HP 4000 VSA - thin or thick provisioning the VSA disk

[AN Helpdesk]

Should the VSA's VMDk file be thick or thin provisioned? There is nothing else on the datastore except the one 2TB VMDK file for the VSA. There is constantly an alert that tells me that the datastore is nearly full.

I am presuming that if I would have created the VSA's VMDK as a thin disk, I wouldn't get that alert.

My questions are:
1.)Is there a recommended setting?
Should this be thick or thin provisioned?
2.)Is it OK to use VMware converter to thin provision the VSA disk?
3.)Do I need to worry about that alert at all?

[Uwe Zessin]

Full provisioned - you do not want to lose time due to VMDK space allocations while the VSA is serving data - do you?
And the disks need to be set "independent", because snapshots on a VSA that is a member of a management group are not allowed.

For the vCenter alarm... I create an extra folder in the Datastores view and put an alarm on it that triggers when the used capacity is (e.g.) *LESS* than 80 percent. In that case the alarm will go on when one _removes_ the VSA ;-)

[AN Helpdesk]

Thank you.

Does anybody know if there is a VMware or HP/Lefthand document that says as much?

[Uwe Zessin]

Yes, for example:

"HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN Solution Quick start guide",
AX694-96002 / c02008675

5 Configure the data disk.
-- Virtual device node must be SCSI (1:0)
-- Mode must be Independent > Persistent

6 Reserve at least 2000 MHz CPU and 1024 MB memory.

[AN Helpdesk]

I meant thick vs thin provisioning.
Sorry.

[Uwe Zessin]

No, haven't seen that as far as I can remember. Thin-provisioning (THP) is a rather new ESX feature and I guess nobody bothered to put that in the documentation.

But as I already wrote: I don't think it makes sense for a VSA in production.

(OK. I've used it in a test environment where I created a datastore and put 8 THP-enabled VSAs on it to test a bit with Network-RAID-5 and 6...)

[Jamessa]

When you create Thin disks and assign them to a VSA the VSA does something to consume all of the space right away. I created Thin disks and the Datastores showed full usage with no Data on the VSA SAN. So to that point I don't think it matters Thick or Thin.