXi 4) including:

• Multipathing using NMP and the Pluggable Storage Architecture

• vmknic/vSwitch setup

• Subnet configuration

• Jumbo Frames

• Delayed Ack

• Other configuration recommendations

If this sounds interesting – or you’re a customer using (or one considering using) iSCSI and vSphere 4 read on!

vSphere on NetApp Best Practices Released

I am please to share with you that this morning our new Technical Report, TR-3749: vSphere on NetApp Storage Best Practices, has been released. I’d like to thank Mike Slisinger, Larry Touchette, and Peter Learmonth for all of their assistance in the production of this TR.

I’d like to take a few moments to share some of the core enhancements covered in the report.