I'm looking for feedback from anyone who is using a NETapp filer, with Snap Manager for Exchange. We plan to install one and the consultant has told us that our current virtual server running exchange 2003 can stay virtual, but the drives containing the log files and the exchange information store need to be move outside of vmware, i.e. can't be stored inside an vdmk file.
My understanding is the log and information store will need to be stored on separate LUNs in the filer and the virtual machine will mount these LUNs.
My question: I've looked through all of Netapp's best practices and I haven't found a similar setup. I believe the consultant, but I would be interested in additional confirmation that this is the prefered setup, or a best practices guide.
Thanks
Best Answer
I found this information in the vmware forums:
The simple answer is "yes" you can run Exchange using vmdks stored on NFS storage and usually in small to medium size environments this is the way to go. If you have 2-4 thousand heavy Exchange users on a mailbox server you might want to reconsider.
The more complicated answer is this should be considered carefully in the context of several things.
1.Are there any SAN or backup application that need native access to the LUNs (RDM or iSCSI). Things like Snap Manager for Exchange need to use an iSCSI or FC LUN presented directly to the Exchange VM. If this is the case, you would still run your operating system on a VMDK stored on NFS and then present an iSCSI or FC LUN to the guest for things like Database or Translogs.
2.You should profile your application using perfmon and determine the average (but include spikes) for throughput and I/Os per second and compare this to the throughput that you can get using NFS which will depend on how you set up your networking.