Scalability Module 6

VMware vSphere: What’s New You Are Here VMware vSphere: What’s New Course Introduction Introducing vSphere 5.0 Virtual Machine Management Network Management Storage Management Scalability High Availability New Alternatives for Deploying vSphere

Importance As the enterprise grows, new scalability features in VMware vSphere® 5.0 allow the infrastructure to handle the growth efficiently. Datastore growth and balancing issues can be remedied automatically with Storage DRS.

Learner Objectives After this module, you should be able to do the following: Describe resource pool enhancements. Describe enhancements to VMware vSphere® vMotion®. Create a datastore cluster. Configure Storage DRS. Explain how storage I/O control and Storage DRS complement each other.

What’s New with Resource Pools? In previous vSphere versions, when a resource pool is created directly on a VMware ESXi™ host, that host alone holds the resource pool settings. In vSphere 5.0, VMware vCenter Server™ has complete control over resource pools, regardless of where the resource pool is created. The change in control allows an autodeployed host to use resource pools. If vCenter Server is down, the host can get its configuration from a VMware vSphere® Auto Deploy server.

What’s New with vMotion? New features in vMotion include: Multi-NIC support of up to: Four 10Gbps NICs Sixteen 1Gbps NICs Support for higher latency links: Up to 10 milliseconds Improved error reporting Reduced application overhead: When a guest operating system writes to a memory page during a vMotion operation, the virtual machine is forced to sleep. The goal is to keep changed memory as small as possible when performing a vMotion operation.

What Is a Datastore Cluster? 2TB A datastore cluster is a collection of datastores that are grouped together without functioning together. A datastore cluster enabled for Storage DRS is a collection of datastores working together to balance: Capacity IOPS latency datastore cluster 500GB 500GB 500GB 500GB

Datastore Cluster Rules General rules for datastore clusters (with or without Storage DRS): Datastores from different arrays can be added to the same datastore cluster. LUNs from arrays of different types can adversely affect performance if they are not equally performing LUNs. Datastore clusters must contain “like” or interchangeable datastores. A datastore cluster can contain one or more NFS datastores. Datastore clusters support only ESXi 5.0 hosts. Rules specific to datastore clusters enabled for Storage DRS: Do not mix VMware vSphere® VMFS and NFS datastores in the same datastore cluster. Do not mix replicated datastores with nonreplicated datastores. You can mix VMFS-3 and VMFS-5 datastores in the same datastore cluster.

Relationship of Host Cluster to Datastore Cluster The relationship between a VMware vSphere® High Availability/VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler cluster and a datastore cluster can be one to one, one to many, or many to many. one to one one to many many to many host cluster host host cluster host host clusters datastore cluster datastore clusters datastore clusters

Storage DRS Overview Storage DRS provides the following functions: Initial placement of virtual machines based on storage capacity Use of vSphere Storage vMotion to migrate virtual machines based on storage capacity Use of Storage vMotion to migrate virtual machines based on I/O latency Configuration in either manual or fully automated modes Use of affinity and anti-affinity rules to govern virtual disk location Use of fully automated, storage maintenance mode to clear a LUN of virtual machine files

Initial Disk Placement When virtual machines are created, cloned, or migrated: You select a datastore cluster, rather than a single datastore. Storage DRS selects a member datastore based on capacity and on I/O operations per second (IOPS) load. By default, a virtual machine’s VMDK files are placed on the same datastore in the datastore cluster. Storage DRS affinity and anti-affinity rules can be created to change this behavior.

Migration Recommendations Migration recommendations are executed: When the IOPS response time is exceeded When the space utilization threshold is exceeded Space utilization is checked every five minutes. IOPS load history is checked every eight hours. Storage DRS selects a datastore based on utilization and IOPS load. Load balancing is based on IOPS workload, which ensures that no datastore exceeds a particular VMkernel IOPS latency level.

Configuration of Storage DRS Migration Thresholds Datastores and Datastore Clusters inventory view > right-click datacenter > New Datastore Cluster. Option for including IOPS latency in balancing Configuration settings for utilized space and latency thresholds Advanced settings for latency thresholds

Storage DRS Affinity Rules datastore cluster datastore cluster datastore cluster Intra-VM VMDK affinity Intra-VM VMDK anti-affinity VM anti-affinity Keep a virtual machine’s VMDKs together on the same datastore. Maximize virtual machine availability when all disks are needed in order to run. Rule is on by default for all virtual machines. Keep virtual machines on different datastores. Rule is similar to the DRS anti-affinity rule. Maximize availability of a set of redundant virtual machines. Keep a virtual machines’s VMDKs on different datastores. Rule can be applied to all or a subset of a virtual machine’s disks.

Adding Hosts to a Datastore Cluster Select the host cluster that will use the datastore cluster. If no host clusters are created, the user can select individual ESXi hosts to use the datastore cluster. Datastores and Datastore Clusters inventory view > right-click datacenter > New Datastore Cluster.

Adding Datastores to the Datastore Cluster Select the datastores to add to the datastore cluster. VMware recommends selecting datastores that all hosts can access.

Storage DRS Summary Information A panel on the datastore cluster’s Summary tab displays the Storage DRS settings.

Storage DRS Migration Recommendations Use the Storage DRS tab to monitor for migration recommendations.

Storage DRS Maintenance Mode Storage DRS maintenance mode allows you to take a datastore out of use in order to service it. Storage DRS maintenance mode: Evacuates virtual machines from a datastore placed in maintenance mode. Registered virtual machines (on or off) are moved. Templates and unregistered virtual machines are not moved.

Backups and Storage DRS Backing up virtual machines can add latency to a datastore. You can schedule a task to disable Storage DRS behavior for the duration of the backup.

Storage DRS Compatibility Feature or product Supported/Not supported VMware snapshots Supported RDM pointer files NFS ESXi 3.x and 4.x hosts Not supported

What’s New with Storage I/O Control? Storage I/O Control allows clusterwide storage I/O prioritization. Storage I/O Control was introduced in vSphere 4.1. In vSphere 5.0, Storage I/O Control is supported on NFS datastores. Storage I/O Control is used when I/O load balancing is enabled in a datastore cluster enabled for Storage DRS.

Storage DRS and Storage I/O Control Storage DRS and Storage I/O Control are complementary solutions: Storage I/O Control is enabled by default on datastore clusters enabled for Storage DRS. Storage DRS works to avoid I/O bottlenecks. Storage I/O Control manages unavoidable I/O bottlenecks. Storage I/O Control works in real time. Storage DRS does not use real-time latency to calculate load balancing. Storage DRS and Storage I/O Control provide you with the performance that you need in a shared environment, without having to massively overprovision storage.

Lab 5 In this lab, you will create a datastore cluster and configure Storage DRS. Create a datastore cluster enabled for Storage DRS. Perform a datastore evacuation with datastore maintenance mode. Manually run Storage DRS and apply migration recommendations. Acknowledge Storage DRS alarms. Clean up for the next lab.

Review of Learner Objectives You should be able to do the following: Describe resource pool enhancements. Describe enhancements to vMotion. Create a datastore cluster. Configure Storage DRS. Explain how storage I/O control and Storage DRS complement each other.

Key Points vSphere 5.0 has improved how the enterprise scales. The enhancements to scaling allow the infrastructure to expand quickly and efficiently. Storage DRS allows an easy way for an organization to balance its storage utilization and minimize the effect of IOPS latency. Questions? .