Comment Re:VMWare needs no luck (Score 1) 417
Don't be so quick to knock NFS for the Enterprise. I used to avoid it as well, but now I wouldn't have it any other way.
We run NFS datastores on Netapp filers for all of our VMs. It is SO much easier to manage than iSCSI or FC LUNs. No more worrying about the number of VMs in each datastore and we can take full advantage of Netapp's deduplication (which saves us about 50% on average). It's always nice to be able to directly access your datastores if you need to copy files in/out for backups and restores.
If you really need a block based solution you can always connect some iSCSI or FC LUNs as RDMs (we use iSCSI for SQL databases that use block based storage replication).
This is an environment with close to 400VMs accross 20 hosts (HP DL360 G7's) with 20TB+ of storage (and growing fast). The previous environment I managed had 1000VMs accross 36 hosts (IBM x3850 M2's) using FC LUNs with somewhere north of 60TB of VMs so that's what I'm comparing with.
I'll grant you that not all NFS solutions are created equal so YMMV with other NAS solutions. Netapp can be very pricey, but I think you get what you pay for.
We run NFS datastores on Netapp filers for all of our VMs. It is SO much easier to manage than iSCSI or FC LUNs. No more worrying about the number of VMs in each datastore and we can take full advantage of Netapp's deduplication (which saves us about 50% on average). It's always nice to be able to directly access your datastores if you need to copy files in/out for backups and restores.
If you really need a block based solution you can always connect some iSCSI or FC LUNs as RDMs (we use iSCSI for SQL databases that use block based storage replication).
This is an environment with close to 400VMs accross 20 hosts (HP DL360 G7's) with 20TB+ of storage (and growing fast). The previous environment I managed had 1000VMs accross 36 hosts (IBM x3850 M2's) using FC LUNs with somewhere north of 60TB of VMs so that's what I'm comparing with.
I'll grant you that not all NFS solutions are created equal so YMMV with other NAS solutions. Netapp can be very pricey, but I think you get what you pay for.
