To add to my post above, here's the type of stuff that confuses me. Looking at the VMware SAN Design Guide, the guidelines they list are contradictory:
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From Page 73:
"For VMware Infrastructure 3, it is recommended that you can have at most 16 VMFS
partitions per volume. In other words, have no more than 16 virtual machines or
virtual disks sharing the same volume. You can, however, decide to use one large
volume or multiple small volumes."
From 176:
"Carefully determine the number of virtual machines to place on a single volume
in your environment. In a lightly I/O loaded environment (with 20 to 40 percent
I/O bandwidth use), you might consider placing up to 80 virtual machines per
volume. In a moderate I/O load environment (40 to 60 percent I/O bandwidth
use), up to 40 virtual machines per volume is a conservative number. In a heavy
I/O load environment (above 60 percent I/O bandwidth use), 20 virtual machines
per volume is a good maximum number to consider."
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So what's the real answer here? Is it 16, or the 20/40/80 guideline? Or are they even talking about the same thing?
