To create data stores for your VMs, here are some quick steps:
1. Make a directory: mkdir /ifs/esx/ds01
2. Set a directory quota on it, if you have the smart quotas license: (use hard, and show available size as size of hard threshold)
3. NFS export the folder to the VMKernel IP addresses of your ESXi hosts (put them in clients export). Its best if your cluster is in the same subnet, because vmware is extremely latency sensitive when it comes to it's storage, so routing the traffic can add latency.
4. on the export map root users to root, so that ESX can set whatever permissions it wants on the data
5. Attach the NFS export to your ESX cluster using a *dynamic smart connect zone name, or an IP address from a dynamic smart connect zone, in the form: sczonedynamic.isilon.com:/ifs/esx/ds01
*Note Dynamic Smartconnect Zones require the SmartConnect Advanced License
Now All of this said, there certainly are best practices guides for this. Also be careful what workloads you use this for. It works just fine, however it will probably never be as fast over Ethernet as a VMAX, VNX, or XtremeIO over Fiber-Channel for your tier-1 applications or VDI.
crklosterman
450 Posts
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Posted January 17th, 2014 13:00
Tooles,
To create data stores for your VMs, here are some quick steps:
1. Make a directory: mkdir /ifs/esx/ds01
2. Set a directory quota on it, if you have the smart quotas license: (use hard, and show available size as size of hard threshold)
3. NFS export the folder to the VMKernel IP addresses of your ESXi hosts (put them in clients export). Its best if your cluster is in the same subnet, because vmware is extremely latency sensitive when it comes to it's storage, so routing the traffic can add latency.
4. on the export map root users to root, so that ESX can set whatever permissions it wants on the data
5. Attach the NFS export to your ESX cluster using a *dynamic smart connect zone name, or an IP address from a dynamic smart connect zone, in the form: sczonedynamic.isilon.com:/ifs/esx/ds01
*Note Dynamic Smartconnect Zones require the SmartConnect Advanced License
Now All of this said, there certainly are best practices guides for this. Also be careful what workloads you use this for. It works just fine, however it will probably never be as fast over Ethernet as a VMAX, VNX, or XtremeIO over Fiber-Channel for your tier-1 applications or VDI.
Here is a link to the BP guide for Vsphere5:
http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h10522-bpg-isilon-and-vmware-vsphere5.pdf
Chris Klosterman, ICSP, ICIE, CCNA, VCP
Twitter: @croaking
Email: chris.klosterman@emc.com
Senior Solution Architect
Offer and Enablement Team
EMC²| Isilon Storage Division