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What is recommended VMDK structure to allow for future expansion?


ilovepancakes

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Hi all,

 

What is recommended config/structure in Storage Manager to allow for future expansion/increase in size of VMDK? I believe using 2 VMDKs in RAID 1 in Storage Manager will allow one VMDK to be expanded at a time and then the volume will increase but this won't work in my case because I am using vSAN so two VMDKs in RAID 1 would be a huge waste of space since each VMDK is already being made redundant by vSAN.

 

I also get using JBOD and adding new VMDKs everytime I want to expand could work but would prefer a method of using 1 single VMDK that expands, even if the method involves a little work beyond Storage Manager. Curious for everyone's experience and input.

 

:) 

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If your storage is already fault tolerant, and it's being backed up, then you could probably just go with a single 'disk' under DSM..

How big are your VMDKs? If the available storage is always wayyyyy bigger than your DSM disk sizes, you could simply create a new disk in VSphere, create a new 'disk' under DSM and move the Share/Data to the new one.. Not sure about expanding disks but rebuilding arrays in DSM seems to take a long damn time..

 

Apologies for the mini-thread hijack - but it's kind of on topic..

Can someone please explain to me why you'd install DSM in ESXi? It sounds like a recovery nightmare. Not to mention poorer performance over bare metal.

Aside from the obvious pro's of virtualisation (having more than one server on the one box) and hardware compatibility; why do it?

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4 hours ago, Hostilian said:

If your storage is already fault tolerant, and it's being backed up, then you could probably just go with a single 'disk' under DSM..

 

Yeah I suppose this doesn't provide for easy expansion but would work. I could even backup the share with HyperBackup to a large cheap external drive and then delete the volume and make a bigger one with new VMDKs that way vSAN storage doesn't have to front all the extra space to have both VMDKs exist at same time, even temporarily.

 

Is there any way to unofficially expand the volume after increasing the VMDK size? The disk shows new bigger size in DSM after simply increasing it in ESXi but the storage pool/volume is locked to only show the original capacity despite those underlying disks showing as bigger.

 

4 hours ago, Hostilian said:

Apologies for the mini-thread hijack - but it's kind of on topic..

Can someone please explain to me why you'd install DSM in ESXi? It sounds like a recovery nightmare. Not to mention poorer performance over bare metal.

Aside from the obvious pro's of virtualisation (having more than one server on the one box) and hardware compatibility; why do it?

 

Multiple DSMs in one box is certainly a reason I do it, but recovery I would say is easier if you have it all setup right. I use Veeam to backup the VM and VMDKs so if anything goes wrong at all, a few mouse clicks and DSM is completely restored to a working state. Update testing is another one, because snapshots mean I can super quickly revert back to working state if a new DSM update bricks the install. Performance on any VM I would assume is worse than the same install on bare metal but for DSM running on Dell r730xd which is what I have, the performance is so good with vSAN and 10G networking, it doesn't really matter if I get an extra couple MB/s transfer and stuff on bare metal. I also love the ability to work on DSM installs and bootloaders all remotely over a VPN since I can see the console output anywhere with ESXi, don't have to be physically at the box to change settings in Grub like SN and Mac if needed.

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7 hours ago, bearcat said:

have you looked at this way to expand the volume?

 

This first method seems to have worked perfectly! Uploading a bunch of data now to fill the increased space to test if volume remains stable. I did not find that tutorial in a forum search, so thank you!

Edited by ilovepancakes
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