Re: R: R: VMware - snap

It seems we’re transforming this mailing list in a monothematic one…should VMware pay us for this? J

Ok.

All this sounds good. So, VMware on NFS to obtain adavanteges and performances but…

But, I was asking myself reading you and your experience.

Many of you told us about the advantages of snapshot on a file system volume (NFS) respect another containing LUNs that hosts vmdk…I’m sure you got me.

But, again, a vmdk file is a big or huge file that “lives”, full of block that change continously because the os guest is acting in it…do you get me?

A thing is to take a snap of a unstructured file system that contains files that can be opened or closed and another is to take a snap of a file system containing “living” files…

Where I’m wronging? J When you speak of snap on NFS volume maybe do you mean the VMware ones?

Keep in touch

Da: Vaughn Stewart [mailto:vmwarestorageguy@gmail.com]
Inviato: giovedì 6 marzo 2008 16.39
A: Carl Howell; Vaughn Stewart; Jack Lyons; Milazzo Giacomo
Cc: Buerger, Andreas; Nick Silkey; toasters@mathworks.com
Oggetto: Re: R: R: VMware - snap - backup

For VMware deals work with NetApp on the protocol license cost

As for a game changer, it’d say that when you consider that VMware encapsulates data into files, NAS makes allot more sense than block. Don’t take my word on it, EMC shares my view (see Chuck Hollis’ blogs from 12/06 & 12/07). Also see: http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/videos/2008/BingTsai.mov

Virtualization changes everything...

Cheers,

Vaughn Stewart | Virtualization Evangelist

From: Carl Howell <chowell@uwf.edu>
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 08:04:59 -0600
To: Vaughn Stewart <vmwarestorageguy@gmail.com>, Jack Lyons <jack1729@gmail.com>, 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

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

From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Vaughn Stewart
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 7:33 AM
To: Jack Lyons; Milazzo Giacomo
Cc: Buerger, Andreas; Nick Silkey; toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: Re: R: R: VMware - snap - backup

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: martedì 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
>
>