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
__________________________________________________________ FINEOS Corporation is the global brand name of FINEOS Corporation Limited and its affiliated group companies worldwide. The information contained in this e-mail is confidential, may be privileged and is intended only for the use of the recipient named above. If you are not the intended recipient or a representative of the intended recipient, you have received this e-mail in error and must not copy, use or disclose the contents of this e-mail to anybody else.
If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and permanently delete the copy you received. This e-mail has been swept for computer viruses. However, you should carry out your own virus checks. Registered in Ireland, No. 205721. http://www.FINEOS.com __________________________________________________________
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
__________________________________________________________
FINEOS Corporation is the global brand name of FINEOS Corporation Limited and its affiliated group companies worldwide.
The information contained in this e-mail is confidential, may be privileged and is intended
only for the use of the recipient named above. If you are not the intended recipient or a
representative of the intended recipient, you have received this e-mail in error and must
not copy, use or disclose the contents of this e-mail to anybody else.
If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return
e-mail and permanently delete the copy you received. This e-mail has been swept for
computer viruses. However, you should carry out your own virus checks.
Registered in Ireland, No. 205721. http://www.FINEOS.com
__________________________________________________________
Please be advised that this email may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy or re-transmit this email. If you have received this email in error, please notify us by email by replying to the sender and by telephone (call us collect at +1 202-828-0850) and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance.
In addition, Danaher and its subsidiaries disclaim that the content of this email constitutes an offer to enter into, or the acceptance of, any contract or agreement or any amendment thereto; provided that the foregoing disclaimer does not invalidate the binding effect of any digital or other electronic reproduction of a manual signature that is included in any attachment to this email.
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
__________________________________________________________
FINEOS Corporation is the global brand name of FINEOS Corporation Limited and its affiliated group companies worldwide.
The information contained in this e-mail is confidential, may be privileged and is intended
only for the use of the recipient named above. If you are not the intended recipient or a
representative of the intended recipient, you have received this e-mail in error and must
not copy, use or disclose the contents of this e-mail to anybody else.
If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return
e-mail and permanently delete the copy you received. This e-mail has been swept for
computer viruses. However, you should carry out your own virus checks.
Registered in Ireland, No. 205721. http://www.FINEOS.com
__________________________________________________________
Please be advised that this email may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy or re-transmit this email. If you have received this email in error, please notify us by email by replying to the sender and by telephone (call us collect at +1 202-828-0850) and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance.
In addition, Danaher and its subsidiaries disclaim that the content of this email constitutes an offer to enter into, or the acceptance of, any contract or agreement or any amendment thereto; provided that the foregoing disclaimer does not invalidate the binding effect of any digital or other electronic reproduction of a manual signature that is included in any attachment to this email.
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
__________________________________________________________
FINEOS Corporation is the global brand name of FINEOS Corporation Limited and its affiliated group companies worldwide.
The information contained in this e-mail is confidential, may be privileged and is intended
only for the use of the recipient named above. If you are not the intended recipient or a
representative of the intended recipient, you have received this e-mail in error and must
not copy, use or disclose the contents of this e-mail to anybody else.
If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return
e-mail and permanently delete the copy you received. This e-mail has been swept for
computer viruses. However, you should carry out your own virus checks.
Registered in Ireland, No. 205721. http://www.FINEOS.com
__________________________________________________________
Please be advised that this email may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy or re-transmit this email. If you have received this email in error, please notify us by email by replying to the sender and by telephone (call us collect at +1 202-828-0850) and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance.
In addition, Danaher and its subsidiaries disclaim that the content of this email constitutes an offer to enter into, or the acceptance of, any contract or agreement or any amendment thereto; provided that the foregoing disclaimer does not invalidate the binding effect of any digital or other electronic reproduction of a manual signature that is included in any attachment to this email.
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
__________________________________________________________
FINEOS Corporation is the global brand name of FINEOS Corporation Limited and its affiliated group companies worldwide.
The information contained in this e-mail is confidential, may be privileged and is intended
only for the use of the recipient named above. If you are not the intended recipient or a
representative of the intended recipient, you have received this e-mail in error and must
not copy, use or disclose the contents of this e-mail to anybody else.
If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return
e-mail and permanently delete the copy you received. This e-mail has been swept for
computer viruses. However, you should carry out your own virus checks.
Registered in Ireland, No. 205721. http://www.FINEOS.com
__________________________________________________________
Please be advised that this email may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy or re-transmit this email. If you have received this email in error, please notify us by email by replying to the sender and by telephone (call us collect at +1 202-828-0850) and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance.
In addition, Danaher and its subsidiaries disclaim that the content of this email constitutes an offer to enter into, or the acceptance of, any contract or agreement or any amendment thereto; provided that the foregoing disclaimer does not invalidate the binding effect of any digital or other electronic reproduction of a manual signature that is included in any attachment to this email.
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
__________________________________________________________
FINEOS Corporation is the global brand name of FINEOS Corporation Limited and its affiliated group companies worldwide.
The information contained in this e-mail is confidential, may be privileged and is intended
only for the use of the recipient named above. If you are not the intended recipient or a
representative of the intended recipient, you have received this e-mail in error and must
not copy, use or disclose the contents of this e-mail to anybody else.
If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return
e-mail and permanently delete the copy you received. This e-mail has been swept for
computer viruses. However, you should carry out your own virus checks.
Registered in Ireland, No. 205721. http://www.FINEOS.com
__________________________________________________________
Please be advised that this email may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy or re-transmit this email. If you have received this email in error, please notify us by email by replying to the sender and by telephone (call us collect at +1 202-828-0850) and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance.
In addition, Danaher and its subsidiaries disclaim that the content of this email constitutes an offer to enter into, or the acceptance of, any contract or agreement or any amendment thereto; provided that the foregoing disclaimer does not invalidate the binding effect of any digital or other electronic reproduction of a manual signature that is included in any attachment to this email.
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Thanks everybody for each contribution. It has been fine reading all from you,
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Da: Darren Sykes [mailto:Darren.Sykes@csr.com] Inviato: mercoledì 6 maggio 2009 17.04 A: Willeke, Jochen; Learmonth, Peter; Milazzo Giacomo; Page, Jeremy; Paul McGuinness Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Oggetto: RE: Againt on VMware on NFS -> append to R: NetApp3140 v EMC CX4-240
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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I think that mainly it's a configuration issue (and the fact that VMware and Netapp did a poor job disimenating their information when they found the locking problem, I think the TR was changed 4-5 times in a few months and the old settings are DANGEROUS). We run a reasonably heavy load on our 3070A (250 VMs over NFS+ FC connected 800mbs Oracle DB + 2000 people's shares via CIFS and several CAD DBs via NFS). We had some instability but after applying the settings in the latest version of the TR it's been extremely stable.
Why would you want to use VCB in an NFS environment? Storage vMotion works fine for us, although flexclone would be nice (SIS takes care of the space side but there are obviously other advantages).
Jeremy M. Page____________________
Systems Architect
* email:Jeremy.Page@gilbarco.com - * phone: 336.547.5399 - 6 fax: 336.547.5163 - * cell: 336.601.7274
________________________________
From: Milazzo Giacomo [mailto:G.Milazzo@sinergy.it] Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 3:30 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
__________________________________________________________
FINEOS Corporation is the global brand name of FINEOS Corporation Limited and its affiliated group companies worldwide.
The information contained in this e-mail is confidential, may be privileged and is intended
only for the use of the recipient named above. If you are not the intended recipient or a
representative of the intended recipient, you have received this e-mail in error and must
not copy, use or disclose the contents of this e-mail to anybody else.
If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return
e-mail and permanently delete the copy you received. This e-mail has been swept for
computer viruses. However, you should carry out your own virus checks.
Registered in Ireland, No. 205721. http://www.FINEOS.com
__________________________________________________________
Please be advised that this email may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy or re-transmit this email. If you have received this email in error, please notify us by email by replying to the sender and by telephone (call us collect at +1 202-828-0850) and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance.
In addition, Danaher and its subsidiaries disclaim that the content of this email constitutes an offer to enter into, or the acceptance of, any contract or agreement or any amendment thereto; provided that the foregoing disclaimer does not invalidate the binding effect of any digital or other electronic reproduction of a manual signature that is included in any attachment to this email.
Please be advised that this email may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy or re-transmit this email. If you have received this email in error, please notify us by email by replying to the sender and by telephone (call us collect at +1 202-828-0850) and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance.
In addition, Danaher and its subsidiaries disclaim that the content of this email constitutes an offer to enter into, or the acceptance of, any contract or agreement or any amendment thereto; provided that the foregoing disclaimer does not invalidate the binding effect of any digital or other electronic reproduction of a manual signature that is included in any attachment to this email.
-
Darren Sykes -
Learmonth, Peter -
Milazzo Giacomo -
Page, Jeremy -
Paul McGuinness -
Willeke, Jochen