Continuing on, here is a quick synopsis of the following webcast, http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/details/261, title above.

• So what’s new you ask? Storage efficiency as it relates to the following…
  • New iSCSI software initiator
  • PVSCSI adapter
  • VMDirectPath IO
  • Virtual disk thin provisioning
• Improved management
  • vCenter storage capabilities
  • Dynamic expansion of VMFS volumes
  • Enhanced storage vMotion
• vStorage Thin Provisioning
  • Consumes only what is used (over commitment)
  • Fully supported on block storage
  • VM sees full logical disk size at all times
  • full reporting and alerting on allocation and consumption
    • improves storage utilization
    • eliminates over provisioning
  • Via enhanced Storage vMotion gives you the ability to migrate thick to thin disks
  • Potential negative? Metadata updates needed more frequently with thin disks
  • Fragmentation a problem? incremental size increase is based on block size of VMFS volume. Lower block sizes less of an issue.
  • TP Option available at: VM creation, clone to a template, clone a VM, migrate a VM (Storage Motion)
    • Reporting and alerting are key, Rate of disk growth (writes specifically) important to note for thin disk. Ultimately this can affect performance.
    • Eager zeroed thick disk required for FT, thick lazy zeroed default for VM creation

  • Additional Datastore Management built around the following:

    • Added Datastore views, you can now manage Datastores independent of the hosts.

    • Much need usage reports on a per DS level

    • The ability to set alarms/alerts on capacity, and group DS’s as foldered objects. Not only that you         can set permissions on who can allocate to certain DS’s. Bitchin’..

  • Dynamic expansion-VMFS volume grow

    • Current options to alleviate oversubscription

      • increase the Datastore size or VMFS Volume (add extend, span, grow the VMFS volume)

      • Storage vMotion

      • Cold migrate of VM to another Datastore

      • Delete old and unused VM’s from Datastore

    • VMFS volume grow allows you to expand an extend so that it fills the available adjacent capacity there fore improving VM availability

      • Can grow as many times as needed up to max volume size of the VMFS volume

      • Must grow LUN backing for the VMFS Datastore first. So LUN expansion and then the VMFS volume grow

      • Volume LUN size is still maxed at 2TB. This stems from SCSI 2 compliancy with in the vmkernel.

      • Storage VMotion now supports NFS/iSCSI and FC and fully GUI integration. local experimental

  • Enhanced Storage vMotion

• Storage VMotion now supports NFS/iSCSI and FC and is fully GUI integration. Local disk migrations are experimental.
• Changes within the mechanisms behind this function
• Snapshot in 3.x to do sVMotion, in vSphere however, enhanced Storage VMotion flows as follows.
• Copy VM home to new location
• Start changed block tracking
• Pre-copy disk to destination (multiple iterations)
• Copy all remaining disk blocks Fast suspend/resume
• VM to start running on new home and disks
• Delete original VM and disks
• Furthermore in vSphere, there is support for moving VMDK’s from thick to thin formats and migrating RDM’s to VMDK’s
• Software iSCSI initiator
• No longer requires Service Console connection for initiating communication with iSCSI target.
• Additional performance tuning parameters under advanced within the initiator properties
• CPU cost improvement---read +10 to 25% improvement, write 20 to 50% improvement
• Jumbo frames and 10G support for the TCP/IP stack
• vStorage API for multipathing
• Pluggable storage architecture, that gives the storage vendors the ability to write MP software with insertion into the vmkernel
• Para-virtualization SCSI adapters
• SAS Para-Virt PCIe storage adapter
• Hardware spec written by VMware
• Provides functionality similar to bus logic, lsilogic and lsilogic SAS
• Supports MSI-X, PME, MSI capabilities in the device
• Drivers available for windows server 2003, 2008, and RHEL 5
• Key benefits---
• Lower overhead and higher CPU efficiency in I/O processing
• Higher throughput and low latency
• Better performance under high I/O conditions
• Better VM scalability (more VMs, vCPUs per host)
• Caveats-does not support boot disks with ESX 4
• VMdirectpath I/O (Experimental)
• Feature allows you to map a single HBA to a single VM. Prevents sharing of the HBA by more than a single VM.
• Allows VM's to directly access the underlying hardware devices
• vMotion, hardware independence and sharing of physical I/O devices not supported to the that VM using VMdirectpath I/O
• Experimental support for the following i/O devices:
          -Qlogic QLA25xx 8G FC
          -Emulex LPe12000 8G FC 
          -LSI 3442e-R and 3801e (1068 chip based) 3 Gb SAS adapters