Storage Links

General

Storage Caching Solutions (Architecting IT)
(Alternative) VM swap file locations Q&A (Frank Denneman)
A look at the ESX I/O stack (NetApp)
vSphere Storage: Features and Enhancements (Professional VMware)
Storage Changes in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 4 (Stephen Foskett)
Storage Changes in the VMware vSphere 4 Family (Stephen Foskett)
Storage Changes in VMware vSphere 5 (Stephen Foskett)
Storage Changes in VMware vSphere 5.1 (Stephen Foskett)
Everything you need to know about vSphere and data storage (Storage Magazine)
10 tips for managing storage for virtual servers and virtual desktops (Storage Magazine)
Best Practices for Designing Highly Available Storage – Host Perspective (Stretch Cloud)
Best Practices for Designing Highly Available Storage – FC SAN Perspective (Stretch Cloud)
Best Practices for Designing Highly Available Storage – iSCSI SAN Perspective (Stretch Cloud)
Best Practices for Designing Highly Available Storage – Network for iSCSI (Stretch Cloud)
Best Practices for Designing Highly Available Storage – Storage LUNs (Stretch Cloud)
Best Practices for Designing Highly Available Storage – Overall Storage System (Stretch Cloud)
Storage Landscape (Part 1) – Disruptive Technology Trends (Talking Tech with SHD)
Storage Landscape (Part 2) – Storage Architectures (Talking Tech with SHD)
Software-Defined Storage & Hyper-Converged Infrastructure; Two Sides of the Same Coin? (Talking Tech with SHD)
vSphere and 2TB LUNs – changes from VI3.x (Virtual Geek)
Data Compression, Deduplication, & Single Instance Storage (Virtual Storage Guy)
vSphere Introduces the Plug-n-Play SAN (Virtual Storage Guy)
Storage Basics – Part I: An Introduction (VM Today)
Storage Basics – Part II: IOPS (VM Today)
Storage Basics – Part III: RAID (VM Today)
Storage Basics – Part IV: Interface (VM Today)
Storage Basics – Part V: Controllers, Cache and Coalescing (VM Today)
Storage Basics – Part VI: Storage Workload Characterization (VM Today)
Storage Basics – Part VII: Storage Alignment (VM Today)
Storage Basics – Part VIII – The Difference in Consumer vs. Enterprise Class Disks and Storage Arrays (VM Today)
Storage Basics – Part IX: Alternate IOPS Formula (VM Today)
Improve Storage Efficiency and Management with VMware vSphere 4 (VMware)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 4.0 -Storage (VMware Tech Paper)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 4.1 – Storage (VMware Tech Paper)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 – Storage (VMware Tech Paper)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 – Storage (VMware Tech Paper)
VMware vSphere 4: Exchange Server on NFS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel (VMware)
Advanced VMkernel Settings for Disk Storage (VMware vSphere Blog)
Ye olde Controller, Target, Device (ctd) Numbering (VMware vSphere Blog)
How much storage can I present to a Virtual Machine? (VMware vSphere Blog)
Best Practice: How to correctly remove a LUN from an ESX host (VMware vSphere Blog)
Should I defrag my Guest OS? (VMware vSphere Blog)
Misaligned VMs? (VMware vSphere Blog)
Guest OS Partition Alignment (VMware vSphere Blog)
Storage Oversubscription Technologies (Xtravirt)
Why Queue Depth matters! (Yellow Bricks)

Performance

vStorage: Troubleshooting Performance (Professional VMware)
Benchmarking Storage for VMware (Peacon)
Avoid Storage I/O Bottlenecks With vCenter and Esxtop (Petri)
Calculate IOPS in a storage array (Tech Republic)
Performance Troubleshooting VMware vSphere – Storage (Virtual Insanity)
Comparing the I/O Performance of 2 or more Virtual Machines SSD, SATA & IOmeter (Vinf.net)
Storage System Performance Analysis with Iometer (VMware)
Poor performance and high disk latency with some storage configurations (VMware KB)
vSOM: A Framework for Virtual Machine-centric Analysis of End-to-End Storage IO Operations (VMware Labs Tech Paper)
Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 5.1 (VMware Tech Paper)
Storage I/O Performance on VMware vSphere 5.1 over 16 Gigabit Fibre Channel (VMware Tech Paper)
Storage Workload Characterization and Consolidation in Virtualized Environments (VMware Tech Pub)
An Analysis of Disk Performance in VMware ESX Virtual Machines (VMware Tech Pub)
IOPs? (Yellow Bricks)

pvSCSI

More Bang for Your Buck with PVSCSI (Part 1) (Virtual Insanity)
More Bang for your Buck with PVSCSI (Part 2) (Virtual Insanity)
Boot from Paravirtualized SCSI Adapter (Xtravirt)
Configuring disks to use VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters (VMware KB)

Raw Device Mappings (RDMs)

Physical RDM to VMDK Migration Feature (VMware vSphere Blog)
Migrating RDMs, and a question for RDM Users (VMware vSphere Blog)

Storage DRS

Storage DRS, more than I/O load-balancing only (VMware vSphere Blog)
Storage DRS Affinity & Anti-Affinity Rules (VMware vSphere Blog)
Storage DRS and Storage Array Feature Interoperability (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMware vSphere Storage DRS Interoperability (VMware Tech Paper)
Storage DRS: Automated Management of Storage Devices In a Virtualized Datacenter (VMware Labs Tech Paper)
Should I use many small LUNs or a couple large LUNs for Storage DRS? (Yellow Bricks)

Storage I/O Control

Debunking Storage I/O Control Myths (VMware vSphere Blog)
Storage I/O Control Enhancements in vSphere 5.0 (VMware vSphere Blog)
Using both Storage I/O Control & Network I/O Control for NFS (VMware vSphere Blog)
Performance Implications of Storage I/O Control-Enabled NFS Datastores in VMware vSphere 5.0 (VMware Tech Paper)
Storage IO Control Technical Overview & Considerations for Deployment (VMware Tech Paper)

Storage vMotion

Answering some Storage vMotion questions (VMware vSphere Blog)
Storage vMotion of a Virtualized SQL Server Database (VMware Tech Paper)
The Design and Evolution of Live Storage Migration in VMware ESX (VMware Tech Paper)

Virtual Disk

To Zero or not to Zero, that is the question… (Defined By Software)
xExtending an EagerZeroedThick Disk (VMware vSphere Blog)
2TB VMDKs on Upgraded VMFS-3 to VMFS-5. Really? (VMware vSphere Blog)
Virtual Disk Format 5.0 (VMware Tech Paper)

VDI

VDI User Sizing Example (EMC)
Space-Efficient Sparse Virtual Disks and VMware View (My Virtual Cloud)
Clearing up Space-Efficient Virtual Disk questions (My Virtual Cloud)
Managing storage for virtual desktops (Storage Magazine)
VDI and Storage: Deep Impact (Virtuall.eu)
A closer look at the View Storage Accelerator [incl. Video] (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMFS File Locking and Its Impact in VMware View 5.1 (VMware Tech Paper)
Storage Considerations for VMware View (VMware Tech Paper)
View Storage Accelerator in VMware View 5.1 (VMware Tech Paper)

VMFS

VMFS Extents – Are they bad, or simply misunderstood? (VMware vSphere Blog)
Exactly how big can I make a single-extent VMFS-5 datastore? (VMware vSphere Blog)
Some useful vmkfstools ‘hidden’ options (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMFS Locking Uncovered (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMFS Heap Considerations (VMware vSphere Blog)
Something I didn’t known about VMFS sub-blocks (VMware vSphere Blog)
Upgraded VMFS-5: Automatic Partition Format Change (VMware vSphere Blog)
What could be writing to a VMFS when no Virtual Machines are running? (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File System – Technical Overview and Best Practices (VMware Tech Paper)
VMware vSphere VMFS-5 Upgrade Considerations (VMware Tech Paper)

vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)

vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) Resilience – Network Outage Scenario #1: Back End (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) Resilience – Network Outage Scenario #2: Front End (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) – Introduction (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere Storage Appliance – Can I run vCenter on a VSA cluster member? (VMware vSphere Blog)
Performance of VSA in VMware Sphere 5 (VMware Tech Paper)
VMware vSphere Storage Appliance Technical Deep Dive (VMware Tech Paper)
What’s New in VMware vSphere® Storage Appliance 5.1 (VMware Tech Paper)

vSphere 5.0 Blog Series

vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 1 – VMFS-5 (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 2 – Storage vMotion (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 3 – VAAI (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 4 – Storage DRS – Initial Placement (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 5 – Storage DRS – Balance On Space Usage (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 6 – Storage DRS – Balance On I/O Metrics (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 7 – VMFS-5 & GPT (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 8 – Handling the All Paths Down (APD) condition (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 9 – Snapshot Consolidate (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 10 – VASA – vSphere Storage APIs – Storage Awareness(VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 11 – Profile Driven Storage (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 12 – iSCSI Multipathing Enhancements (VMware vSphere Blog)

vSphere 5.1 Blog Series

vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 1: VMFS-5 (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 2: SE Sparse Disks (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 3: vCloud Director (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 4: All Paths Down (APD) (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 5: Storage Protocols (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 6: IODM & SSD Monitoring (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 7: Storage vMotion (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 8: Storage I/O Control (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 9: Storage DRS (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 10: 5 Node MSCS Support (Cormac Hogan)

vSphere 5.5 Posts

vSphere 5.5 Storage Enhancements Part 1: 62TB VMDK (Cormac Hogan)
Hot-Extending Large VMDKs in vSphere 5.5 (Cormac Hogan)
vSphere 5.5 Storage Profiles Are Now Storage Policies (Everything Should Be Virtual)
vSphere 5.5 Jumbo VMDK Deep Dive (Long White Clouds)
vSphere 5.5 Windows Failover Clustering Support (Long White Clouds)
VMworld 2013: What’s new in vSphere 5.5: Storage (Mike Laverick)
vSphere 5.5 UNMAP Deep Dive (VMware vEvangelist)
64TB VMDKs? Yes we can. (VM Today)
VMware’s Strategy for Software-Defined Storage (VMware CTO Blog)
What’s New in vSphere 5.5 Storage (VMware vSphere Blog)
Comparing VMware VSA & VMware Virtual SAN (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMworld 2013: STO5715-S – Software-defined Storage – The Next Phase in the Evolution of Enterprise Storage (VMworld TV)
vSphere 5.5 Improvements Part 3 – Lions, Tigers, and 62TB VMDKs (Wahl Network)
vSphere 5.5 nuggets: changes to disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault (Yellow Bricks)
vSphere 5.5 nuggets: Change Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding per device! (Yellow Bricks)

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