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Is Netapp ONTAP Select certified to run VM workloads on NFS datastore ?

vishalbmulik

My query is that since we have multiple products from Netapp which are used in Virtualization environment, there has to be some vendor certification process before recommending any solution for VM workloads. So do we have any kind of vmware validated design document which states that we can use NFS services to create NFS datastores using Netapp OTS Appliances to run virtual machines ? And even if such document exist, is this solution practically suitable in Data-center Environments ?

Are these SDS solutions (Software Defines Storage Appliances) capable of handling Block level operations required by VMware ESXi Hypervisors in clustered environment, using protocols like iSCSI.

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vishalbmulik

Thanks for clarification.

So to summarize in order to ESXi Cluster to work , we have use native HA in OTS using combination of JBOD and software RAID. And also this will not impact the ESXi cluster HA functionality as the NFS share in this case will be treated as external storage since ESXi will not be having the storage visibility and the underlying disk will be directly mapped to OTS nodes using passthrough / VM direct path IO for the OTS nodes hosted on the ESXi Hypervisor.

Also I have read in the best practices document that the Large size OTS nodes only work on software RAID and there is no option of Hardware RAID.

All comments

elementx

I doubt there's need for certification of h/w.

OTS supports VMware ESXi 7.0 and that's in IMT.

If a customer buys a VMware-certified server, they have a supported environment.

> And even if such document exist, is this solution practically suitable in Data-center Environments ?

It depends.

If someone wants to use OTS to make a DIY A900, that won't happen.

If they want to provide NFS or iSCSI storage to dozens or hundreds of VMs, that can work fine, and multiple nodes can be deployed to scale that to larger numbers and hundreds of TBs. That's how people use it in real life.

OTS can consume external or internal block storage, so with external storage and sufficient CPU and memory resources it's not that different from entry to mid-range appliances.

vishalbmulik

Thanks for reply, but I still have below doubts.

Please find the reply for below points :

OTS supports VMware ESXi 7.0 and that's in IMT ==>In the installation guide Its only mentioned that it can run on ESXi Hypervisor, nowhere its mentioned that it will support loopback NFS datastore mount on the base ESXi Host on which it is running.

If a customer buys a VMware-certified server, they have a supported environment ==> Here I am not talking about the hardware compatibility with ESXi, I am just mentioning the OTS compatibility with ESXi for NFS datastore. I am attaching the OTS Datasheet for reference. In the Datasheet diagram its only showing Guest OS VM's using the File level protocols. Its not mentioned whether we can use these protocols directly within the Hypervisor to Host VM workloads.

NetApp ONTAP Select Datasheet.pdf

elementx

It's not a "loopback" datastore, the use of switches (vSwitches) is mandatory.

https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap-select/concept_nw_vsphere_vswitch_config.html#standard-or-distributed-vswitch-and-two-physical-ports-per-node

The IMT shows iSCSI and NFS clients (VM and non-VM) are supported:

The data sheet uses standard NetApp "VM icon", so the diagram looks misleading but it indicates these are VMs (on same or different nodes, but can be on another vSphere cluster as well).

vishalbmulik

Thanks for explanation, but could you please elaborate when you say non-VM client. Does non-vm means external physical hosts which are not part of the vCenter Infra.

Also I have gone through the Ontap Select 9 installation and Cluster deployment guide.

https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_download_file/ECMLP2570999

In above document under planning section (Page number 12) its described that we have only two options for deploying OTS nodes.

Dedicated versus collocated

From a high level, you can deploy ONTAP Select in two different ways regarding the workload on the hypervisor host server.

Dedicated deployment
With the dedicated deployment model, a single instance of ONTAP Select runs on the host server. No other significant processing runs on the same hypervisor host.

Collocated deployment
With the collocated deployment model, ONTAP Select shares the host with other workloads. Specifically, there are one or more additional virtual machines typically running computational
applications. These compute workloads are tightly coupled with the local ONTAP Select cluster so that overall system performance can be improved. This hyper-converged
infrastructure (HCI) model supports specialized applications and packaging requirements. As with the dedicated deployment model, each ONTAP Select virtual machine must run on a separate and dedicated hypervisor host.

And also I can see that OTS nodes have CPU and Memory reservations on the ESXi Hypervisor Hosts. So in this case would you still recommend to use the OTS nodes with other VM's running on the same physical ESXi host while sharing the existing compute with OTS appliance. Wouldn't it have an impact on other application VM's which are running alongside OTS Appliance which is also acting as a Virtual storage appliance with dedicated reserved resources on the ESXi Host ?