Netapp has put out a good technical article regarding the performance differences between FC, iSCSI, and NFS when running virtual machines with VMware. Its a good article, located here:

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3697.pdf

The basic premise is that Fibre Channel performs the best, no surprise there. But that NFS can perform better then iSCSI in certain instances, but that iSCSI scales better then NFS.

Hello,

I was having problems with snapshots in VMware, Virtual Center deleted them as per my request but corrupted the files and I had to fix it. I used the following resource to fix my problems and will be happy to implement Netapp Snapshots to make life easier!

http://sanbarrow.com/

Thanks,

Chris

I think that Netapp should change the name of Thin Provisioning to True Provisioning. Talking with large enterprise shops, they view thin provisioning as a bad way to go, a technology that the lower half uses. "Why, if I have a good sized budget, would I want to use thin provisioning? That leaves me open to having system availability issues when I run out of space? I have enough opportunities for users and management to complain, so why would I create another opportunity?"

I've recently started working at a VAR (HighVail Systems in Toronto, ON) and am looking to get back to building content in this forum.

I'll be upgrading the version of DRUPAL and hopefully implementing a CAPTCHA that works so I'm not spending time deleting fake users and fake content.

Please come back soon and post any questions or comments you have regarding the site.

Thank you,

Chris

I've been patiently waiting for Data Ontap 7.3 for some time now, with the understanding that A-SIS would finally be a worth while deduplication product.

Some of the advancements that I have heard about for 7.3 are:

1. Aggregate level dedup (not volume based). This should result in a greater dedup ratio when you look at say running 40 virtual machines that are all based upon the same template.

So, still not crazy for A-SIS, yet!

Data Ontap 7.3 will add a great deal of functionality and bring Netapp's de-dup offerring closer to what's available from other vendors. Key in my opinion is the ability to do de-dup at an aggregate level, instead of at the volume level. Case in point, if you have many Virtual Machine luns, each in different volumes, you can gain a great deal of space savings by de-dup'ing your entire aggregate.

Hey Guys,

Found a great VMware site.

http://www.vmware-land.com

Has some really good troubleshooting information on it.

Thanks,

Chris