Managing storage for a virtual

machine
 Connecting Virtual Disks
• The amount of data being managed is rapidly growing Thin provisioning is a mechanism
that applies to large-scale
• Storage connects to virtual machines similarly to physical centralized computer disk-
servers but is abstracted from the VMs storage systems, SANs, and
storage virtualization systems. Thin
• Many storage best practices used in the physical environment provisioning allows space to be
apply very well in the virtual world easily allocated to servers, on a
o Thin provisioning just-enough and just-in-time basis.
o Data deduplication Thin provisioning is called "sparse
volumes" in some contexts.
• Adequate storage I/O is key for good performance
o Storage connects through specialized storage or standard network interfaces Data deduplication is a process that
eliminates excessive copies of data
and significantly decreases storage
capacity requirements.
Deduplication can be run as an inline
process as the data is being written
into the storage system and/or as a
background process to eliminate
duplicates after2the data is written to
disk.
 Virtual Storage

• Model shown is VMware architecture

• Hypervisor provides storage and network interface emulators that the virtual
machine drivers connect to
• Hypervisor then manages connections and traffic to the physical interfaces

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 Virtual Storage (II)

• Model is Xen based though Microsoft is similar

• Virtual machines pass data blocks through unique privileged guest that handles I/O
rather than hypervisor layer

4
 Virtual Storage (II)

Figure illustrates the path that a request for data makes from the application program to the storage controller. The
request goes to the operating system, which determines the I/O device to which the request needs to go.

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 Virtual Storage (III)
• Direct attached storage (DAS), disk storage internal to the host system, is managed by a storage controller, a physical processor
card that is part of a computer’s hardware.
• A SAN (Storage Area Network) or NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a disk storage device that is connected to a computer
through a dedicated storage network or through the NIC (Network Interface Controller), a physical card that connects the
computer to the network.
• A SAN usually connects via a specialized controller, sometimes called a Fiber-Channel Controller (FCC), or a Host-Bus Adapter
(HBA). Each of these physical I/O cards, the storage controller and the network controllers, utilize device drivers that the
operating system uses to communicate with them.
• In the case of a request for information that resides on a local disk, or internal to the computer, that request goes to the to the
SCSI driver.
• The SCSI driver request, which in a physical server goes to the physical storage controller, is taken by the hypervisor in the
virtualized environment.
• The virtual machine sees a SCSI controller presented by the hardware, but in actuality it is merely an abstraction that the
hypervisor uses to send and receive storage I/O requests.
• The SCSI emulator catalogs the request and places it in a queue with storage I/O from all of the virtual machines on the host.
• The requests are then passed to the hypervisor’s storage device driver, which is connected to the physical host’s storage
controller.
 Data Deduplication

• Duplicated entities are replaced by pointers to the original

• Works at byte, block, and file levels
• Can reclaim between 30 to 90 percent of storage space

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 Thin Provisioning

• Does not pre-allocate disk space when the file

system is created like thick provisioning
• Could lead to issues if file systems fill the allocated
space
• Like memory overcommit but for storage

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 Storage I/O Control

• Allows Quality of Service (QOS) policy assigned to a single VM or a group of

VMs
• Guarantees appropriate storage throughput in the event of I/O contention to protect
business-critical applications

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 Other Topics
• Tiered Storage
o Storage arrays that have different classes of storage offering multiple levels of service
o Files can be dynamically migrated based on need

• Solid-State Disk Drives (SSD)

o Use solid-state memory instead of spinning platters and moving parts
o Fifty times faster than current disks

• Storage Virtualization
o One model pools internal server storage from multiple servers into a virtual SAN, which is more cost
effective than a separate NAS or SAN

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 Configuring VM Storage Options
• Just as with memory and CPUs, there are limited options for changing the storage of a virtual machine. That is, there are many
ways to connect and configure storage to virtual machines, but these are all methods that are possible in a physical environment as
well.
• Change virtual storage from the management interface.

• 1. If your virtual machine is still running, shut it down. Once it is powered down, edit the Virtual Machine Settings and highlight
the Hard Disk option.

• As shown in Figure , you can see some basic information about the C: drive: some capacity information, the name of the file that
comprises the hard disk in the physical system’s file system, and a small selection of utilities. The utilities menu shows several
tools.

• 2. Defragment is like the physical disk tool in that it will rearrange the data files in the virtual disk in a more compact
configuration, but it will not reclaim that newly emptied space.

• Expand will allow you to add space to a virtual disk drive. Compact will reduce the size of a virtual disk by reclaiming empty
space, but the virtual machine must be powered down to use this capability.

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Configuring VM Storage Options

12
 Configuring VM Storage Options

3. Let’s add a second disk drive to the system. Below the Device
Summary on the left side of the screen, select Add. If your host
system requests permission for VMware Workstation Player to make
changes on the computer because it will be creating a new disk file,
allow it to do so by selecting Yes.

4. Figure 9.5 shows the initial screen of the Add Hardware Wizard.
Hard Disk is already highlighted, so select Next to continue.

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 Configuring VM Storage Options

5. The Select a Disk Type window appears, as shown

in Figure 9.6.

You can choose between bus types but stay with the
recommended SCSI. Select Next to continue.

14
 Configuring VM Storage Options

6. Figure 9.7 displays the Select a Disk screen. The first

radio button is already selected to Create A New Virtual
Disk by creating a file on the host operating system.
Notice the other selections as well.

Use An Existing Virtual Disk would allow you to connect

or reuse a previously created disk. Use A Physical Disk
would allow the virtual disk direct access to a physical
device. Select Next to continue

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 Configuring VM Storage Options
7. Next, you get to choose how much storage space you’d like to allocate
to the new drive. You can see in Figure 9.8 that both maximum and
recommended sizes are presented as guidelines.
You have an option to allocate all of the space on the disk at once, or have
it grow incrementally as it is required. As with the C: drive during the
original virtual machine creation, you also have the option to keep the disk
file as one single file or split it into multiple smaller ones. The plusses and
minuses are stated in the description. For this exercise, enter 5 GB and
then choose to Store Virtual Disk As A Single file. Select Next to continue.

8. The final screen of the Add Hardware Wizard, illustrated in Figure 9.9,
allows you to select the name and placement of the virtual disk files. The
wizard takes the existing virtual disk name and increments it by default.
Also by default, the disk will be placed in the existing virtual machine
folder. You can select Browse to examine the folder and existing files
there already. When you are done, close the Browse window and then
select Finish to complete the process.

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 Configuring VM Storage Options

9. Back on the Virtual Machine Settings window,

you can see that the new disk has appeared.

As shown in Figure 9.10, examine the capacity of

the new disk and note that the maximum size and
the actual
size are different because you didn’t pre-allocate
the space.
If you highlight the Utilities, you can see that the
only option available is to expand the disk size.
One reason why is that the job of creating a new
disk is not complete.
The disk is now configured and connected to the
virtual machine, but you haven’t formatted and
initialized it for
Window’s use.
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 Configuring VM Storage Options
10. Select OK to close the Virtual Machine Settings window and power on the virtual
machine by selecting Play Virtual Machine. Note that there are now two disk icons at
the top of the VMware Workstation Player window. If you hover over them with your
cursor, you will see both the original 30 GB C: drive and the new 5 GB drive.

11. Once the virtual machine is powered on, click the Windows Start button and select
All Apps. Expand the Windows Administrative Tools folder and double-click Computer
Management. In the left-hand windowpane, expand the Storage item if it isn’t already
done and select Disk Management.
12. The utility recognizes that the new storage device, Disk 1, has not yet been
initialized and as shown in Figure 9.11, offers to do so. You can move the window to
uncover the existing devices and verify that the disk to be initialized is the correct one.
Select OK to proceed.

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 Configuring VM Storage Options
13. The new drive is now recognized by the system and is online, but 14. The maximum and minimum volume sizes are
it is presented, and you can choose a value in MB between
still not usable by Windows. As illustrated in Figure 9.12, right-click those limits. Leave the default, which is the maximum
in the Unallocated portion of the disk and a menu appears. Select value, and then choose Next to continue.
New Simple Volume. The Volume Wizard appears. Select Next to
Continue.

19
 Configuring VM Storage Options
15. The next screen allows you to assign a drive letter to the new disk. E: has already been selected, but you can change that
if you like by choosing another letter from the remaining choices in the drop-down menu. Select Next to continue.

16. The next screen has formatting options. For our purposes, the defaults are fine, but change the Volume label to Second
Drive. Select Next to continue.

17. The final screen of the wizard allows you to review the selections you have made. Check your work and then select
Finish. After a few moments, as you can see in Figure 9.13, the new disk, Second Drive, has been formatted and mounted to
the file system as Drive E.

18. When the drive was mounted, Windows 10 automatically recognized it and
an AutoPlay window appeared when the format was complete. Close the
Computer Management utility. You can also see the drive by clicking the
Windows File Explorer icon and choosing This PC, as shown in Figure 9.14. The
drive is completely empty aside from the overhead Windows maintains for
management structures.
 Summary
• Data storage volume is rapidly increasing in both the physical and virtual
environments
• Virtual machines connect to storage devices as physical servers do
• Adequate storage I/O bandwidth is key for good disk performance with VMs
• Physical best practices translate well to the virtual environment
• There are numerous advanced features that make more efficient use of disk storage or
provide better storage I/O

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 Exercise

• As an administrator, you are given a single host server configured with four six-core
processors, 256 GB of memory, and 1 TB of storage to deploy a number of virtual web servers.
You have been told that each virtual machine will require 8 GB of memory, one processor, and
100 GB of disk storage. How many virtual machines will you able to deploy? What is the
limiting factor?
 Answer!
• With a total of 24 cores, you could dedicate a core to up to 24 virtual machines. With 256 GB of memory, and
without taking advantage of memory overcommit, you could deploy up to 32 virtual machines. With a terabyte of
disk storage, you can thick provision 10 virtual machines. There could potentially be some disk storage needed
for the hypervisor, but it would be negligible enough that you could get to 10 virtual machines. The limiting
factor here is the amount of storage available.
 Question!!
• After deploying the 10 web servers as virtual machines, you request more storage
explaining that you could potentially double the number of web servers. Your request is
denied due to budget constraints. After a few weeks of observation, information gathering,
and a conversation with the application team, you discover that the web servers use only
25 GB of storage. The 100 GB request is a comfort number based on the vendor’s generic
recommendation. In the physical environment, they actually had 50 GB but never
approached 30 GB of disk space. With a little more investigation, you discover that
converting thick provisioned disks to thin-provisioned disks is not a very difficult process.
If you decide to reconfigure the existing disks to a thin-provisioned model, and use 30 GB
as your amount of used storage plus some emergency space, how many more virtual
machines could you add to the host? What is the limiting factor? Are there other ways to
increase the number of virtual machines you could add? Would you want to add them?
 Answer!
• At 30 GB per virtual machine, you could now provision up to 33 virtual machines, 23 more
than the initial deployment. This would be more than your memory model would support, but
with page sharing, you could easily meet this mark. Thirty-three virtual machines would also
exceed your 24 processors. The limiting factor is now the number of processors. You would
need additional information about how the CPU resources are being utilized before you could
make a decision about adding more than 14 virtual machines. You might not want to add many
more virtual machines to your host for a number of reasons. As a single host, a potential failure
would cause a severe outage of your service. You would probably spend some time getting
used to the virtual environment and investigate strategies that would increase availability. Also,
you would want to be sure that your physical host could handle all of the demands that were
made on it throughout a variety of conditions over a reasonable period of time. If you ran out
of resources—CPU or memory, for example—contention would occur and cause performance
issues and customer dissatisfaction. On a single host, there is a finite amount of resources
!!! The End !!!