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The only possible consequences are really bad performance, either for your VMs or for your file sharing.<br />
The Exchange server may be affected most, because Exchange has a poor tolerance for high storage latency.<br />
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In practice, you may have no problems at all, it all depends on your particular load.<br />
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If you know the IO rates of all your apps, you could calculate if the storage will support it. If not, you could simply try and see how it performs.<br />

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Hi Robocat, <br />
I agree with your response. What I really need are articles or vmware documentation written somewhere that this is what will happen. I basically need to explain to management how this will affect our infrastructure if we do it this way. They have requested expert information and documentation.
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It depends on what you're trying to prove. Do you actually want to consolidate everything or not ?<br />
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E.g. I've seen papers before that say that your exchange storage should be dedicated. I've never seen articles that say that you can consolidate everything in all circumstances.<br />
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Yes, papers that say what should be dedicated. Uhm ... maybe news articles that say you can very easily overwhelm your storage by consolodating, being proactive, all that kind of stuff...Basically I need it to be from an article or the vmware website or the equallogic website. I've tried to ask them both specifically but they have not been able to point me to anything yet.<br />
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Thanks for your help
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Hi Everyone, <br />
Im hoping I can get some help. I'm looking for specific recommendations, articles, and real data that will support the consequences of having your production virtual machines (ie. sql server, exchange server, domain controller, web server) sharing the same SAN or other storage product. I have an Equallogic SAN with 15k SAS drives. 1.53 TB Raid 5+0. We currently have 10 production virtual machines running in a Vi3 infrastructure on two ESX Servers. While understand that it is possible to have your file shares and virtual machines on the same SAN I'm looking for the consequences and worst case scenarios. I appreciate any input although I really need articles or reports from valid experts in the industry. <br />
<br />
Thanks for your help
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Hi Everyone, 
Im hoping I can get some help. I'm looking for specific recommendations, articles, and real data that will support the consequences of having your production virtual machines (ie. sql server, exchange server, domain controller, web server) sharing the same SAN or other storage product. I have an Equallogic SAN with 15k SAS drives. 1.53 TB Raid 5+0. We currently have 10 production virtual machines running in a Vi3 infrastructure on two ESX Servers. While understand that it is possible to have your file shares and virtual machines on the same SAN I'm looking for the consequences and worst case scenarios. I appreciate any input although I really need articles or reports from valid experts in the industry. 

Thanks for your help

What are the consequences of having your production Virtual Machines on the same storage as your file shares?

VMware, a software company founded in 1998,  was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies.

VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture.  Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.

VMware

Windows Server 2003 was based on Windows XP and was released in four editions: Web, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter. It also had derivative versions for clusters, storage and Microsoft’s Small Business Server. Important upgrades included integrating Internet Information Services (IIS), improvements to Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy (GP), and the migration to Automated System Recovery (ASR).

Windows Server 2003

Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, based on the Microsoft Vista codebase, is the last 32-bit server operating system released by Microsoft. It has a number of versions, including including Foundation, Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web, HPC Server, Itanium and Storage; new features included server core installation and Hyper-V.