PAC 267-A
ESX Server Storage I:
Tips and Tricks
Mostafa Khalil
Bob Slovick
This presentation may contain
VMware confidential information.
Copyright © 2005 VMware, Inc. All rights
reserved. All other marks and names mentioned herein may
be trademarks of their respective companies.
What We Will Discuss..
Introduction to ESX Server in a SAN
environment
Design methodologies
Path management
Storage performance optimization
Basic troubleshooting and trouble avoidance
Boot from SAN
Storage Vendor Partners
Dell
EMC
Fujitsu
Fujitsu Siemens
HP
IBM
Network Appliance
NEC
3PAR
StorageTek
Sun
Xiotech
First Steps: Virtual Machine Storage
Characterization
How critical is the virtual machine?
What are its performance requirements?
What are its availability requirements?
What are its Point-in-Time (PiT) restoration
requirements?
What are its backup requirements?
What are its replication requirements?
In short, what “tier” storage does that virtual
machine belong on?
What Are Some of the Tiers?
High Tier: High performance, high availability,
often built in snapshots, to facilitate backups and
Point-in-Time (PiT) restorations, replication, full
controller redundancy, fibre drives. High cost
spindles
Mid Tier: Mid-range performance, lower
availability, MAYBE snapshots, some controller
redundancy, SCSI drives. Medium cost spindles
Lower Tier: Low performance, little internal
storage redundancy, low end SCSI drives or SATA.
Low cost spindles
Tiered Storage…
Warnings…
Technology changes and push higher tier
features to a lower tier: Better, faster,
cheaper…
A virtual machine may change tiers
throughout its “lifecycle”, due to changes in
criticality or changes in technology
Criticality is relative, and may change for a
variety of reasons, including changes in the
organization, operational processes,
regulatory requirements, disaster planning,
etc.
Tiered Storage…
How many 9’s
are you willing to pay for?
The truth: Not all applications need to be on
the