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Looking for thoughts and opinions from people regarding file server philosophies. We have data shares on five different servers that we are looking to virtualize. Probably about 3TB of data across all shares on those servers.<br />
I have plenty of room on my VMWare environment - Disk, Processor, RAM.<br />
What works for you? One big file server, all shares hanging off of it? Multiple servers to spread the shares? Within the one/each, is a larger datastore to hold the entire VMDK more efficient, or more prone to error/issue?<br />
Thanks in advance!
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Looking for thoughts and opinions from people regarding file server philosophies. We have data shares on five different servers that we are looking to virtualize. Probably about 3TB of data across all shares on those servers.
I have plenty of room on my VMWare environment - Disk, Processor, RAM.
What works for you? One big file server, all shares hanging off of it? Multiple servers to spread the shares? Within the one/each, is a larger datastore to hold the entire VMDK more efficient, or more prone to error/issue?
Thanks in advance!

VMWare File Server Philosophies

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

Virtualization is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, including (but not limited to) a virtual computer hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or computer network resources. Virtualization is usually the creation of a system that executes separate from the underlying hardware resources, or the creation of an entire desktop for systems located elsewhere, similar to thin clients.

Virtualization

Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media used to retain digital data. In addition to local storage devices like CD and DVD readers, hard drives and flash drives, solid state drives can hold enormous amounts of data in a very small device. Cloud services and other new forms of remote storage also add to the capacity of devices and their ability to access more data without building additional data storage into a device.