Comments on: With the move to ESXi is NFS becoming more useful than VMFS? http://vinf.net/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/ My ramblings on the stuff that holds it all together Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:53:33 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: stein http://vinf.net/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1571 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:43:20 +0000 http://vinf.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1571 you dont need esx to use mbralign, all you need is a linux guest that can mount your nfs datastore, and run mbralign from there.

]]> By: Dave Convery http://vinf.net/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1549 Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:21:22 +0000 http://vinf.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1549 Simon –

Great post. You give compelling arguments for using NFS over FC or FCoE. The FCoE standards for some things like losslessness still haven’t been finalized, but are in the works. Whenever designing a storage solution, everyone always asks “How much space do I need?” The question should always be answered “You really need to worry about IOPS and MBPS performance.” Even at 1GbE, you can use NFS if designed properly.
Dave

]]> By: Aaron Delp http://vinf.net/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1543 Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:38:52 +0000 http://vinf.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1543 One other big factor with ESXi right now is alignment of the vmdk’s. Currently you can use vOptimizer or NetApp’s mbralign tools to fix the issues. The problem is that you need a service console to run them today! So, if you are using NFS with ESXi, you can mount them to Linux and run the tools. There is no way to align vmdk’s with ESXi on VMFS today. This is my single biggest reason to resist ESXi today.

]]> By: Jean http://vinf.net/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1542 Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:34:19 +0000 http://vinf.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1542 Giuseppe,

I don’t agree. 10gb is getting cheap.
Thanks to copper;
10gb switch port : 500 euros per port
10gb dual port nic : less than 500 euros
Copper cable SFP+ (5m) : 150 euros

I don’t see the same level of price with FC.

jean

]]> By: gguglie http://vinf.net/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1536 Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:15:10 +0000 http://vinf.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/with-the-move-to-esxi-is-nfs-becoming-more-useful-than-vmfs/#comment-1536 I agree with you on the need of fast out-of-band access and emergency access, and NFS seems to be a balanced solution.
The only drawback that I see, is that a 10 Gb/s Ethernet infrastructure (even if used only for storage) is quite expensive yet and the whole network infrastructure must be coherent (switch, nic and so on).
I think that the whole thing will cost like Fibre Channel.

In small environment, where lan teaming can support the load, I agree with you that NFS can be the best solution.

Giuseppe

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