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What DataStore size do you use?

 
jrich52352
Trusted Contributor

What DataStore Size Do You Use with VMware?

So what size datastores do you guys use with vmware and what version of vmware?

just curious what other folks are doing. Im running 5.1 and i tend to stay around 2tb, depending on the use.

18 REPLIES 18
marktheblue45
Valued Contributor

What DataStore size do you use?

Hi Justin, we create VM O/S datastores for the operating system and VM Data datastores. We are trying to keep each datastore limited to 15 VM's so the VM O/S stores are set to 500 GB and the VM Data datastores are set to 1TB. Currently our array is truly live and most of our VM's are still on the NetApp storage until we get our Commvault Simpana suite in. Windows file servers, SQL and exchange will be in guest iSCSI attached for the log and DB volumes. All thin provisioned.

Regards,

Mark.

marktheblue45
Valued Contributor

What DataStore size do you use?

Currently our array is truly live ....... Should read Currently our Nimble array is not truly live yet.

aherbert23
Trusted Contributor

Re: What DataStore size do you use?

I get this question a lot when working with new customers. I counsel them that the strategy should be to focus on putting applications in datastores to match with snapshot protection and replication schedules. This will then define the size required based on the quantity and size of the VMs for that application. This is a better plan than just putting as many VMs in a datastore that fit. 

jrich52352
Trusted Contributor

Re: What DataStore size do you use?

Adam,

I actually ran in to a problem doing that, snapshots were failing due to VMware being unable to quiesce in a timely manor. There is about 21 VMs on a 2TB volume, which make up a development environment for us. Havent had time to get back to working on that, but since we are a SaaS based company its harder to look at things per application/usage. I think that makes more sense for things like maybe Exchange or other corp related stuff. In production we'd tend to protect them all the same

Currently Im running 2tb datastores and trying to balance the number of VMs with the expect IO requirements of the systems.

Thanks!

aherbert23
Trusted Contributor

Re: What DataStore size do you use?

Another piece of advice is to only quiesce volumes that are running SQL or Exchange workloads. Then isolate these applications onto their own datastores. They are really the only applications that benefit from application consistency. All other applications typically recovery without any issue from crash consistent snapshots.

jrich52352
Trusted Contributor

Re: What DataStore size do you use?

Thats a pretty good idea, it will definitely help with the timeout issues. I'll give that a try whenever i get time to focus on that project again.

joebrug52
Occasional Visitor

Re: What DataStore size do you use?

Just set up my nimble last week and have been storage vmotioning like crazy.  I firstly used the Nimble recommended "5-10 VM's per datastore" for the vm snapshotting.  Everyone else I talked to said this is a crazy low recommendation.  I usually also create 500GB Datastores and put my VM O/Ss on them.. if the VM requires a larger "data" drive, I usually create its own datastore for that.. not sure if this is best practice or not.  Yesterday I created a 2TB datastore and started moving some of the smaller VM's to it.. well now I'm up to 15 or so VM's and just saw your comment on that you only need to "quiesce" the VMs if they're SQL or Exchange.  Interesting.   So for non SQL/Exchange Datastores, you recommend just putting Synchronization to "none" instead of "vmware vcenter" ?

Learning as I go here but really having fun with the Nimble so far.

aherbert23
Trusted Contributor

Re: What DataStore size do you use?

That's correct, you can just set the volume collection synchronization to none. The snapshots can still be used for clones and easily recover data.

tmoore106
Trusted Contributor

Re: What DataStore size do you use?

My lab is VMware 5.1 on Nimble and I run a mix of 1 and 2TB volumes.