suba

hi there

i would like to know how VM Guest on VMware (ESX) use the storage. when a VM Guest is on, does it load the whole image to the ESX Server? what are the disk activities between the VM Guest on storage with the ESX Server?

which one would be better for VMware? SAN or NAS? will they be fast enough?

David_Wallis

The disks are presented as a vmdk I would suspect that it accesses them on the fly, it certainly doesnt load them all into memory, however I suspect some aspect of caching is done.

We previously used an MSA1500, and are currently using a HP EVA and its fast enough.

SAN / NAS are both supported.

Size of you environment, number of guests etc etc will effect your choices more.

I've even used iscsi before and that was ok

Id still recommend local disks for the install and 'swap' files etc.
David

Ian Cook

depends what you want to know re the storage, when you create a VM whatever space you create is always written to the SAN/NAS/DAS so a 20gb file is a 20gb file, it doesnt load that into memory though !

If you can be a bit more specific can maybe answer more thoroughly

Ian
Currently sunning myself in Nice at TSX

druddle

I dont know much about VMWare but i have designed and configured the storage for a couple of environments and used Netapp (iSCSI and NAS). Works a treat, just check the compatibility matrix for versions of Snapdrive supported....

Dave

suba

well, i am running vm desktops (windows XP) on ESX 3.0. local is good but no DR support. i was told NAS is slow and SAN is expensive!

so does vmware only load whatever is require from the vmdk disk?

Ian Cook

vmware (ESX) loads to memory exactly what a physical box does, its just more efficient with its handling of it.