NetApp与VMware vSphere存储最佳实践指南

需积分: 10 53 浏览量更新于2024-07-27 收藏 6.27MB PDF 举报

"NetApp Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere 技术报告提供了在实施VMware vSphere时使用NetApp统一存储阵列的最佳实践。报告详细介绍了NetApp自2001年以来为VMware解决方案提供的高级存储特性，以及运行Data ONTAP和ESX Server或ESXi Server的存储阵列的操作指南。这些技术被记录下来并称为‘最佳实践’。" 在VMware vSphere环境中，NetApp存储的最佳实践涵盖了多个关键领域，旨在优化性能、可用性和效率。以下是报告中的主要知识点： 1. **执行摘要**: 报告的核心在于提高VMware环境中的存储效率，通过运用NetApp的创新存储功能来增强虚拟基础设施。 2. **实施最佳实践**: 实施这些最佳实践旨在确保系统的稳定性和高性能，同时降低管理复杂性。 3. **目标受众**: 本报告面向的是系统管理员、IT专业人员和架构师，他们负责设计、部署和管理基于NetApp存储的VMware vSphere环境。 4. **文档路线图**: 文档提供了一个结构化的指南，从VMware存储选项的概述，到存储网络设计和设置，以及特定的存储技术和功能。 5. **VMware存储选项概述**: 解释了虚拟基础设施中的存储基础，包括多协议存储阵列的价值，80/20规则（即80%的资源利用率和20%的预留空间），以及VMFS和NFS数据存储的区别。 6. **VMFS和NFS数据存储**: VMFS是VMware的原生文件系统，适合SAN环境；NFS则更适合NAS环境，两者各有优势，可以根据需求选择。 7. **SAN原始设备映射**: 用于直接连接到存储阵列的块级存储，适用于需要高性能I/O的应用。 8. **数据存储比较表**: 提供了不同存储选项的比较，帮助决策者选择最适合的存储类型。 9. **VMware虚拟磁盘格式**: 讨论了不同的磁盘格式，如 Thick 和 Thin Provisioning，以及它们对存储效率的影响。 10. **存储阵列的精简配置**: 允许按需分配存储空间，减少物理存储需求，提高存储利用率。 11. **存储阵列的数据去重**: 通过去除重复数据节省存储空间，进一步提升效率。 12. **vStorage Array Integration in VMware vSphere 4.1**: 描述了NetApp与VMware vSphere的深度集成，提供更高级别的存储服务和管理功能。 13. **存储网络设计与设置**: 包括FC存储网络和以太网存储网络的基础知识，以及Cisco Nexus 1000V等交换机在虚拟化环境中的角色。这些最佳实践为NetApp和VMware环境的管理员提供了宝贵的指导，帮助他们充分利用硬件资源，优化虚拟化环境的性能，并确保高可用性。通过遵循这些实践，组织可以实现更高效、更可靠的存储管理，同时降低总体拥有成本。

16 NetApp Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere

2.9 INCREASING STORAGE USE

NetApp offers storage virtualization technologies that can enhance the storage savings provided by

VMware thin-provisioning technology. FAS data deduplication and thin provisioning for VMFS datastores

and RDM LUNs offer considerable storage savings by increasing storage use of the FAS array. Both of

these technologies are native to NetApp arrays and do not require any configuration considerations or

changes to be implemented within the ESX servers.

By using the storage savings technologies of NetApp with VMware, you can increase server hardware

use to match that of its physical servers. Reducing storage hardware results in reduced acquisition and

operational costs.

Note: All virtual disks stored on NetApp NFS are thin-provisioned VMDKs and provide VMware

clustering support.

Figure 8) VMs deployed on NetApp NFS are always thin provisioned and provide clustering support.

2.10 STORAGE ARRAY THIN PROVISIONING

You should be very familiar with traditional storage provisioning and with the manner in which storage is

preallocated and assigned to a server or, in the case of VMware, a VM. It is also a common practice for

server administrators to overprovision storage to avoid running out of storage and the associated

application downtime when expanding the provisioned storage. Although no system can run at 100%

storage use, methods of storage virtualization allow administrators to address and oversubscribe storage

in the same manner as with server resources (such as CPU, memory, networking, and so on). This form

of storage virtualization is referred to as thin provisioning.

Traditional provisioning preallocates storage; thin provisioning provides storage on demand. The value of

thin-provisioned storage is that storage is treated as a shared resource pool and is consumed only as

17 NetApp Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere

each individual VM requires it. This sharing increases the total usage rate of storage by eliminating the

unused but provisioned areas of storage that are associated with traditional storage. The drawback to thin

provisioning and oversubscribing storage is that (without the addition of physical storage) if every VM

requires its maximum possible storage at the same time, there will not be enough storage to satisfy the

requests.

NETAPP THIN-PROVISIONING OPTIONS

NetApp thin provisioning extends VMware thin provisioning for VMDKs. It also allows LUNs that are

serving VMFS datastores to be provisioned to their total capacity while consuming only as much storage

as is required to store the VMDK files (which can be either a thick or thin format). In addition, LUNs

connected as RDMs can be thin provisioned.

When you enable NetApp thin-provisioned LUNs, NetApp recommends deploying these LUNs in FlexVol

volumes that are also thin provisioned with a capacity that is 2x the size of the LUN. By deploying a LUN

in this manner, the FlexVol volume acts merely as a quota. The storage consumed by the LUN is reported

in FlexVol and its containing aggregate.

2.11 STORAGE ARRAY DATA DEDUPLICATION

One of the most popular VMware features is the ability to rapidly deploy new VMs from stored VM

templates. A VM template includes a VM configuration file (.vmx) and one or more virtual disk files

(.vmdk), which include an operating system, common applications, and patch files or system updates.

Deploying from templates saves administrative time by copying the configuration and virtual disk files and

registering this second copy as an independent VM. By design, this process introduces duplicate data for

each new VM deployed. Figure 9 shows an example of typical storage consumption in a vSphere

deployment.

Figure 9) Storage consumption with a traditional array.

NetApp offers a data deduplication technology called FAS data deduplication. With NetApp FAS

deduplication, VMware deployments can eliminate the duplicate data in their environment, enabling

greater storage use. Deduplication virtualization technology enables multiple VMs to share the same

physical blocks in a NetApp FAS system in the same manner that VMs share system memory. It can be

seamlessly introduced into a virtual data center without having to make any changes to VMware

18 NetApp Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere

administration, practices, or tasks. Deduplication runs on the NetApp FAS system at scheduled intervals

and does not consume any CPU cycles on the ESX server. Figure 10 shows an example of the impact of

deduplication on storage consumption in a vSphere deployment.

Deduplication is enabled on a volume, and the amount of data deduplication realized is based on the

commonality of the data stored in a deduplication-enabled volume. For the largest storage savings,

NetApp recommends grouping similar operating systems and similar applications into datastores, which

ultimately reside on a deduplication-enabled volume.

Figure 10) Storage consumption after enabling FAS data deduplication.

DEDUPLICATION CONSIDERATIONS WITH VMFS AND RDM LUNS

Enabling deduplication when provisioning LUNs produces storage savings. However, the default behavior

of a LUN is to reserve an amount of storage equal to the provisioned LUN. This design means that

although the storage array reduces the amount of capacity consumed, any gains made with deduplication

are for the most part unrecognizable, because the space reserved for LUNs is not reduced.

To recognize the storage savings of deduplication with LUNs, you must enable NetApp LUN thin

provisioning.

Note: Although deduplication reduces the amount of consumed storage, the VMware administrative

team does not see this benefit directly, because its view of the storage is at a LUN layer, and

LUNs always represent their provisioned capacity, whether they are traditional or thin

provisioned. The NetApp Virtual Storage Console (VSC) provides the VI administrator with the

storage use at all layers in the storage stack.

When you enable dedupe on thin-provisioned LUNs, NetApp recommends deploying these LUNs in

FlexVol volumes that are also thin provisioned with a capacity that is 2x the size of the LUN. When the

LUN is deployed in this manner, the FlexVol volume acts merely as a quota. The storage consumed by

the LUN is reported in FlexVol and its containing aggregate.

DEDUPLICATION ADVANTAGES WITH NFS

Unlike with LUNs, when deduplication is enabled with NFS, the storage savings are immediately available

and recognized by the VMware administrative team. The benefit of dedupe is transparent to storage and

VI administrative teams. Special considerations are not required for its usage.

19 NetApp Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere

DEDUPLICATION MANAGEMENT WITH VMWARE

Through the NetApp vCenter plug-ins, VMware administrators have the ability to enable, disable, and

update data deduplication on a datastore-by-datastore basis. The details on this capability are covered in

the vSphere Dynamic Storage Provisioning and Management section of this report.

2.12 VSTORAGE ARRAY INTEGRATION IN VMWARE VSPHERE 4.1

With the release of vSphere 4.1, VMware has delivered a set of storage constructs enhancing storage

array integration in vSphere. These enhancements consist of three main components:

 vStorage APIs for array integration

 Storage I/O control

 Storage performance statistics

VSTORAGE APIS FOR ARRAY INTEGRATION

vStorage APIs for array integration (VAAI) provide a mechanism for the acceleration of certain functions

typically performed at the hypervisor by offloading these operations to the storage array. The goal of VAAI

is to enable greater scalability at the host layer by freeing hypervisor resources (CPU, memory, I/O, and

so on) during operations such as provisioning and cloning. This first release of VAAI provides support for

new features only in VMFS datastores. In the case of NFS datastores on NetApp storage, many

operations with respect to VM provisioning and cloning are already offloaded to the storage array with the

combined capabilities of the VSC and file-level FlexClone. The initial release of VAAI expands VMFS to

include similar capabilities. The current release of VAAI has three capabilities:

 Full copy. When a data copy is initiated from the ESX/ESXi host, VAAI enables the storage array to

perform that copy within the array, without the host having to read and write the data. This reduces

the time and network load of cloning and migrating VMs with vMotion.

 Block zeroing. When a new virtual disk is created, such as an eager-zeroed thick VMDK, the disk

must be formatted and written full of zeroes. VAAI allows the storage array to format zeroes into the

disks, removing this workload from the host.

 Hardware-assisted locking. VMFS is a shared cluster file system. Therefore, it requires

management of metadata and locking to make sure that multiple hosts do not gain write access to the

same data simultaneously. VAAI provides an alternative method of locking to that of SCSI-2

reservations used in previous releases. This new method of locking is managed automatically by the

host and storage array and allows for greater scalability of VMFS datastores.

VAAI support requires that the storage array is running an operating system version that provides

support. To use VAAI, the NetApp array must be running NetApp Data ONTAP version 8.0.1. VAAI is

enabled by default in Data ONTAP and in ESX/ESXi. Version 2.0 of the VSC indicates whether or not a

storage array supports VAAI and if VAAI is enabled on that array.

STORAGE I/O CONTROL

The storage I/O control (SIOC) feature introduced in vSphere 4.1 enables quality of service control for

storage using the concepts of shares and limits in the same way CPU and memory resources have been

managed in the past. SIOC allows the administrator to make sure that certain VMs are given priority

access to storage compared to other VMs, based on the allocation of resource shares, maximum IOPS

limits, and whether or not the datastore has reached a specified congestion threshold. SIOC is currently

only supported on FC or iSCSI VMFS datastores.

To use SIOC, it must first be enabled on the datastore, and then resource shares and limits must be

applied to the VMs in that datastore. The VM limits are applied on the Resources tab in the VM Edit

Settings dialog window. By default, all VMs in the datastore are given equal resource shares and

unlimited IOPS.

20 NetApp Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere

Figure 11) Enabling SIOC on a datastore and VM in vSphere 4.0.

SIOC does not take action to limit storage throughput of a VM based on the value of its resource shares

until the datastore congestion threshold is met. As long as the overall performance of the datastore is

sufficient, according to the threshold, all VMs on the datastore have equal access to the storage. The

congestion threshold is set per datastore in a value of milliseconds of latency. The default value is 30ms,

and most environments do not need to adjust this value. Storage resource shares are set in values of low,

normal, and high (these values are 500, 1,000, and 2,000, respectively), or a custom value may be set.

The amount of resource shares is used to determine how much throughput one VM is given compared to

another VM on the same datastore in which SIOC is enabled. For example, when SIOC limitations are

imposed on the datastore, a VM with 1,000 shares is entitled to twice the access to resources as a VM

with 500 shares. The actual amount of throughput achievable by each VM is dependent on the demands

of the VMs. Viewing the share settings of multiple VMs can be done in the vSphere Client datastores view

by selecting a datastore and then the Virtual Machine tab.

The access of a VM to a datastore can also be limited to a maximum storage IOPS. Setting a maximum

IOPS limit on a VM causes vSphere to continuously limit the throughput of that VM to that number of

IOPS, even if the congestion threshold has not been surpassed. To limit a VM to a certain amount of

throughput in MB/sec, you must use the IOPS limit by setting an appropriate maximum IOPS value

according to the VM’s typical I/O size. For example, to limit a VM with a typical I/O size of 8k to 10MB/sec

of throughput, set the maximum IOPS for the VM to 1,280. The following formula may be used: MB/sec ÷

I/O size = IOPS. For example: 10,240,000 ÷ 8,000 = 1,280.

STORAGE PERFORMANCE STATISTICS

An additional storage enhancement in vSphere 4.1 is an increase in available storage performance

statistics available both in vCenter and by using the esxtop command. In VI3 environments, gathering

storage performance metrics directly in vCenter was limited to viewing the performance of specific

physical disks. This allowed some monitoring of storage performance per datastore on NetApp storage

arrays because a typical FC datastore in a NetApp environment is made up of one LUN presented from

the storage system and would be represented as one physical disk in the vCenter performance monitor.

Isolating complete datastore performance was difficult when multiple disks or LUNs were used to make

up one datastore. This limitation continued into vSphere 4.0. Additionally, the ability to view metrics per

NFS datastore or individual virtual disks attached to VMs was not available in both VI3 and vSphere 4.0.

The metrics viewable for hosts and VMs in vSphere 4.0 are shown in Figure 12.

剩余117页未读，继续阅读

sharp_zeng

粉丝: 0
资源: 1

NetApp与VMware vSphere存储最佳实践指南

NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices

面向VMware vSphere的NetApp存储的最佳实践

面向VMware vSphere 的 NetApp存储最佳实践.pdf

VMware搭建FC平台

window server 文件服务器 迁移到netapp

netapp9.x模拟器

netapp存储配置练习.rar

netapp 存储安装配置文档

netapp存储默认账号密码

netapp oncommand system manager

最新资源

window server 文件服务器迁移到netapp