vsphere on nas design considerations

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Design Considerations for vSphere on NFS Discussing some design considerations for using vSphere with NFS Scott Lowe, VCDX 39 vExpert, Author, Blogger, Geek http://blog.scottlowe.org / Twitter: @scott_lowe

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This presentation discusses some design considerations for running VMware vSphere on NFS.

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Page 1: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

Design Considerationsfor vSphere on NFSDiscussing some design considerationsfor using vSphere with NFS

Scott Lowe, VCDX 39vExpert, Author, Blogger, Geek

http://blog.scottlowe.org / Twitter: @scott_lowe

Page 2: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

Before we start

•Get involved! Audience participation is encouraged and requested.

• If you use Twitter, feel free to tweet about this session (use hashtag #VMUG or handle @SeattleVMUG)

• I encourage you to take photos or videos of today’s session and share them online

•This presentation will be made available online after the event

Page 3: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

Your name is familiar...

Page 4: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

•Some NFS basics

•Some link aggregation basics

•NFS bandwidth

•Link redundancy

•NFS and iSCSI interaction

•Routed NFS access

•Other considerations

Agenda

Page 5: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

•All versions of ESX/ESXi use NFSv3 over TCP

•NFSv3 uses a single TCP session for data transfer

•This single session originates from one VMkernel port and terminates at the NAS IP interface/export

•vSphere 5 adds support for DNS round robin but still uses single TCP session and only resolves DNS name once

Some NFS Basics

Page 6: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

•Requires unique hash values to place flows on a link in the bundle

• Identical hash values will always result in the same link being selected

•Does provide link redundancy

•Doesn’t increase per-flow bandwidth, only aggregate bandwidth

•Need special support to avoid single point of failure (SPoF)

Some Link Aggregation Basics

Page 7: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

•Can’t use link aggregation to increase per-datastore bandwidth

•Can’t use DNS round robin to increase per-datastore bandwidth

•Can’t use multiple VMkernel NICs to increase per-datastore bandwidth

•Must move to a faster network transport (from 1Gb to 10Gb Ethernet, for example)

•That being said, most workloads are not bandwidth constrained

NFS Bandwidth

Page 8: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

•No concept of multipathing; link redundancy must be managed at the network layer

•No concept of multiple active “paths” per datastore

•Link aggregation helps but is not required

Link Redundancy

Page 9: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

• iSCSI traffic is generally “pinned” to specific uplinks via port binding/multipathing configuration; not so for NFS traffic

•Traffic could “cross” uplinks under certain configurations

•Need to keep separate with:

•Per-port group failover configurations

•Separate vSwitches

•Separate IP subnets for iSCSI and NFS traffic

NFS and iSCSI Interaction

Page 10: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

Routed NFS Access

•Supported as of vSphere 5.0 U1

•Be sure to use FHRP (HSRP or VRRP) for gateway redundancy and apply QoS where needed

•Can’t use IPv6 or vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS)

•Be sure latency won’t be an issue (WAN routing not supported)

•More information available at http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/06/vsphere-50-u1-now-supports-routed-nfs-storage-access.html

Page 11: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

•Thin provisioned VMDKs: need VAAI-NFS plugin to do thick provisioned VMDKs

•Datastore sizing: SCSI locking not an issue, but still need to consider:

•Underlying disk architectures/layout and IOPS requirements

•Ability to meet RPO/RTO

•Jumbo frames: can be useful, but not necessarily required

•ESXi configuration recommendations: follow vendor-provided recommended practices

Other Considerations

Page 12: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

Questions &Answers

Page 13: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

One more thing...

Page 14: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

Coming to VMworld?

• If you’re coming to VMworld(and you should be!), considerbringing your spouse/partnerwith you!

•Spousetivities will be offeringplanned, organized activities for spouses/partners/friends traveling with VMworld conference attendees

•See http://spousetivities.com for more information

Page 15: vSphere on NAS Design Considerations

Thank you!