Posted by Wen Yu
Alliances Staff SE
VMware® vSphere® 5, which shipped in the summer of 2011, delivers better application performance and availability for all business-critical applications while automating the management of an increasingly broad pool of datacenter resources. That includes storage technology from NetApp, a valued partner that has worked closely with VMware to develop solutions that work together seamlessly and accelerate the shift to cloud computing for our mutual customers.
As part of that effort, NetApp has released a comprehensive new publication that guides our customers through the deployment of solutions that combine vSphere with NetApp. The new NetApp Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere (technical report TR-3749) includes valuable new content specific to the powerful new storage features in vSphere 5.
In his recent blog, Vaughn Stewart of NetApp raves about the report. It contains deployment considerations and best practices that have been validated by both NetApp and VMware. Contents include:
- An introduction to storage concepts in vSphere 5
- Updated storage maximums, supported options, and NetApp integration tables
- Support for the VSC with the vCSA or vCenter Server Appliance
- Host Profiles
- VMFS 5
- Storage DRS, affinity rules and maintenance mode
- SIOC or Storage I/O Controls
As you dig into this 118-page report, I suggest you pay close attention to the design best practices on the following topics that vSphere 5 customers are likely to find especially valuable:
- Protocol choices - vSphere5 has full support for NFS, iSCSI, FCP and FCoE. Ever wonder which protocol to use and what to expect with each, in terms of usability, supportability and performance? The protocol benefits and considerations sections of the report will give you a clear rundown of what to expect with each, and guides you through all the way.
- Virtual Storage Console integration with VMware vCenter ™ - If you have not used the Virtual Storage Console, then this section is also a must-read. Virtual Storage Console enables VI Administrators to have more visibility into the storage “black box”. When storage volumes are presented to the ESX server clusters, admins do not have any visibility into the volume: for example, datastore to flexvol relationship, dedup setting, actual volume size when thin provisioning is enabled. VSC completes the picture and brings all relevant storage backend related info to the VI admin.
- Storage IO Control usage with NFS and VMFS storage - With intelligent storage like NetApp FAS systems, SIOC settings can be configured to match with the array side for end-to-end quality of service control for the cloud infrastructure.
- Storage DRS considerations - When Storage DRS is configured to run in automatic mode, the storage vMotion migrations of VMs between datastores have implications on dedup enabled volumes. Read this section and make sure all considerations are understood when you consider using Storage DRS with NetApp storage.
The final product is more than a testament to a great partnership. It’s a standard-setting resource that will speed the journey to IT and business transformation for our customers. I invite you to take a look at the best practices in the report and share your feedback or questions in the comments section below. We're always looking for ways to make our customers' lives easier!
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