QLogic 2600 Series vSphere 5 Virtual Server Engine - Manual (Page 9)

Picking the Right I/O Pieces, and Making Them Work Together
Tier-1 applications are uniquely demanding in many dimensions. Their needs with respect to CPU power,
memory footprint, high availability/failover, resiliency, and responsiveness to outside stimuli is typically
unmatched within the enterprise. Moreover, Tier-1 applications also tend to be tightly integrated with other
applications and resources within the enterprise. Because of this, virtualizing a Tier-1 application requires
rigorous planning of the I/O strategy. There are five steps to follow:
 Identify the I/O fabrics that the Tier-1 applications will use (it may very well be “all of them”).
 Quantify the data flows for each fabric when the application was operating on a standalone system.
 Estimate vMotion I/O needs for failovers and evolution. Note that most vMotion traffic will be storage
I/O; if the data stays within one external array during vMotion, vSphere’ vStorage API for Array
Integration (VAAI) capability can reduce the I/O traffic.
 Determine your primary and secondary I/O paths for multi-pathing on all of your networks.
 Determine QoS levels for the Tier-1 apps.
One simplifying option available is to utilize a multi-protocol network adapter that can function as either a
Fibre Channel or Converged Network Adapter. The QLogic QLE2672 is an example of such an adapter; it can
be reconfigured in the field to operate on 4/8 or Gen 5 Fibre Channel or 10Gb converged Ethernet networks.
Network I/O Planning
Networking Considerations When Virtualizing Tier-1 Applications
Pre-planning deployments is the most effective way to ensure that
SLAs will be achieved, and expensive surprises will be avoided.
Planning