CONSIDERATION WHEN CREATING VMFS

You should always have one VMFS volume per LUN, however you can have multiple smaller or one larger VMFS volume. With ESX Server you can create 1.2 GB Minimum and 256 VMFS volume per system. You can connect upto 32 ESX servers to single volume.

Environment where you should go for Larger VMFS Volume:

When you need more flexibility in creating VMs, more flexibility for resizing VMDKs,snapshots

Few Volumes better management

If you go for smaller VMFS Volume you following Advantages:

• Less wasted storage space
• Less contention on each VMFS due to locking and SCSI reservation issues
• More flexibility, as the multipathing policy and disk shares are set per LUN
• Use of MSCS requires each cluster disk resources has its own LUN

NB: Best practise would be configure few servers with Larger VMFS vols and few with smaller VMFS vols

• Maximum VMDK file size: 2 TB
• Maximum file size: 2TB
• Block size: 1 MB to 8 MB

When you add datastore, name must be unique within the current Virtual Infrastructure instances. Before creating a new datastore on a FC device, rescan a fibre channel adapater to discover any newly added LUNs.

UPGRADING VMFS 2.0 TO VMFS 3.0

When upgrading to 3.0 ESX server file-lock mechanism ensures that no remote ESX Server or local process is accessing the VMFS volume being converted. ESX Server 3.0 supports VMFS 3. VMFS-3 is not backward compatible with earlier versions of ESX server

Before you carry out upgrade process make sure

• Commit or discard any changes to VMDK
• Backup the VMDK suppose to be upgraded
• No Power ON VM is using VMFS2.0
• No ESX Server is accessing VMFS2.0 or mounted on any ESX Server