Best Practice for creating a Windows 2012 R2 file server VM with a C: (OS) and D: (DATA) partition?

[quantum-it]

I am in process of deploying a Windows 2012 R2 Standard server, as a primary file server for our environment. I have create an 80GB VM, which is acting as the C: drive, and is solely for the OS and logs.

My questions is, for the D: partition/volume (used only for data sharing/collection) does it make more sense from an administrative standpoint to create this as another virtual machine and then mount that as the D: drive, or is it just simpler to create a LUN from my storage array and mount it to the virtual machine using iSCSI? I'm using a Nimble Storage array for all VMs and iSCSI LUNs.

The initial size of the D: volume will be 1.5TB, and I want the flexibility to be able to dynamically grow it, when it starts reaching capacity.

[jkincer57]

It depends what your backup software is...

Option1     Create a new volume on the Nimble, present it to your hosts, create a new VMDK on it for the D drive and configure within windows.  VMware based backups (VEEAM) will be able to backup this volume, and Nimble will be able to snapshot it as well.

Option2     Create a new volume on the Nimble, present it to the VM using the iSCSI initiator.  Make sure you have 2 storage NICs on the VM and your hosts are configured correctly for multi-pathing.  VMware based backups (VEEAM) will not be able to backup this in guest iSCSI mounted volume, but the Nimble will still be able to snap it.

Either option will allow you to grow the volume on the Nimble side and for option 1 increase the size of the VMDK.

[j-gray34]

If you're using Hyper-v R2, I would simply create an additional vhd/vhdx and make it a SCSI disk. SCSI disks can be resized on the fly without having to power down the VM.

[quantum-it]

Yep, I'm using Veeam.

So for Option 1, what is the max size I will be able to grow that second VMDK out to?   Can I go larger than 2TB (I keep seeing that number listed as a 'ceiling' for VMWare).

[jkincer57 · Accepted solution]

It depends on what version VMFS datastore.  v3 max is 2tb minus some overhead and v5 is 62tb minus some overhead.

[quantum-it]

I am using ESXi 6.0 U1, so I am assuming this means that the VMDK created would be v5?

[jkincer57]

the summary tab of the datastore will tell you for sure.