I had another question recently about whether or not the Storage vMotion behaviour of renaming VM files on a VMFS or NFS datastore also worked with Virtual Volumes or VVols? After a quick test, I can state categorically that the answer is yes. I created a VM on a Nimble Storage appliance, presented two unique storage containers (aka virtual volume datastores), deployed a test VM on one of the VVol datastores, and then renamed the VM in the vSphere web client. I then verified that the VM name in the vSphere client was different to the names of its files…
This post came about after a brief discussion with my pal, Lee Dilworth. Although the outcome of this test has really nothing to do with vSAN, the behaviour was observed on certain Guest OS which were running on vSAN. I guess the first thing that needs to be made clear is that there is no support for in-guest UNMAP (or TRIM) for VMs running on vSAN at this time, although it is something we are examining very closely. So with this in mind, we had feedback to say that a test being run as part of a proof-of-concept was showing…
Last week, I was presenting at the VMware User Group (VMUG) event in Poland. My topic was SPBM, Storage Policy Based Management. This is the framework for consuming data services, whether these are provided from vSAN, Virtual Volumes or VAIO (IO Filters). You can get the presentation from here. One of the attendees who had implemented Virtual Volumes (aka VVols) asked a very interesting question about changing policies of a VVol based VM on-the-fly. The question is whether a policy change causes a new VVol has to be instantiated, data synced to original VVol and then the original VVol is…
My Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) presentation slide deck is now available online. This is the presentation that I delivered at a number of VMUG (VMware User Group) meetings this year in Europe, primarily Norway and Poland. SPBM is an integral part of VMware’s software defined storage vision, and is deeply integrated into vSAN, Virtual Volumes (VVols) and VAIO, the vSphere APIs for I/O Filters. Hope you find it useful. 2017 VMUG Storage Policy Based Management from Cormac Hogan
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been looking to update some of our older white papers on core storage topics. One of the outdated papers was on NFS, and a lot had changed in this space since the paper was last updated. Most notably, was the introduction of support for NFS v41 in vSphere 6.0, along with Kerberos based authentication. In vSphere 6.5, we also added Kerberos integrity checking. I decided to have a go at configuring this in my own lab. Before going any further, I need to thank Justin Parisi of NetApp for this guidance through this setup.…
It seems that 2-node vSAN for ROBO (remote office/branch office) deployments are becoming more and more popular. The fact that one can now connect the 2 vSAN hosts at the remote office directly back-to-back without needing a 10Gb switch has reduced the cost extensively. And with the introduction of a vSAN Enterprise for ROBO license edition with vSAN 6.6.1, you get the full feature set of vSAN on 2-node deployments. This new edition builds on the vSAN Advanced edition, and enables the use of features like native encryption and stretched clusters on a per-VM pricing model for smaller sites. The…
I’m delighted to announce that I have been invited back to present at the next Poland/Polska VMUG, which will take place in Warsaw on Wednesday, October 25th, 2017. I have been asked to deliver the keynote at this VMware User Group meeting, and I will be using the opportunity to present on Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM), and how important it is to have a seamless, policy based approach to managing data. It would seem that I am one of the first speakers of the day, so I will have a lot of free time later in the morning and…