We spent months attempting to
get something that worked (we use SMVI which takes snapshots every hour in our
environment).
I believe we’ve got to the
bottom of it. The root cause of our issues was VMWare tools; we’d
upgraded VMWare tools repeatedly on the VM’s over a number of years.
As a result we didn’t have
the VSS provider installed which caused a pause of 30 seconds to a minute for
each VM as VMWare tool attempted to quiesce the VM’s disks.
So, if you’re having
problems after applying the patch then I’d recommend making sure that you
make sure every VM on the datastore is running the latest version of VMWare
Tools with VSS.
Darren
From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com
[mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Willeke, Jochen
Sent: 06 May 2009 13:48
To: Learmonth, Peter; Milazzo Giacomo; Page, Jeremy; Paul McGuinness
Cc: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: RE: Againt on VMware on NFS -> append to R: NetApp3140 v EMC
CX4-240
Hi,
we do see this behaviour as well when
running Backup with VMWare-Snapshots.
All vmdk’s are mounted over nfs from
netapp-Storage.
Sadly our colleagues tried the procedure
described in this TR on one test-ESX host with ESX 3.5 update 3 but without
success. The VM still seems to hang during backup-process and we do have at
most 2 vdisks per VM.
Would be glad to hear other people’s
experience about this issue, who have applied this patch.
Regards
Jochen
From:
owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf
Of Learmonth, Peter
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 9:44 AM
To: Milazzo Giacomo; Page, Jeremy; Paul McGuinness
Cc: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: RE: Againt on VMware on NFS -> append to R: NetApp3140 v EMC
CX4-240
Hi guys
Please do NOT disable NFS locks.
There is a fix for the VM hang on VM snapshot
commit issue, which is detailed in TR3428 (http://www.netapp.com/us/library/technical-reports/tr-3428.html
starting on p.79).
If this does not work, please check that you
have followed all the steps, that the entry in /etc/vmware/config is correct
(look closely at the quotes), then open a case with VMware, NetApp or both.
Without the fix, the freeze can be 15-30
seconds or more per virtual disk. If a VM has a few virtual disks, the
freeze for that VM can be minutes. With the patch applied and activated,
the freeze is only noticeable (more than 1 second) with many vdisks.
Share and enjoy!
Peter
From:
Milazzo Giacomo [mailto:G.Milazzo@sinergy.it]
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 12:30 AM
To: Page, Jeremy; Paul McGuinness
Cc: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: Againt on VMware on NFS -> append to R: NetApp3140 v EMC CX4-240
Just a doubt about VMware on NFS stability.
NFS strage by default
have NFS locks enabled: this permits best protection and avoids more than one
access at time on a vmdk file.
During a vMotion, a
backup or a snapshot (VMware one), with NFS locks enabled, the ESX o.s. creates
some freeze extended in time, sometimes also dozens of seconds. These limits
have been improved with ESX 3.5U3 but not completely solved.
To avoid these
strange problems we need to disable NFS locks. But in this case the issue (I’ve
already experienced it a couple of time) is that if VMware cluster fails or
malfunctions while it’s in maintenance mode there’s the risk that
the VM will run on two different hosts at the same time: the result is a BSOD
on that VM and that VM file system (vmdk) will be definitively corrupt!!!
Wth NFS is true that
we can have good performances, high flexibility but we can’t use VCB,
storage vMotion, linked clone and VDI. There aren’t SCSI reservations as
VMFS has, so it’s less stable.
Regards,
Da:
owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] Per conto
di Page, Jeremy
Inviato: lunedì 27 aprile 2009 15.14
A: Paul McGuinness; toasters@mathworks.com
Oggetto: RE: NetApp3140 v EMC CX4-240
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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