Comments on: Responsible Thin Provisioning in VMware vSphere http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/ Informed Virtualization Criticism Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:50:42 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Most useful VMware vSphere storage posts of the last year « Steve Goodman's Tech Blog http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-9666 Most useful VMware vSphere storage posts of the last year « Steve Goodman's Tech Blog Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:19:39 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-9666 [...] also a couple of Thin Provisioning posts I’d found interesting over a VCritical - Responsible Thin Provisioning in VMware vSphere and The Last Resort - PowerShell Prevents Datastore Emergencies. Though to be honest, I don’t see [...] [...] also a couple of Thin Provisioning posts I’d found interesting over a VCritical – Responsible Thin Provisioning in VMware vSphere and The Last Resort – PowerShell Prevents Datastore Emergencies. Though to be honest, I don’t see [...]

]]> By: Welcome to vSphere-land! » Thin Provisioning Links http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-8932 Welcome to vSphere-land! » Thin Provisioning Links Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:11:03 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-8932 [...] working for you in vSphere (Virtual Insanity) Living Thin in a Fat World (IT Blood Pressure) Responsible Thin Provisioning in VMware vSphere (vCritical) Storage VMotion and moving to a Thin Provisioned disk (Yellow Bricks) VMware vSphere 4 [...] [...] working for you in vSphere (Virtual Insanity) Living Thin in a Fat World (IT Blood Pressure) Responsible Thin Provisioning in VMware vSphere (vCritical) Storage VMotion and moving to a Thin Provisioned disk (Yellow Bricks) VMware vSphere 4 [...]

]]> By: Eric Gray http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-8913 Eric Gray Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:55:57 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-8913 VMware just published a new performance study on thin provisioning: http://www.vcritical.com/2009/11/vsphere-thin-provisioned-disk-performance/ VMware just published a new performance study on thin provisioning:

http://www.vcritical.com/2009/11/vsphere-thin-provisioned-disk-performance/

]]> By: vSphere Thin-Provisioned Disk Performance | VCritical http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-8895 vSphere Thin-Provisioned Disk Performance | VCritical Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:19:58 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-8895 [...] vCenter Server, ESX 4 thin provisioning is safe and reliable even for production workloads thanks to advanced storage accounting and built-in monitoring.  And even if the worst does happen — an unexpectedly full datastore — recovery is [...] [...] vCenter Server, ESX 4 thin provisioning is safe and reliable even for production workloads thanks to advanced storage accounting and built-in monitoring.  And even if the worst does happen — an unexpectedly full datastore — recovery is [...]

]]> By: Provision a Thin Provisioned Standby LUN For vSphere Thin Provisioning | VM /ETC http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-8802 Provision a Thin Provisioned Standby LUN For vSphere Thin Provisioning | VM /ETC Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:11:01 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-8802 [...] Responsible Thin Provisioning in VMware vSphere [...] [...] Responsible Thin Provisioning in VMware vSphere [...]

]]> By: How to recover when a VMware ESX datastore runs out of space | VCritical http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-8185 How to recover when a VMware ESX datastore runs out of space | VCritical Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:57:40 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-8185 [...] Full accounting for all provisioned storage space and complete monitoring [...] [...] Full accounting for all provisioned storage space and complete monitoring [...]

]]> By: Eric Gray http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-8173 Eric Gray Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:56:49 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-8173 David, That is an excellent question, and you just might be surprised by the answer! Stay tuned... Eric David,

That is an excellent question, and you just might be surprised by the answer! Stay tuned…

Eric

]]> By: David http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-8151 David Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:48:41 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-8151 Hi But whatis the performance overhead on the VMFS LUN, and underlying storage (removing the vendor for the moment, and if the storage is thin provisioned as per Nate)? Yes, thin provisioing is supported in production, but at what cost? I have it enabled on a number of low I/O vm's - web servers, AD, app vm's. but have avoided the large disk intensive machines for the moment, until I have seen more definitive numbers on the peformance and system "hit". Do you have anything here Eric that could be referenced. Cheers David Hi

But whatis the performance overhead on the VMFS LUN, and underlying storage (removing the vendor for the moment, and if the storage is thin provisioned as per Nate)? Yes, thin provisioing is supported in production, but at what cost?

I have it enabled on a number of low I/O vm’s – web servers, AD, app vm’s. but have avoided the large disk intensive machines for the moment, until I have seen more definitive numbers on the peformance and system “hit”.

Do you have anything here Eric that could be referenced.

Cheers
David

]]> By: Eric Gray http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-8145 Eric Gray Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:07:02 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-8145 Nate, those are some very interesting stats. Thanks for sharing. Nate, those are some very interesting stats. Thanks for sharing.

]]> By: nate http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/responsible-thin-provisioning-in-vmware-vsphere/#comment-8141 nate Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:55:27 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=1684#comment-8141 I've been using thin provisioning on ESX since 3.0 on my 3PAR arrays. What I have done and seems to work well/pretty foolproof is that I provision volumes thinly, and create VMs on them. VMware isn't aware that the thin provisioning is transparent, so when it says there is 100GB in use there may only be 10GB in use. I usually provision 1TB luns and stop provisioning VMs once VMware thinks there is 500GB written. So that means even in the worst case VMware will only use roughly 500GB of physical space on the storage array. No chance of "over subscription", the remaining space is there in case I get lazy or something and want to provision another VM on it. Since the space isn't allocated on the storage there isn't any cost associated to the "waste". Thin provisioning licensing for my array at least is based on data written, so no lost $ there either. At the moment my production VMFS volumes are using 985GB out of 4096GB, my QA VMFS volumes are using 930GB out of 5120GB, and my internal IT VMFS volumes are using 410GB out of 4096GB, that's written data to the array. From VMWare's perspective, production VMFS volumes are using 2075GB, QA VMFS volumes are using 1788GB, internal IT VMFS volumes are using 725GB. So in total, out of 13,312GB of thin provisioned volumes for VMFS, 2325GB has been written or an 83% savings over thick provisioning? Given this effective usage of space I don't imagine having to provision new volumes any time soon, and we're running out of things to put in VMs. But at least I can rest well thinking that despite provisioning so much more space than VMWare really needs, it really won't ever cause a space issue for our system. In all VMFS volumes account for 2.8% of the total space on our storage system. I’ve been using thin provisioning on ESX since 3.0 on my 3PAR arrays. What I have done and seems to work well/pretty foolproof is that I provision volumes thinly, and create VMs on them. VMware isn’t aware that the thin provisioning is transparent, so when it says there is 100GB in use there may only be 10GB in use. I usually provision 1TB luns and stop provisioning VMs once VMware thinks there is 500GB written. So that means even in the worst case VMware will only use roughly 500GB of physical space on the storage array. No chance of “over subscription”, the remaining space is there in case I get lazy or something and want to provision another VM on it. Since the space isn’t allocated on the storage there isn’t any cost associated to the “waste”. Thin provisioning licensing for my array at least is based on data written, so no lost $ there either.

At the moment my production VMFS volumes are using 985GB out of 4096GB, my QA VMFS volumes are using 930GB out of 5120GB, and my internal IT VMFS volumes are using 410GB out of 4096GB, that’s written data to the array.

From VMWare’s perspective, production VMFS volumes are using 2075GB, QA VMFS volumes are using 1788GB, internal IT VMFS volumes are using 725GB.

So in total, out of 13,312GB of thin provisioned volumes for VMFS, 2325GB has been written or an 83% savings over thick provisioning? Given this effective usage of space I don’t imagine having to provision new volumes any time soon, and we’re running out of things to put in VMs.

But at least I can rest well thinking that despite provisioning so much more space than VMWare really needs, it really won’t ever cause a space issue for our system. In all VMFS volumes account for 2.8% of the total space on our storage system.

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