I don’t know what NetApp’s plans are, all I can say is that being able to restore VM’s from a snapshot and using SnapVault to do my backups saves me at least 30 hours a week. NFS is where it’s at IMO.

 

Jeremy

 

For those of you who have worked with both block protocols and NFS in VM environments, do you see NFS+NetApp as a game changing solution going forward? I do, and I hope NetApp does. I think if the price for the NFS license was more reasonable, the adoption rate of NFS would skyrocket.

 

iSCSI was great when it came out, and NetApp gave away the license for free. But iSCSI, in IMHO, didn’t have an application like VMWare to drive it. NFS+NetApp does, and I hope they take advantage of it.

 

--Carl

 

 

There are many customers running 100s and 1000s of VMs over NFS.  It seems like a natural way to integrate NetApp’s storage virtualization directly with VMware, and NFS performs on par with FCP.  You should try it, you’d be surprised.

Cheers,
 
Vaughn Stewart | Virtualization Evangelist

 

From: Jack Lyons <jack1729@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:09:12 -0500
To: Milazzo Giacomo <G.Milazzo@sinergy.it>
Cc: "Buerger, Andreas" <andreas.buerger@wincor-nixdorf.com>, Nick Silkey <silkey@ece.utexas.edu>, <toasters@mathworks.com>
Subject: Re: R: R: VMware - snap - backup

I don't speak for VMWare but I know that they are moving away from only
storing ISO and  templates.  There are several good size implementations
of vmware on nfs.  We have about 2 dozen VM's running on nfs and another
40 running on FCP.

Milazzo Giacomo wrote:
> And I've to (re)correct you :-)
> NFS? Avoiding phylosophical discussion on performances, VMware itself states to use it just for ISO or templates...
> you perfectly know how much costs the NFS license! Terrible!!! iSCSI is free (bundle) and we've tested also on huge SATA disks...no issues.
>
> Why do you said that iSCSI implementation is horrible? It's so easy to setup...
>
> -----Messaggio originale-----
> Da: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] Per conto di Buerger, Andreas
> Inviato: marted́ 4 marzo 2008 14.38
> A: Nick Silkey; toasters@mathworks.com
> Oggetto: RE: R: VMware - snap - backup
>
> I have to correct you :)
> We did some tests with vcb and iscsi, it works fine, but vcb in general
> was not very convenient.
> And the other thing is that the iscsi implementation in esx is horrible.
> Use NFS to earn more flexibility and an even better performance.
>
> That's the experience we've made.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com]
> On Behalf Of Nick Silkey
> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 1:17 PM
> To: toasters@mathworks.com
> Subject: Re: R: VMware - snap - backup
>
> Milazzo Giacomo wrote:
>   
>> As I told you in another mail your environment make me more persuaded
>> that the best thing you could do is to use VCB.
>>     
>
> VCB = VMWare Consolidated Backup?
>
> AFAIK, it is not an option in an iSCSI environment[1] ... if this is not
> the case, do correct me as we are aggressively pursuing iSCSI on our
> 3020s as a prod means to store vmdks for ESX.  :)
>
> [1]: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/iSCSI_design_deploy.pdf
>
>