Veritas InfoScale™ 7.4.1 Virtualization Guide - Linux on ESXi
- Section I. Overview
- About Veritas InfoScale solutions in a VMware environment
- Section II. Deploying Veritas InfoScale products in a VMware environment
- Getting started
- Understanding Storage Configuration
- Section III. Use cases for Veritas InfoScale product components in a VMware environment
- Application availability using Cluster Server
- Multi-tier business service support
- Improving storage visibility, availability, and I/O performance using Dynamic Multi-Pathing
- How DMP works
- Improving data protection, storage optimization, data migration, and database performance
- Protecting data with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- Optimizing storage with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- Migrating data with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- Improving database performance with InfoScale product components in the VMware guest
- Setting up virtual machines for fast failover using Storage Foundation Cluster File System High Availability on VMware disks
- About setting up Storage Foundation Cluster File High System High Availability on VMware ESXi
- Configuring coordination point (CP) servers
- Section IV. Reference
Achieving storage visibility using Dynamic Multi-Pathing in the hypervisor
When DMP is installed in the hypervisor, DMP provides instant visibility to the storage attributes of a LUN. You can use the storage attributes to determine the characteristics of the LUN.
The following scenario describes a typical use case for storage visibility.
As the ESX administrator, you notice that your existing pool of storage is getting near capacity, so you put in a requisition to your storage team to add additional storage. You request two LUNs to meet the storage needs of different tiers of applications:
500GB RAID 5 LUN
500GB RAID 0+1 LUN
After the storage team processes the request, you get an email from the storage admin stating "Your storage is ready". Without any more information, you need to guess which LUN is which, and has the appropriate storage configuration (RAID 5 vs. RAID 0+1).
You need to determine which LUN is which, so that you can set up the applications on the appropriate storage. If you allocate mission critical, high performance applications to a RAID 5 LUN, SLA's could be impacted, and the applications may run slower than needed. Conversely, you want to avoid allocating low-priority applications on the high-end storage tier.
DMP provides instant visibility to the storage attributes of a LUN so you can determine exactly which device is which.
Navigate to the storage view, and you can see the LUNs. The attributes for each LUN show which LUN is RAID 5 and which is RAID 0+1.
The storage attributes also let you identify the LUN using the AVID name. The AVID name provides a clear way to refer to the device, and can reduce confusion between the ESXi system administrator and the storage administrator.
If an issue occurs for the LUN, you can refer to the storage device by the AVID name. For example, if one of the LUNs has a performance issue, you can communicate that to the platform or storage administration team. The AVID name provides a common, concise language between the platform and storage administration teams, and minimizes any confusion. It also speeds time to remediation of issues, and reduces ambiguity in communications.