Network and Storage Protocols

VDI - FCP LUNs to NFS

irobinson1
4,672 Views

I know this may be a complicated and very detailed queston but I'm just looking for a general idea of what is all involved in converting a VDI infastructure from FCP to NFS.  Keep in mind I have about 2100 VDI instances.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

7 REPLIES 7

amiller_1
4,672 Views

In short, data migration. Your options revolve around....

  • VM data relocation (in VirtualCenter with the VM shut down) -- manual process
  • Storage vMotion (not officially supported from FC to NFS but no problems for at all so far or multiple other people I've talked to) -- manual process but scriptable via rcli
  • depending on VDI configuration (independent, pools, etc.), adjusting the pool parameters and reprovisioning VM's on a new NFS datastore
  • some mix of everything above.

Hopefully helpful -- just let me know if anything above doesn't make sense.

abhinavj
4,672 Views

Hi Ivory,

What is the driver for migrating the environment from FC to NFS?

Regards,

Abhinav

amiller_1
4,672 Views

Not to secondguess too much...but possibly some of these...

http://viroptics.pancamo.com/2007/11/why-vmware-over-netapp-nfs.html

irobinson1
4,672 Views

Just moving forward.  We are on FCP LUNS and the benefits of NFS look they are better considering we are approching 2500 VM clients.

keitha
4,672 Views

Ivory,

I suspect you have a very high number of FC LUNs. Likely the biggest gain would be the ability to place a much greater number of VMs per data store. Many fewer objects for you to manage. Andrews suggestions on how to migrate were right on. I am curious which of the techniques you think you would likely use to migrate?

Keith

amiller_1
4,672 Views

Phew....that's a lot of VM's/a lot of datastores....NFS would be nice if only for that. There's also some future-looking stuff posted in the reply here.

http://communities.netapp.com/message/8975

And finally, RCU 2.0 may be invaluable for you (single-file FlexClone for fast VM rollouts integrated into a VirtualCenter GUI).

irobinson1
4,672 Views

Thanks guys.  This is great info.

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