If you have 20 or 30 virtual machines then VMFSis great for consolidating the VMDKs into a hit LUN. But NAS is much easierand more scalable if you have hundreds or thousands of virtual machines.
The big advantageis that you can use all your file management tools. Group the VMDKs for Exchangeservers in one folder. SQL servers in a second virtual desktops in a third,and so on. Instead of backing up LUNs or virtual machines individually simplybackup a directory channelise of VMDKs all at once. (This is much less expensive thanbuying a backup authorise for each virtual forge and also easier to manage.)For disaster recovery you can replicate the data for a whole group of virtualmachines as a hit unit.
Some people aresurprised that you can use NFS for Windows virtual machines since Windows can’tboot from NFS. This works because VMware has built NFS into ESX’s diskvirtualization forge. ESX handles the NFS protocol so that the operating systemdoesn’t undergo to. This is very similar to.
I think that in the long call,we'll find high-end NAS much more friendly for high-end VMotion / DRS farmsthan today's SANs. And I think that NAS has the potential to offer a fewbenefits that we might not find in the SAN world.
When you use FCP or iSCSI on VMWare (with VMFS) your NetApp is changed from a great storage device to a just ordinary storage solutions. You loose all the fun part: snapshots change state provisioning snapvault (is possible in theory but not in real be). ...
With NFS you don't use the file system of VMWare. It's back WAFL who rules the world. This is also a big advantage of using NFS.
And to go one go futher what do you think about the marriage between VMWare and OnTap GX over NFS? I believe this will be one with a lot of passion and firework.
To add to Dave and Reinoud's comments (and even Chuck's) Nick Triantos a NetApp Global SE has posted on his blog some VMware backup ideas if you're considering VMware on NetApp using NFS. VMware has a link to it as come up from their VMTN blog but you can get directly to it here:
We implemented NFS over ISCSI when we saw the results of ASIS on the vmdk files. We are currently deploying XP workstations through VMware for all of our contractors. All of the OS VMDKs are the same with applications being installed on a seperate VMDK.
Also. I wish you guys are going watching the Site Recovery Manager (SRM) feature closely. It would be nice to see Netapp as one of the 1st vendors to support this feature.
some of my Customers has bought NetApp and use NetApp together with VMWare´s ESX. With the new VMWare Release 3.0.2 it should now be possible for NetApp to offer mouth control for ESX Servers so that the guest servers have the Possibilty to use Snap Manager Modules.
Another interesting thing in NFS's "favor" - at least in the near call - column is there is more robust multipathing/failover using network link-layer protocols than with iSCSI's path-based models.
This will get exceed in future VMware releases but right now multipathing iSCSI on VMware either means you use the link-layer methods (which doesn't go the iSCSI path-based MPIO copy). In the past the lack of advanced VMware feature support kept customers away but everything but VCB works great on NFS.
I gotta tell you in my mind right now - it's NFS if easy is the primary create by mental act goal and FC if high throughput low ESX host CPU impact or VCB (although Peter Learmonth had a good session at VMworld on alternative solutions to VCB when using NFS) the primary create by mental act goal.
Lots of our customers are deploying on NFS - it's completely a allow VMware option.
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Related article:
http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/2007/09/why-run-vmware-.html
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