Provisioning VMware storage on VMAX - latest and greatest ?

That's a huge datastore - bigger than I've ever seen in a customer environment.  Max device size is 240 GB for a meta. Personally I think their current setup is preferable.  Start here - should answer most if not all the questions. 

http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/solution-overview/h2529-vmware-esx-svr-w-symmetrix-wp-ldv.pdf

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I am hoping to meet with the customer next week to get more details but this is what they have told us so far: Customer:                “ I would like to speak with one of your SME’s about the VMAX and VMWare best practices. We have lot of free space on the SATA pool close to 150 TB and I want to look into creating large size LUNs or pools that can be managed more space efficiently under VMWare. Can you setup a call or meeting with one your experts at EMC so I can discuss my questions. What is the best way to provision 40 TB on VMAX to VMWare. What is the Max Size LUN, How many Meta, Volume and other details so we can go ahead and provision the storage. Right now we use 2 – 4 TB LUN size with 8 – 16 Meta count. For what is the Max Meta Count and Volume Size and Number of LUN’s we should use to provision 40Tb Storage to VMWare. Besides this SATA pools we are also looking into Virtualize our EPIC Clarity, CDW environments also. I want to do research as to what is the optimal storage provision.”

This is when I always start with the question "What are you actually trying to do?". Sometimes when we get requests like this it isn't so much that they really need it that way, they are just "wondering" what is possible. They may or may not have thought through the implications. Maybe you have already sat down and talked through why this request is being made and maybe it makes sense. Or maybe if you ask they will just say "Oh, don't worry about it... just give us 10 x 4TB LUNs".

So, has there been any conversation to validate that what they think they need would actually meet the requirements?

I agree with Allen's statements above, you are really getting into the realms of a vArch who would be tasked with designing this correctly, how you segregate your workload (different PG's, MV's etc) , is the 40 TB coming from a 'new' VMAX or has an existing VMAX had additional capacity added.

I think the meta size is pretty way down the list of things to consider but there is too many unknowns on this to give an answer of any real substance.

That sounds like a positive start. Too many times we get people coming to us with "solutions" that they want us to figure out how to implement as opposed to coming with requirements that we can discuss with them to help determine the best all round solution. It sounds like your customer is open to discussion and that's worth a lot.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you are talking about a VMAX 1or 2 on this thread since there is reference to Metas. Is that an accurate assumption? If there is a VMAX3 or VMAX AFA in the mix the answer is very different.

It's a 6 engine VMAX40K, thx.

Thank you very much.