Running ESX over NFS is (imo) the way to go. I moved from FC to NFS about 2 years ago (2.5.4) and have never looked back. Being able to restore crash consistent out of the box and the extra flexibility of being able to access your VMDK files directly instead of through VMFS is very nice. We're currently running 300 VMs on 5 IBM 3850m2s with dual 1 gig connections to our switches and then dual 10g to the filer itself. Most of my VMs are on SATA with the higher IO boxes on 15k FC disks. Dedup is also very nice, just realize that the first time you run the SIS job (the dedup process) it will hammer your disks since it has to look at every block with data on it.
If you're hard set on block based storage then I don't think the Netapp boxes are worth it, but I really think NFS is the way to go. Having the extra layer of abstraction may be a bit less efficient, but the extra flexibility and related uptime is very much worth it.
Jeremy M. Page____________________
Systems Architect
* email:Jeremy.Page@gilbarco.com - * phone: 336.547.5399 - 6 fax: 336.547.5163 - * cell: 336.601.7274
________________________________
From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Paul McGuinness Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 5:19 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: NetApp3140 v EMC CX4-240
I am after opinions / Pros and Cons on running a substantial VMware infrastructure of approximate 200+ VMs using the 2 mentioned storage systems.
Obvious benefits of the NetApp seem to be around the De-Dupe out of the box. Any other thoughts / experiences would be appreciated
Fibre attached Dell R900s will be running the ESX side of things.
Paul McGuinness
Infrastructure Services Manager
FINEOS Corporation ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS for INSURANCE, BANCASSURANCE AND SOCIAL INSURANCE
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