rmechaber (10/18/2012)
Brandon Leach (10/18/2012)
We have learned however that in a virtual environment best practices are even more important. It's important to build the VM with performance in mind. 64k allocation unit sizes for volumes for sql files, etc. Its also important as a DBA to understand how your virtual platform works. Datastores in VMWare for example can take your server(s) down.Brandon, could you elaborate on what you mean by "datastores in VMWare ... can take your server(s) down"? Do you mean something more than a corruption/error/deletion in the datastore will, of course, destroy the server (since the server essentially is the vmdk etc. file)?
Rich
A datastore is a storage layer underneath the OS. OS Level Volumes exist in this datastore. We may have a couple different OS volumes for one or more servers in a single datastore. We've had instances where a datastore filled up and caused a VM to shut down even though it was showing plenty of free disk space on its volumes.
It also depends on whether the datastores are thin or thick provisioned. Thick provisioned means the space is allocated ahead of time and can mitigate the above issue. Thin is more grab it as you need it. Either way I like to monitor the growth of the datastores my servers use.