We always have multible Datastore->LUN/Volume because
- Never put all Eggs into one basket
- A SC Volume is always assigned to one of the two SC Controller. This controller will do all the Work for this Volume. If you only have one Volume than only 1 of 2 controller perform the work. The 2nd. will idle around until a failover will occur. If you have multible Volumes the load will spread of the 2 controllers
- You always assign a Storage profile to a Volume. Maybe you have a need for a volume which holds your SQL/Terminal Server VMs and the required a RAID10 like storage for Read and Write. So you will assign the "Performance" Storage Profile. For other Appliations VM you can assign the "Balanced" Profile which means Raid10 for writes and than Auto tiered into RAID5. You Archive or Low Performance VMs may can use the "Capacity" Profile which stores the data as RAID5 for Read and Write.
- Maybe you wanna enable "compression" for one Datastore/Volume
- Maybe you wann use different snapshot schedules for one Datastore/Volume
You can "convert" a Snapshot with a mouse click into a new Volume, assign it to the Hosts or Cluster, perform a Rescan on ESX level and mount this new volume (after a new signature is written) as new Datastore and you will see all VMs there. If you know how it works it take less than 3min.
Our Customer an by our self we use Veeam B&R, Quest vRanger and other Software. The Backups are always stored on a different system which means Server with local HDDs, a NAS like QNAP/Synology or a DataDomain.
If you now create a new 1.5TB Volume on the SCv, present it to the ESxi Cluster and format it with a VMFS 6.0 the SC only needs a few Megabytes for this because its Thinprovisioning
- Assing the "Capacity" Storage Profile (you can change it later to the one which fits your needs)
- Dont assign a Snapshot profile yet
- Use svMotion to migrate the VMs and please select "Thin Provision" during the process
- Watch your storage consumtion on the SC during the migration
- It only tooks only a few Clicks to expand a SC volume and ESXi Datastore if you need a larger one
If you are finished with the first Datastore
- Delete the DS
- Delete the Volume and watch if you get storage back
- Change Storage profile back to "Balanced" or what ever
- Add Snapshot profile
Our Snapshot profile is "Company Name"
- Snap at 11:45 and holding 4 Days
- Snap at 14:45 and holding 4 Days
Our workload is typicly 80% Read so the space for the changes == Snapshot size is rather low.
Regards
Joerg