Knowledge
- Identify storage provisioning methods
- Identify available storage monitoring tools, metrics and alarms
Skills and Abilities
- Apply space utilization data to manage storage resources
- Provision and manage storage resources according to Virtual Machine requirements
- Understand interactions between virtual storage provisioning and physical storage provisioning
- Apply VMware storage best practices
- Configure datastore alarms
- Analyze datastore alarms and errors to determine space availability
Tools
- vSphere Datacenter Administration Guide
- Fibre Channel SAN Configuration Guide
- iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide
- vSphere Command-Line Interface Installation and Scripting Guide
- Product Documentation
- vSphere Client
- vSphere CLI
- vmkfstools
Notes
This section in a lot of ways was partially delved into from Objective 1.1 and Objective 6.4. Additionally this topic delves into alarms and events pertaining to storage.
Apply space utilization data to manage storage resources
In general, you never want to have less than 20% space free. Other than that studying should be focused around on how to check these statistics out.
Provision and manage storage resources according to Virtual Machine requirements
I think a lot of this was already covered in the previous section. I will add this link for and in depth look at Windows counters that will assist in determining virtual machine requirements. Additionally this blog from simple-talk.com contains a good overview of best practices when it comes to provisioning virtual machine storage.
Understand interactions between virtual storage provisioning and physical storage provisioning
A couple of things to realize with this one. When you thin provision virtual machines you must account for the possibility of these virtual machines growing. It is often common nowadays to over provision storage with thin provisioning and the risk is there that you could run out of physical storage as result. This is a very good use case for alarms in vCenter.
Additionally the physical storage provisioned will affect the performance of the guest. Read the other topics on storage already covered to understand the different raid levels and how they can affect performance.
Apply VMware storage best practices
VMware Virtual Storage Best Practices
Configure datastore alarms
vSphere has added a lot of alarms with its recent release. A blog from Jeremy Waldrop does a good job of focusing specifically on datastore alarms.
Analyze datastore alarms and errors to determine space availability
I’d recommend roaming the VMware community for this one. http://communities.vmware.com/thread/257031