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HaroldFlag for United States of America

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New Nexsan E18 storage

We have an EMC storage we are migrating all our VM's to a new Nexsan E18. Is there anything anyone can offer, like best practice or planning in the configuration.

We currently have around 8TB we are moving and plan to setup RAID 10.
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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try to keep your LUNs between 500 - 800GB if possible, and use multiple LUNs for VMs, and have many LUNs.

if you have Storage DRS, configure a Datastore Cluster, and get VMware vSphere Storage DRS, to allocate space for your VMs.

Make sure your VMs have no snapshots attached, if migrating using Storage vMotion.
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Hancock: your on the ball today my friend!    Shooting for 7,000 today?   :-)

Data Store clusters are configured within VMware, on the vCenter server correct?

Should I configure a single VM across multiple LUNs, is this what your saying?

I'll have to see if VMware 5.5 plus Essentials comes with DRS.

I've learned snapshots, can be your friend or foe.
Datastore Clusters are configured within VMware vCenter Server, it's a feature of Enterprise Plus.

You can configure VMs across multiple LUNs, if the VM would benefit, using different Tiered Storage, but if all your LUNs are on the same SAN, it's not going to make much different to performance (unless you are going to keep the EMC!).
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Andrew, I'm creating RAID and Volumes on the Nexsan, so am I creating LUNs within VMware?

How can I change Raw Data Mapping to virtual?
VMware vSphere does not create LUNs, VMware vSphere creates a VMFS partition on a datastore. (on a LUN already created and presented to ESXi).

If you have RDMs, you can use VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5, and create a V2V.
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try to keep your LUNs between 500 - 800GB if possible, and use multiple LUNs for VMs, and have many LUNs.  you mentioned here, so I'm thinking I create these LUNs then do my V2V, no.

Why 500-800GB?

Sorry confused.
This is just a general size we have found useful.

It's a case of do not stack all your VMs, in one single massive LUN, in case it gets corrupted or lost/formatted etc

Yes, create LUNs, and complete a V2V conversion.
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Can you span VMs across multiple LUNs?

If so, is this a good idea?

Creating LUNs, where am I doing this?
Can you span VMs across multiple LUNs?

Yes, virtual disks can be created on different LUNs, e.g. you may want to create an OS LUN, on a datastore, and Data virtual disk, on a faster LUN.

LUNs are created in/on your SAN, by connecting to the Management GUI of your SAN.
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We have a new Nexsan E18, 36TB of storage, brand new out of the box. It has created automatically, to Array's. One for each draw, 9 drives each, totally 14TB each.

I have currently about 6TB in VMs to move and migrate from ESX 3.5 to ESXi 5.5, reason for all the questions.

How would you utilize this storage, to most effective?
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Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Thanks again!