Veritas Storage Foundation in a VMware ESX Environment: Linux and Solaris x64 platforms

Introduction

This paper describes how to configure and use Veritas Storage Foundation in a VMware ESX environment. Because most features in Storage Foundation are supported in a VMware environment, this paper focuses on the features that work differently in a VMware environment and why certain features are not supported.

The operating systems covered are Linux and Solaris x64, Windows is not covered in this paper. In addition, the paper is limited to Storage Foundation. Veritas Cluster Server information is not included in this white paper.

Executive Summary

VMware server virtualization is a technology that has significant benefits for a data center environment and it is changing the architecture of data centers. However, while it is great at virtualizing operating system instances, it does not solve or address storage virtualization. VMware has simplistic storage functionality that successfully addresses the current VMware market however as more storage intensive applications are being deployed in virtual environments; true storage management technology is required.

Deploying Storage Foundation in a VMware environment makes storage easier to manage and use by creating a functional storage management layer that the storage administrator or system administrator can access and use as it is not hidden inside the VMware ESX server. Benefits include:

• Reducing complexity and management overhead of day to day operation by standardizing on a single toolset for both physical and virtual environments
• Ensuring predictable performance. This is crucial for mission critical data center applications such as databases and mail servers. The architecture of the solution must be able to handle and support the same behavior as in a physical environment.

Intrusive operations such as array migration and data migration can cause significant downtime for a large amount of servers, especially in a virtual environment where one physical server is hosting as many as 30-40 virtual servers. Having the tools and infrastructure available to support such operations is essential to the long-term success of the data center.

Storage Foundation delivers on these items as well as numerous other functions that help the administrator manage the data center more efficiently.

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Last updated: Jan 2011