Using Flexclone and RCU for Production use

[ajay_nabh]

Hi Guys

I wanted to use RCU to build citrix presentation servers for production use, do you guys think that it is a good idea to use RCU/Flexclone for Production server? what is official line by NetApp?

if you guys please advise your suggestions and docs to read will be very helpful

thanks

Ajay

[prakash_aviva]

Don't know much, but found a community thread.....

http://communities.netapp.com/message/8584#8584

[forgette]

Absolutely.  The VMs created by RCU will create pre-deduplicated virtual hard drives.  The result is not only capacity savings, but speed improvements as well.  This is because the NetApp storage controller cache is dedup aware.

[ajay_nabh]

THanks Mohit and Eric

Question for you Eric, this NetApps official line as I need to present some sort of doc to my boss where it says in black and white? so far all I found was can be used in Lab, development etc!

thanks in anticipation

Ajay

[forgette]

Ajay,

Chris lays it out in this video...
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=eDCT1kHNlig

I've asked some folks to provide more collateral for you as well.

In the mean time, here are some answers:
NetApp dedup is appropriate for production virtual server workloads (in fact it will boost performance).
NetApp file level FlexClone creates "pre-deduplicated" vmdk files.
The RCU leverages NetApp file level FlexClone to create space efficient virtual machine clones.

Hope this helps,

-Eric

[ajay_nabh]

Hi Eric

Thanks a lot for doing this much effort.

appreciate it

Ajay

[vstewart]

Yes - Please use VMs deployed via RCU (FlexClone) for produciton use cases.

You should understand that Data ONTAP is a pointer based storage array.  Snapshot backups, File Clones, & Data Deduplicaiton are all based on the same technology.  Pointers for backup, zero cost provisioning, and storage efficencies over the life cycle of a data set.

If you have any additional thoughts arounf the use of RCU, you will find loads of discussion and comments here:

http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/

Cheers,

Vaughn

[forgette · Accepted solution]

In addition, here is a link to the technical report describing the technology and use cases:

http://www.netapp.com/us/library/technical-reports/tr-3742.html

[ajay_nabh]

Hi Eric

do you have any case studies which can show RCU/FlexClone works well with heavily utilised VMs like Citrix Servers?  All I hear about is test and dev environment, also VDI environment. I trialled it out and seems to be wonderful technology

Cheers

Ajay