Yesterday VMware announced the new version of its VDI product, VMware View 5.1. There are some important new features – from my point of view, which is basically NetApp/VMware integration. Cormac Hogan (aka @VMwareStorage on Twitter) published an article on the official vSphere blog, it describes all the important storage related features.
Let me focus on VCAI, this is the most impressive one for me. View Composer API for Array Integration enables View administrators to create virtual desktops using NetApp FlexClone technology directly from the View Composer. This feature is using VAAI – vStorage API for Array Integration – to offload the clone creation to the storage array. Creating virtual desktops with FlexClone is not a new thing, it exists in the Virtual Storage Console (NetApp vCenter plugin) for a long time, having integration with the mostly used connection brokers. Cormac describes the benefits offloading the clone creation in his article, so you can save CPU on the ESXi hosts and also network bandwidth. Please note, this feature is a Technology Preview in VMware View 5.1.
Yesterday I was playing around a little bit with the new NetApp Virtual Storage Console 2.1.1 which was released last week. I wanted to create a couple of clones (actually 100), and I got an error message. I didn’t realized as a big thing, then I forgot it as my phone was ringing… But wait, it’s something new. So let’s see the error message:
vSphere 5 has been released a few weeks ago and now you can download the Virtual Storage Console to monitor, clone, provision and backup, using NetApp storage. VSC is available on NOW at no cost. The most important change is it supports vSphere 5. It is also compatible with VMware View 4.6 and 5 as well as Citrix XenDesktop 5.0.
You can download and see the full list of changes on the NOW page.
There was a test already here about NetApp Rapid Cloning Utility, but in that case I compared the clone by vSphere and the clone by the array. The other difference is in that case the Virtual Machine were running. This time I tested the behavior of RCU on different types of Volumes/DataStores. About the license requirement:
The rapid cloning capabilities provided by the Provisioning and Cloning feature require a NetApp FlexClone license on the storage array where clones are being created. Read more…
So many bloggers filed a lot of posts about VMworld session voting. I’m late with this, but still there’s a little time to vote. I’ve checked the session list several times, started from the top and started from the bottom also. There’s no chance to read everything, I think it’s not possible, at least for me. We are getting closer to the end of the voting time and I have to say, I have a session proposal there. Read more…
NetApp Insight was my first experience with Flash Cache in action. It was actually a video presentation, but the cool factor was pretty high. Fun starts at 2:35 when 1000VM starts to boot
In the previous posts here and here I’ve already tested the Data ONTAP 8.0.1 VAAI capabilities with a FAS2040 controller. This week we were fortunate enough to test a brand new FAS3210 system, and I repeated the VAAI tests to see the differences. Of course I know the new 3200 and the 2000 series are not the same category, but I wanted to see how much faster and what’s the difference between the VAAI and non-VAAI operations.
I have the same piece of HW:
Cisco UCS B200 blade system with two X5550 sockets and 48GB of RAM
Cisco Nexus 5010 with 4Gb FC connection to the NetApp box
New storage box:
NetApp FAS3210 with 24×300 SAS 15krpm disks. For this test I’ve created the same aggregate of 9 disks.
In a typical NetApp & vSphere environment there are two well-known options to create a clone of a Virtual Machine. The first one is the vSphere default and the second is the NetApp rapid clone. The vSphere default clone is a simple copy operation from filesystem point of view, so if you browse the datastore you’ll see the same files in the source and target VM’s directory, except for the log files. The NetApp rapid cloning utility is doing the things in an other way, we’ll see how. But first of all, let’s talk about the configuration.
Few days ago I posted some performance test results with VMware vStorage API for Array Integration. I went through the test again, but insted of Fibre Channel I have iSCSI today.
I have the same piece of HW except for the connection:
Cisco UCS B200 blade system with two X5550 sockets and 48GB of RAM
NetApp FAS2040 with 12×300 FC 15krpm disks. For this test I’ve created an aggregate of 9 disks.
In the last test I had 4Gb Fibre Channel connection and now I have simple 1Gb iSCSI. I repeated the same steps, the only difference is the size of the VMDK I’ve added to the Virtual Machine: Read more…
I usually do my Data ONTAP tests with the simulator as I don’t have NetApp hardware in my lab. Last week we got a NetApp FAS2040 system for two weeks and I decided to make some VAAI tests.
About the configuration:
Cisco UCS B200 blade system with two X5550 sockets and 48GB of RAM
NetApp FAS2040 with 12×300 FC 15krpm disks. For this test I’ve created an aggregate of 9 disks.
Cisco Nexus 5010 with 4Gb FC connection to the NetApp box
I went throught the same steps with VAAI enabled and disabled configurations. At the beginning I had a Windows VM with 40GB hard disk.
add a new Hard Disk to the VM, 100GB, thick, cluster supported (zeroed)
clone the VM (with the added disk) within the same LUN
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