The use of thin provisioning, then, boils down to the answer to one very important question; Is the virtual machine an appropriate candidate for thin provisioning?  Successful use of thin provisioning is predicated on choosing the right virtual machines/application to provision in thin format. Obviously, if the application running in a thin provisioned virtual machine is a write intensive type of application and its rapidly growing and allocating new blocks (we call that a fatty), then this is not the type of application you wan’t to deploy in a thin provision format.

Thanks to Storage vMotion we can remedy these situations by changing the format from thin to thick.  Remember too, you have the ability to define the thin or thick format per disk, on multi-disk virtual machines you can chose thin for some disks, like the operating system disk, and then use thick for other disks, like the data disk. Fragmentation can and will happen when using thin provisioned VMs, but whether or not it poses a problem lies in  knowing when to use it and when not to.

- Enjoy.

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In order to avoid the dangers of  thin-on-thin as suggested by the storage vendors you can choose between “thick-on-thin” and “thin-on-thick”. Thick-on-Thin means thick virtual machines on thin provisioned LUNs and Thin-on-Thick will in either case you’re only concern with running out of space on of the two elements but not both.

The issue with thick on thin arrises when multiple virtual machines are created in a short period of time against the same datastore built of a thin provision LUN for example if I crate an 800GB thin provision LUN and within the first 2 days of creating the LUN I deployed 7 new virtual machine each with 100 GB VMDK I now consumed all but 100 Gigs of the LUN. In fact I probably consumed more when you take into account all of the additional files required to the virtual machines. So was it really worth thin provisioning the LUN if my attempt at achieving space efficiency lasted less than 2 days.

Barring any technical limitation that I didn’t find, thin-on-thin provisioning is going to give efficient utilization of space at both they hypervizor and the array level. this dual efficiency, however, comes at the expense of the administrative effort involved in establishing the proper monitoring, alerting, and response action planning. It’s not enough to just know of the impending danger of space consumption you must know how to react by establishing what actions will be taken when alert thresholds have been broken

Although this blog doesn’t come with any 90 days guaranteed or offers for protein shake powders, I do hope you’ve I have provided you with tools to help you get thin (on thin). Feel free to take and send before and after photos of your transformation.  : )

- Enjoy

For future updates, be sure to follow me on Twitter at  @PunchingClouds

The post Getting Thin (on Thin) “It’s your Responsibility” appeared first on Punching Clouds.

By leveraging the volunteered community data and apply simplified analytics vOpenData can provide answers to a great deal of questions that people may be interested in acquiring but yet it may be difficult to get.

vOpenData collects various types of data from virtualized infrastructures with an effort to prevent the collection unique data points that could compromise infrastructure private information such as hostsnames, IPs, UUID, etc.

The data collected is used to virtualization based statistics and data modeling for the community that can be useful in a great deal of scenarios such as average VMDK sizes, number of virtual machines, most utilized or deployed hardware, average hosts connected per vCenter servers, etc.

vOpenDate Infrastructure Dashboard

By now, the entire community has shown interest on the vOpenData project and all the blogs have been raving about it from the very first day they saw it. Because of that, I didn’t add my two cents and wrote something about. I figured the project had gained enough attention from the blogger community and just waited for thing I can mention that was particularly of interest to me.

New to vOpenData statistics is the collection of data with regards to storage arrays. Now vOpenData can produce statistics gathered from storage system, LUN sizing, arrays by vendor types and more. As storage is one of the last pain points to be simplified, the more knowledge you have of what is out there and what is being use and in what capacity can help in many ways.

vOpenData Storage Related Dashboard

I’m a big fan of this new storage statistic capability and of vOpenData over all. This will help me with some of my queries with regards to storage centric topics in conjunction with my current responsibilities at VMware. I would highly recommend to give vOpenData project a look if you haven’t done so yet and sign up if possible and contribute to the communities wealth of valuable information and statistics.

- Enjoy

For future updates, be sure to follow me on Twitter at  @PunchingClouds

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Some of the changes added to the new release are:

• Increase of the VMFS heap size to 256MB by default. This change will allow ESXi hosts to address up 24TB of storage capacity.
• Support for 10 Gigabit Ethernet NICs

Check out the vSphere Storage Appliance 5.1.3 (VSA) release notes for more details on the fixes and features of this release.

- Enjoy

For future updates, be sure to follow me on Twitter at  @PunchingClouds

The post VSA Upgrade Required after Applying vCenter Server 5.1U1 Patch appeared first on Punching Clouds.

If you interested on the challenge and pursuing the VCDX certification you want to attend one of the bootcamps delivered by actual VCDX panel members. The VCDX bootcamps have shown to be very helpful for candidates. I will be there along other fellow VCDXs and  panel members Wade Holmes, and Matthew Meyer.

The VCDX bootcamp will cover everything you need to prepare for the certification process and the defense with topics such as

• What the VCDX covers, and what it is designed to demonstrate
• Profiles of successful and unsuccessful candidates
• An insider’s view of the VCDX Panel Defense process, including perspectives from the panelists
• Advanced best practices for VMware design and architecture available nowhere else
• Practice VCDX Design and Troubleshooting Scenarios, and more

If you’re curious and want to learn more about the Software Defined Datacenter and Software Defined Storage, I will also be presenting a session on VMware’s Software Defined Storage (SDS) vision for the Software Defined Datacenter, and providing some insight into some of the features and technologies VMware is currently working on to make the vision a reality.

If you are already a VCDX, master of the universe and already know about all this stuff than great!, you’re the Man!!! or the Woman!!! still just come down and socialize with everyone it will be fun.

Feel free to sign up and register Austin VMUG User Conference

- Enjoy

For future updates, be sure to follow me on Twitter at  @PunchingClouds

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