Mark,
You can definitely install MS iSCSI within a virtual machine and get SME to work as you would expect it to - we've done it. Just keep in mind this is definitely not a recommended practice per VMWare, and it is not recommended to use MSCS within VMWare per Microsoft AND VMWare. Not recommended, and not supported.
But with Microsoft Premiere support and almost any good support organization (Netapp and VMWare included) there is always best-effort support anyways.
Chris,
We haven't seen a very large increase in performance for the few clients we migrated from MS-iSCSI to RDM, but they were never high-IO users anyways. I would just say it is a best practice to use RDMs wherever possible, and you are removing another layer from the storage subsystem so that can't be bad.
HTH,
Hadrian
From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Nils Vogels Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 7:50 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Another Snapmanager Question (MS Exchange, VMware ESX)
Hi Mark, 2008/5/20 Neis, Mark <Mark.Neis@gisa.demailto:Mark.Neis@gisa.de>: So far we've used SnapManager for Exchange to create the Snapshots we then back up to tape via NDMP. If I see this correctly, SnapManager/SnapDrive for Exchange won't work if the storage is handed out to the underlying ESX instead of the Exchange server itself. On the other hand, SnapManager for VMware - which is to be released in August, as I could read - doesn't know about the internals of its VMs and hence is not the tool of choice to back up our Exchange StorageGroups.
Does anyone out there have a similar scenario? Is there any way to use SnapManager for Exchange in the environment I described above? What ways do you back up your Exchange installations?
For every customer a different scenario offcourse, but you can install MS iSCSI Initiator in a VM, stack SnapDrive on top of that, and in this way run SnapManager for Exchange.
Basically, you connect a dedicated LUN from within the VM directly to a NetApp, and not use any VMWare functionality (except for OS disks) to run Exchange.
This way you have your snapshotted LUNs and you can back them up any way you like.
There are many variation to this theme, and I heard rumours that NetApp is working on expanding possibilities of SnapManager for VI and SnapDrive, but I'm sure your SE will have more information on that ;) HTH & HAND,
Nils -- Simple guidelines to happiness: Work like you don't need the money, Love like your heart has never been broken and Dance like no one can see you.