Actually, this brings up a related issue. Does anyone have experience with running VirtualBox on iSCSI volumes vs NFS shares, both of which would be backed by a ZFS server?
-Erik On Wed, 2010-08-11 at 21:41 -0500, Tim Cook wrote: > > > > This is not entirely correct either. You're not forced to use > VMFS. > > It is entirely true. You absolutely cannot use ESX with a guest on a > block device without formatting the LUN with VMFS. You are *FORCED* > to use VMFS. > > > > You can format the LUN with VMFS, then put VM files inside the > VMFS; in this case you get the Guest OS filesystem inside a > VMDK file on the VMFS filesystem inside a LUN/ZVOL on your ZFS > filesystem. You can also set up Raw Device Mapping (RDM) > directly to a LUN, in which case you get the Guest OS > filesystem inside the LUN/ZVOL on your ZFS filesystem. There > has to be VMFS available somewhere to store metadata, though. > > > You cannot boot a VM off an RDM. You *HAVE* to use VMFS with block > devices for your guest operating systems. Regardless, we aren't > talking about RDM's, we're talking about storing virtual machines. > > > > It was and may still be common to use RDM for VMs that need > very high IO performance. It also used to be the only > supported way to get thin provisioning for an individual VM > disk. However, VMware regularly makes a lot of noise about how > VMFS does not hurt performance enough to outweigh its benefits > anymore, and thin provisioning has been a native/supported > feature on VMFS datastores since 4.0. > > I still think there are reasons why iSCSI would be better than > NFS and vice versa. > > > > I'd love for you to name one. Short of a piss-poor NFS server > implementation, I've never once seen iSCSI beat out NFS in a VMware > environment. I have however seen countless examples of their > "clustered filesystem" causing permanent SCSI locks on a LUN that > result in an entire datastore going offline. > > > --Tim > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss -- Erik Trimble Java System Support Mailstop: usca22-123 Phone: x17195 Santa Clara, CA Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800) _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
