Monday, 17 November 2008

IP Storage and VM swap files

The use of IP Storage for VM swap files is now allowed under VMware Best Practices. At one point there were published recommendations not to place the VM's swap files on NFS. This recommendation is no longer VMware's best practice. Of course, best practices recommend designs that minimize VM swapping, including proper memory allocations, but VMware has removed the recommendation of not placing VM swap files on IP-based storage, and it is now an acceptable practice to locate VM's swap files of either NFS or iSCSI-based storage, as it would be with Fibre-Channel or Direct-Attached Storage (DAS). Bob Slovick, thanks for the update.

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Eric Sloof

in VMware at 16:18 | 3 Comments | No Trackbacks

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Does VMware have any documentation of this change in best practices? Searching the KB for "NFS swap" returns only one article that recommends against using IP storage for swap.

#1 Andy Leonard (Homepage) on 2008-11-21 04:58 (Reply)

[PPT] Best Practices for running VI3 on IP based storageFile Format: Microsoft Powerpoint - View as HTML
Do not place swap space on other storage. Select no for NIC teaming failback. Link Aggregation Settings. Match link aggregation on both sides of link ...
inet-gw.maphis.homeip.net/training/VMWare/VMWorld-2008/TA2784_Locked_Loaded_V3.ppt - Similar pages

Slide 38

#2 Eric Sloof (Homepage) on 2008-11-21 08:03 (Reply)

Thanks for the response! That looks like a slide from TA2784 at VMworld, right? If so, that's the other side of the conflicting recommendations about vmswap and NFS from VMware (and NetApp).

(I would be delighted if the no-vmswap-on-NFS recommendation was eliminated...)

#2.1 Andy Leonard (Homepage) on 2008-11-21 16:36 (Reply)

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IP Storage and VM swap files

NTPRO.NL - Eric Sloof

Monday, 17 November 2008

IP Storage and VM swap files

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