Thin Provisioning with ESXi

[niemipet]

I am about to move from my current VMware Server 2.0 environment to ESXi 4.0 by using QNAP TS-439 NAS'es as a virtual machine storage. Since I need to backup the virtual machines by a conventional way, I cannot use iSCSI, because ESXi only supports VSFS-3 at iSCSI. So the best solution would be using NFS.

However, I ran into another problem... Even ESXi and NFS support virtual machine Thin Provisioning, the QNAP TS-439 does not. So if I use QNAP's NFS, my 1TB Thin Provisioned virtual machines will turn into 4TB Thick Provisioned ones...and the backuping in certain timeframes will come impossible.

So what to do? How do I can use QNAP NAS'es as a storage for ESXi, with the requirement of Thin Provisioning the virtual machines???

Would using a Windows NFS-server inbetbeen help???

[QNAPDavid]

Hi niemipet:
pls refer the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone.
https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=converter
see if it works for you.

Cheers.


David Tsao

[niemipet]

Thanks David, but that does not help since problem is with QNAP's way to handle NFS, not with VMware. The virtual machines are already Thin Provisioned, but when they are transferred to QNAP's NFS the QNAP will fully provision the images - even they are still Thin Provisioned by the VMware. So VMware shows the images to be 50GB, but QNAP shows 500GB - so the backup will also be 500GB

I know that tons of expensier Cisco will work with NFS and Thin Provisioning, but I prefer QNAP better in every other aspect. This problem occurs because QNAP's way to handle NFS and EXT3/4 and I suspect that it can be fixed...

[QNAPDavid]

Hi niemipet:
I would like to know how do you move those VMs from VMware Server 2.0 to ESXi?
Copy them directly or useing other method?

BR,


David Tsao

[QNAPDavid]

Hi niemipet:
Would you pls provide the following screen captures of your vSphere client?
1. In the vSphere client, right click the virtual machine->Edit Settings->Disk. Capture this dialog box.

pic1.png

2. Browe the datastore where you stored the vmdk file.

pic2.png

In my case, you would find the size of my thin-provisioning disk is 8GB but the actual size is around 3.2GB.
Cheers.



David Tsao

[tugender]

Has there been any further follow-up on this thin provisioning issue? I'm having the same problem reported by niemipet, that virtual disks (.vmdk's) thin-provisioned in ESXi 4 are being allocated the full disk space with NFS on my TS-439 Pro just as though they had been thick-provisioned. Further interesting is that I also have stored VMs created by VMware Server and VMware Workstation on a different share on the TS-439 and their thin-provisioned .vmdk's are properly thin. At this point I don't know if the reason is the file-sharing discipline (VMS and VMW are both using SMB/CIFS rather than NFS) or the different file engine of ESXi. But I certainly want my ESXi thin-provisioned disks to be stored that way on the QNAP!

Is this a known issue or a configuration subtlety?
If the latter, what configuration tweaks are needed to make ESXi thin-provisioning work properly?
Will the upcoming beta firmware release improve the situation?

[PiroNet]

I am about to move from my current VMware Server 2.0 environment to ESXi 4.0 by using QNAP TS-439 NAS'es as a virtual machine storage. Since I need to backup the virtual machines by a conventional way, I cannot use iSCSI, because ESXi only supports VSFS-3 at iSCSI. So the best solution would be using NFS.

However, I ran into another problem... Even ESXi and NFS support virtual machine Thin Provisioning, the QNAP TS-439 does not. So if I use QNAP's NFS, my 1TB Thin Provisioned virtual machines will turn into 4TB Thick Provisioned ones...and the backuping in certain timeframes will come impossible.

So what to do? How do I can use QNAP NAS'es as a storage for ESXi, with the requirement of Thin Provisioning the virtual machines???

Would using a Windows NFS-server inbetbeen help???

Have you thin provisioned with the following command?
vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/test-vm/test-vm.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/test-vm/testvm-thin.vmdk -d 'thin' -a lsilogic

Then do an ls -lsh or vdf -h (better)

NFS on QNAP should not be the issue as long they have not modified the FS to stick their NAS

[kswail]

Don't worry, while the QNAP shows the vmdks as fully allocated via SMB or even when using "ls", that space isnt really being consumed..

Too see the "real" usage of these files, instead use the "du -h" command, and the output from that will match what VMware is telling you,.

You also get the "real" usage via the QNAP admin interface in the resource monitor.
Cheers.

kswail