Veeam is happy to provide a free NFR license (1 year, 2 sockets) to all certified IT Pros. The license allows for the non-production use of Veeam Availability Suite v9.5 in your home lab, without any feature limitations. It works for both VMware and Hyper-V environments
COURSE of the MONTH
13 days, 16 hours left to enrollBecome a Premium Member and unlock a new, free course in leading technologies each month.
Solved
ISCSI SAN with esxi 5 large volume vs multuple smaller volumes
Posted on 2012-03-14
we recently purchased a new equalogic ISCSI SAN. we plan to use it for our vmware infra which our 7 hosts are using about 7TB spread over their local storage.
my question is we would like to connect our 7 hosts (approx 70 vm's) to the san but are unsure if it is better to create 1 big volume lets say 12TB with one datastore on it or multiple smaller volumes with multiple datastores.
help is appreciated
my question is we would like to connect our 7 hosts (approx 70 vm's) to the san but are unsure if it is better to create 1 big volume lets say 12TB with one datastore on it or multiple smaller volumes with multiple datastores.
help is appreciated
[X]
Welcome to Experts Exchange
Add your voice to the tech community where 5M+ people just like you are talking about what matters.
- Help others & share knowledge
- Earn cash & points
- Learn & ask questions
3
2
- +2
11 Comments
Active today
We prefer to create smaller LUNs, that store all your VMs on a single large LUN, for LUN contentions, and also to prevent disasters, "all eggs in one basket".
We usually carve out LUNs between 500-800GB for VMs, unless there is a requirement for a very large virtual disk, which requires a large LUN.
We usually carve out LUNs between 500-800GB for VMs, unless there is a requirement for a very large virtual disk, which requires a large LUN.
you will need a very good connection for that many vm's too wheter its 1 large lun or several smaller luns
Active today
Some of my EE Articles I've written, with Walkthroughs and Screenshots to help you configure ESXi.
HOW TO: Enable Jumbo Frames on a VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 5.0) host server using the VMware vSphere Client
HOW TO: Add an iSCSI Software Adaptor and Create an iSCSI Multipath Network in VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 4.1
HOW TO: Add an iSCSI Software Adaptor and Create an iSCSI Multipath Network in VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.0
HOW TO: Enable Jumbo Frames on a VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 5.0) host server using the VMware vSphere Client
HOW TO: Add an iSCSI Software Adaptor and Create an iSCSI Multipath Network in VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 4.1
HOW TO: Add an iSCSI Software Adaptor and Create an iSCSI Multipath Network in VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.0
Multiple luns is adviced for performance and data corruption.
If the san also has multple interfaces you can setup also multiple iscsi paths that increases the bandwith.
Disksize is not really the limit it is more the expected io from the servers. One server with just 100GB can pull that much io that other servers are gettings problems.
And an other lun with 800Gb on servers is almost doing nothing.
Keep these things in mind and you will do well.
If the san also has multple interfaces you can setup also multiple iscsi paths that increases the bandwith.
Disksize is not really the limit it is more the expected io from the servers. One server with just 100GB can pull that much io that other servers are gettings problems.
And an other lun with 800Gb on servers is almost doing nothing.
Keep these things in mind and you will do well.
Active 2 days ago
Use smaller LUNs because the EqualLogic arrays are not as space friendly as you would like. Between replication reserve and snapshots, I get about 35-40% of the array capacity available for LUNs. If you have really large LUNs, you may not have enough free space to make a snapshot, clone a volume, or perform other desired activities. If you have smaller LUNs, you can also have different policies for the LUNs, such as some LUNS getting a snapshot daily, others weekly, and some not at all. I like to keep the pagefiles of my VMs on their own separate LUN. That LUN doesn't get replicated nor snapshot, which keeps down the change rate onmy real data volumes, which reduces the amount of snapshot space required.
Active 7 days ago
I've requested that this question be deleted for the following reason:
Issue Resolved
Issue Resolved
Featured Post
You are probably backing up your data—but how and where? Ransomware is on the rise and there are variants that specifically target backups. Read on to discover why off-site is the way to go.
Question has a verified solution.
If you are experiencing a similar issue, please ask a related question
Ransomware is a malware that is again in the list of security concerns. Not only for companies, but also for Government security and even at personal use. IT departments should be aware and have the right knowledge to how to fight it.
Compliance and data security require steps be taken to prevent unauthorized users from copying data. Here's one method to prevent data theft via USB drives (and writable optical media).
Teach the user how to configure vSphere clusters to support the VMware FT feature
Open vSphere Web Client: Verify vSphere HA is enabled: Verify netowrking for vMotion and FT Logging is in place or create it: Turn On FT for a virtual machine: Verify …
Teach the user how to join ESXi hosts to Active Directory domains
Open vSphere Client: Join ESXi host to AD domain: Verify ESXi computer account in AD: Configure permissions for domain user in ESXi: Test domain user login to ESXi host:
Suggested Courses
Course of the Month13 days, 16 hours left to enroll
801 members asked questions and received personalized solutions in the past 7 days.
Join the community of 500,000 technology professionals and ask your questions.