There are many tools on NetApp¹s site today which provide the data consistency point required for backing up this data. At VMworld Europe last week NetApp was demonstrating a product which will do this in the very near future.
Cheers,
Vaughn Stewart | & Virtualization Evangelist
From: Milazzo Giacomo G.Milazzo@sinergy.it Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 20:44:49 +0100 To: Vaughn Stewart vmwarestorageguy@gmail.com, Carl Howell chowell@uwf.edu, Jack Lyons jack1729@gmail.com Cc: "Buerger, Andreas" andreas.buerger@wincor-nixdorf.com, Nick Silkey silkey@ece.utexas.edu, toasters@mathworks.com, Nils Vogels bacardicoke@gmail.com Subject: R: R: R: VMware - snap - backup
It seems we¹re transforming this mailing list in a monothematic oneshould 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 vmdkI¹m sure you got me.
But, again, a vmdk file is a big or huge file that ³lives², full of block that change continously because the os guest is acting in itdo 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 ³living² files
Where I¹m 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, it¹d say that when you consider that VMware encapsulates data into files, NAS makes allot more sense than block. Don¹t take my word on it, EMC shares my view (see Chuck Hollis¹ 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, didn¹t 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 NetApp¹s storage virtualization directly with VMware, and NFS performs on par with FCP. You should try it, you¹d 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. :)