ESXI Questions

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chinesestunna

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Jan 23, 2015
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That's really neat, learn something everyday. I meant to say hardware solution btw so sorry for the confusion
 

T_Minus

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Feb 15, 2015
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What do you guys think / do regarding blending drive brands/sizes in ZFS?

Does it matter if I use WD RED and Toshiba 5TB drives in the same pool?
Would you do it?
Why/Not.

What about hot spares?
I assume that ZFS handles failures automatically so a hot spare may repair while I sleep and likely not even be aware until I get notified/logs.
 

NeverDie

Active Member
Jan 28, 2015
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What do you guys think / do regarding blending drive brands/sizes in ZFS?

Does it matter if I use WD RED and Toshiba 5TB drives in the same pool?
Would you do it?
Why/Not.

What about hot spares?
I assume that ZFS handles failures automatically so a hot spare may repair while I sleep and likely not even be aware until I get notified/logs.
It appears that even the same drive model can have different performance characteristics depending on when it was manufactured. I purchased my 3TB WD drives in 3 different batches of three 3TB drives over the span of a year. I found out from running the SMART self-test diagnostics that some of the drives appeared to have faster throughput than the others: those drives would also complete the self-test sooner than the drives that were straggling. These differences were also reflected in the estimations that SMART gives for when the drive would be finished running its assigned task.

For example, when I recently ran the "badblocks" test on all 9 of the drives in parallel, the slowest drive took about 6 hours longer to complete than the fastest drive. It's a very long test, so that represents about a 10% difference in completion times

Actually, I don't know for sure whether it's the drives that are so different. I have the nine drives connected to three different types of controllers on the motherboard: two are connected to the 6Gbps SATA controller, 4 are connected to the 3Gb SATA controller, and 3 are connected to the IT JBOD controller.
 
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T_Minus

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Depending how many drives were in that array a variance in speed wouldn't be noticeable depending how the pool was setup due to how ZFS works, correct?

If so it wouldn't be the actual difference would it? It would be something random, and probably change based on usage at that time, correct?
 

NeverDie

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Jan 28, 2015
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Depending how many drives were in that array a variance in speed wouldn't be noticeable depending how the pool was setup due to how ZFS works, correct?

If so it wouldn't be the actual difference would it? It would be something random, and probably change based on usage at that time, correct?
I don't know yet what to attribute the performance difference to. Am I the only one experiencing this, or has anyone else here also noticed it in their setup?

I'm not that concerned by it. I presume overall performance is simply governed by the slowest drive. Or, perhaps there's something more to it than that? I'm only mentioning it because some people are under the impression that it's important to make all the drives the same model, and my evidence suggests that the results based on that alone may not be as uniform as they might think, or that I would have predicted.

That said, I wouldn't mix 7200 and 5600 RPM drives, if only because it would seem to waste the higher performance of the 7200 RPM drives. Likewise, if seek performance among a set of drives were greatly different, I wouldn't mix those drives either, and for the same reason.
 
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mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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I've mixed 15K SAS and 10K SAS drives before because that's all I had. Didn't bother the raid controller one bit! Harmonic wise - might not have been the best solution!
 

T_Minus

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Going to get ready to install, and noticed in my ISO DIR, I have:

- VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.5.0.update02-2068190.x86_64.iso
- VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.5.0-1331820.x86_64.iso

Is the Update02 the latest including everything, or is it simply a minor update for 5.5?

Not sure which to put on the USB and install :)
 

T_Minus

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Feb 15, 2015
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Not available yet, and when I go 5.5 to 6.0 I'll be able to experience an upgrade process very early on, and gain from the experience.
 

T_Minus

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I haven't kept up with it or software in general recently with the HW acquisitions and build-outs no time :)

Either way I'm going 5.5 to upgrade to 6.0 anyway :)

Thanks for hte info, didn't know it came yet.
 

chinesestunna

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Jan 23, 2015
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I haven't kept up with it or software in general recently with the HW acquisitions and build-outs no time :)

Either way I'm going 5.5 to upgrade to 6.0 anyway :)

Thanks for hte info, didn't know it came yet.
Selfishly I want you to go this route, I just installed 5.5u2 3 weeks ago then 6.0 GAed last week so I'll be in the same boat, you can be the guinea pig and I can learn from the experience :D
Personally I don't really use any of the newer features and even my old 5.0u2 build was working fine. Also I usually wait until u1 for bugs to get worked out a bit more before going production.
 

NeverDie

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I haven't kept up either, but 6.0 appears to have been out a week now. I'm intrigued by a few entries on the download page, such as "VMware Tools CD image for Freebsd Guest OSes". I'm not sure if that appeared earlier in the 5.5 release, but if so, I didn't notice it.

Download page is here.
 
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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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I haven't kept up either, but 6.0 appears to have been out a week now. I'm intrigued by a few entries on the download page, such as "VMware Tools CD image for Freebsd Guest OSes". I'm not sure if that appeared earlier in the 5.5 release, but if so, I didn't notice it.

Download page is here.
You either are not entitled or do not have permissions to download this product.
Check with your My VMware Super User, Procurement Contact or Administrator.