It's the way I have gone and snapshots seem to be working...I have everything snap mirrored to a remote site, I have brought all the VM's up at the remote site without any problems.
Matt
-----Original Message----- From: Forest Leonard [mailto:fleonard@rvigroup.com] Sent: 11 July 2007 16:25 To: Davies,Matt; Glenn Walker; Glenn Dekhayser; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: List still active?
Yes I am currently in the big volume/lun configuration. To add more to this there is also the RDM LUN configuration option. According to netapp article TR-3562 this is the way to do snapshots?
-----Original Message----- From: Davies,Matt [mailto:MDAVIES@generalatlantic.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 11:20 AM To: Glenn Walker; Glenn Dekhayser; Forest Leonard; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: List still active?
Separate LUNS, would mean that the disk share value has no effect within DRS, as the disk shares value is only valid with VM's in the same LUN? Or I am missing something ?
There seems to be 2 separate camp for the design of volumes and LUNs and VMFS stores
Either one big Volume and LUN VMFS store for the VM's
Or
One volume/LUN and VMFS store for each VM.
I still have no idea which is right or wrong :) But I can see benefits and disadvantages of both.
Cheers
Matt
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Glenn Walker Sent: 11 July 2007 15:56 To: Glenn Dekhayser; Forest Leonard; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: List still active?
To the point of separate LUNs\VMDKs - this would be preferable from the standpoint of being able to identify which VM was creating heaviest load to prevent future headaches... I'm sure there are also implications from the standpoint of separating backups\restores as well.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Glenn Dekhayser Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:41 AM To: Forest Leonard; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: List still active?
I've got a bunch of clients backing up the snapped Netapp VMFS LUN files direct to tape via ndmp, they find this to be the most convenient. VCB has some drawbacks in its ability to restore, which is why we back up of course..:-) Of course, it would be better in this instance to keep a separate Netapp Volume and Luns for each guest VM, for better snap and restore granularity. Also, you get better performance out of vmfs that way since each vmfs filesystem has its own queues, so you probably don't want to make one big one unless it's for test/dev.
Glenn (the other one) Voyant Strategies, Inc.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner- toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Forest Leonard Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:12 AM To: Scott Lowe; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: List still active?
Thanks for the info.. It turns out you are right.. I don't have a VMKernel network.. Just a VM Network.. How are you guys backing up
your
VM's? I finally got VCB to work with Arcserve. But I am not sure if
the
snapshots will be the best way to backup the VM's or not.
-----Original Message----- From: Scott Lowe [mailto:slowe@eplus.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:05 AM To: Forest Leonard; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: List still active?
Forest,
When it comes time to configure VMkernel for VMotion, then I'd definitely recommend keeping it separate from the virtual machine network. As it stands right now, you don't even need a VMkernel NIC configured because it sounds like you are using Qlogic iSCSI HBAs and only have a single ESX Server. Since the Qlogic cards handle the iSCSI traffic and there is no VMotion, there no current need for a VMkernel NIC (unless you want to use NFS from the FAS to provide additional storage for VMs--which, by the way, works pretty well and has some nice advantages over iSCSI, IMHO).
Regards, Scott Lowe ePlus Technology, Inc. slowe@eplus.com
On Jul 11, 2007, at 8:33 AM, Forest Leonard wrote:
Interesting stuff. I only have one ESX server so I haven't gotten to the Vmotion configuration yet.. That should be later this year.
I just configured a RDM to run a Virtual server on. I found an
article
where you want to create the type as NTFS if it is a RDM for a
windows
host. Not sure if I am going to use this going forward. I actually don't know if you can migrate into a RDM. It doesn't look like it.
I am only using 2 NIC's on my Vmware server.. and a QLOGIC card for
my
ISCSI access.. I may need to look at bulking up my NIC configuration. It looks like I may gain some performance if I separate my VMKernal from my Virtual Machine network?
Thanks, Forest
-----Original Message----- From: Davies,Matt [mailto:MDAVIES@generalatlantic.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 8:18 AM To: Forest Leonard; ggwalker@mindspring.com; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: List still active?
Sounds like we are both at the same stage.
We are not using RDM's yet, however when it comes to exchange we
will
have to, or I may just stick with using the Microsoft Iscsi initiatator from within the VM, not exactly supported, but I know of other
people
doing it.
We have migrated 8 machines so far, into just one datastore and have not seen any performance problems at all, although most of the machines have very low IO requirements.
We are using a script to snapshot and then replicate using
snapmirror,
it works very well, however our Virtual Centre server is also a VM which was causing a few problems with the snapshots on the VMware side not being removed, but moving this to a separate datastore seems have cured the problems, even SQL doesn't seem to have a problem.
The script is the one written by Evan Battle, that is in the newest netapp docs on VMware. I did have a few problems with ssh to the filer, but we are now using rsh and it seems to be ok.
I don't know how you have setup your virtual switches on the ESX
side,
but I got some best practice information out of VMware on that subject.
Each of our ESX IBM3550 host servers have 6 Nics, connected as follows.
2 Nics for service console VMKernel for Vmotion, load balance using Virtual port ID
2 Nics for Virtual Machine network, load balance using Virtual port
ID
2 Nics for ISCSI (Service Console and VMKernel), load balance using
IP
Hash
Hope this helps....
-----Original Message----- From: Forest Leonard [mailto:fleonard@rvigroup.com] Sent: 11 July 2007 11:06 To: Davies,Matt; ggwalker@mindspring.com; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: List still active?
Hey Matt... I am actually doing the exact same thing on a FAS 270..
I
have migrated about 7 servers so far.
Are you using RDM's (remote device mappings) for the Virtual Machines? I actually just created 2 200GB LUNs on the netapp to use as
Datastores
and have not had any performance issues.
Just wondering what your experience with RDM's are.. I added one into a virtual machine.. It just lets you map a LUN directly to a Virtual machine.
Has anyone out there used the netapp script to capture a VM
snapshot?
Thanks, Forest
From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com on behalf of Davies,Matt Sent: Wed 7/11/2007 1:00 AM To: ggwalker@mindspring.com; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: List still active?
Still working by the looks of things.
busy in process of migrating all our physical severs to VM, stored on a iscsi lun on a FAS 270.
For those that want to know we are using the software iscsi
initiator
within ESX and have not had any problems so far.
cheers
matt
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com owner-toasters@mathworks.com To: toasters@mathworks.com toasters@mathworks.com Sent: Wed Jul 11 01:03:49 2007 Subject: List still active?
I've noticed that I'm still subscribed, but have received no email since July 4th. Everyone didn't trade their NetApp gear for something
else
while I was out of town did they?? J
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