Partitioning Nimble Storage - VM Oracle Cluster

[ssnyder]

Is it possible to partition our Nimble such that storage can be "reserved" for a particular VM ESXi6.5 cluster?  In particular, we need to reduce the amount of auditable resources in our Oracle environment from not only a CPU/Host perspective, but also storage.  

[mamatadesaiNim]

When a volume is created on the Nimble, you have the option to "thickly provision" it, which will reserve 100% of the space on the Nimble.

If you want to reserve for one VM, you will need to make sure there is only one VM on the VMFS datastore which is created on top of this Nimble volume.

hth,

Mamata

[ssnyder]

Thanks Mamata.  I'm going through the volume build action now, and I do not see an option called thick provision.  Can you ellaborate?

[mamatadesaiNim]

Sure.  Are you using the Nimble vCenter Plugin, or the Nimble GUI?  Could you paste a screenshot?

On the Nimble GUI, Manage --> Data Storage --> Volumes --> + --> Create Volume --> Expand "More Options" at the bottom of this modal --> And on the 2nd screen titled "Space" you should see it.

[SvenHancke · Accepted solution]

Basically you might look into ACLs (Data Access / Initiator Groups) to restrict access to "Oracle" volumes on your Nimble storage to the desired ESXi cluster.

By the way: I strongly recommend to check with your licensing auditor about this configuration - Oracle might not be happy with such a setup; sometimes they would like to see a physically separate storage.

[ssnyder]

Thanks!  We have done just that.  Unfortunately we do not have hardware at this time to seperate storage and compute resources, so this will be our "best effort" offering to the Oracle gods in attempt to gain some favor while we wait for our more permanent solution, which is a dedicated Nutanix hyperconverged node.  

I heard a great analogy regarding Oracle licensing last week.  Their licensing is akin to purchasing a parking ticket at a public garage.  You only have one car to park but you have the potential to park in any spot in the garage, therefore you will be charged for every parking space in the lot.